Critical Thinking and Argumentation

Code: FIL02321L

6 ECTS

Duration: 15 weeks/156 hours

Scientific Area: Philosophy

Teaching languages: Portuguese

Languages of tutoring support: Portuguese

Regime de Frequência: Presencial

Sustainable Development Goals

Educação de qualidade - Assegurar a educação inclusiva, e equitativa e de qualidade, e promover oportunidades de aprendizagem ao longo da vida para todos.

Learning Goals

This course on critical thinking intends to contribute to a better performance of students whenever they have:
?to critically react to what they read in books, journals, newspapers or on the internet;
?to judge the quality of a speech or of a lecture;
?to actively participate in classes and seminars;
?to build an argument of their own;
?to write an essay in defense of a certain conclusion.

Identific. of questions,positions and arguments
Arguments:conclu.and reasons
Implicit premises
Intermediary conclu.
Language:vagueness and ambiguity
Kinds of definitions
Facts and values
Objective and subjective judgements
Representing arguments with diagrams
Does the conclu. follow from the premises?
Probability in the premises
Strong and weak inductions
Principles of rational discussion
Common mistakes in the assessment of premises
Appeals to authority
Mistaking the person for the argument
Disjunctive and conditional claims,and how to deny them
Necessary and sufficient conditions
Reasoning from hypothesis
Contrafactual reasoning
Objecting and refuting
Presenting and assessing counter-examples
Appeals to emotion
Formal fallacies and fallacies with respect to content
Reasoning by analogy
Numbers:graphs and averages