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Dowling College:  Fall 2010

 

PHL 1005A Critical Thinking CRN 91295

 

Professor Christian Perring

 

Online: Blackboard

 

Email: perringc at dowling dot edu [all email to me should have PHL1005 in the subject line]

Texting: message me at 631-256-7167, always starting your message with PHL 1005 and your name.

Office Phone: 244-3349

Office: 330B RC (next to the computer lab)

Student Hours: MW 100-230PM, Tuesday 300-600PM, or by appointment.  You can IM me during office hours using the Digsby widget on my home page.

 

Textbook: Critical Thinking, by Brooke Noel Moore and Richard Parker.  NINTH (9th Edition)

(It is important to have this edition, and not an earlier one)

 

Course description: This course will enable students to analyze both popular and technical discourse for its assumptions and arguments and assess their plausibility.  It will also help students improve their own abilities to argue for their own claims. 

 

Learning Outcomes:

Students will be able to

  • Identify deductive and inductive arguments.
  • Identify different kinds of ambiguity.
  • Assess sources for the credibility of their claims.
  • Identify rhetorical devices and techniques.
  • Identify fallacies.
  • Understand categorical logic in deductive arguments.
  • Understand truth-functional logic in deductive arguments.
  • Identify causal explanation.
  • Identify normative reasoning.

 

Students need to be aware of the following features of this online course.  My experience in teaching this course previously is that students find the online format of the class very different from a regular course and find the different expectations very challenging.  Some students find the convenience of an online course just what they need, but others discover that it does not suit them.  For nearly all students, taking an online course is more difficult than doing the classroom equivalent for the following reasons:

·        It requires a great deal of self-motivation and discipline. 

·        You need to be able to work on your own from the course textbook.

·        You need to be able to read the textbook with comprehension on your own.

·        You need to be able to submit work on time.

·        You need to be able to participate online in questioning, answering and commenting on the content of the chapters.

·        There is work due every week, both doing exercises from the book and also participating in online discussion.

·        You need to be able to focus on the material at least twice a week so that you can apply the feedback you get on your ideas to the homework you do.

·        As a rough estimate, in order to succeed, you will need to work about 8 hours a week on the course.

·        You need the textbook from the beginning of the course.  If you do not have it at the start of the course, you will run into problems.

·        If you stumble in the middle of the semester, it can be difficult to recover.

I want to make sure that all students enrolled in the class benefit from the experience.  If you are unsure whether this course is a good fit for you, please think carefully about whether you can meet the expectations.  If you have questions, you can discuss the issue with me by email or phone.

 

Due dates.  Work will be due weekly, by 11.59PM on the day specified in the list below.  Each week I will let you know what grade you got on that week's work and what your cumulative grade is.  Since we will not be meeting together, it is important that all students are working on the same issues at the same time and are discussing them online at the same time.  So I will be penalizing late work in order to give you an incentive to do your work on time. 

 

To emphasize this as strongly as possible: you need to hand work in on time.  It is better to hand incomplete work in on time than to wait.  If you have made a good faith effort to do the work, I will give you the opportunity to re-do it later on. 

 

So the late penalty is 10% for each week late. 

 

Homework deadlines

 

Deadline

Chapter

Grade weight %

Useful links

9/8

1

7

 

9/13

2

7

 

9/20

3

7

 

9/27

4

7

 

10/4

5

7

 

10/11

6

7

 

10/18

7

7

 

10/25

10

9

 

11/1

11

9

 

11/8

8 pt I

6

Creating a Venn Diagram in Word

11/15

8 pt II

6

 

11/22

9 pt I

6

Truth Tables on Wikipedia

Brian's Truth Table Constructor

YouTube Mr Cropper,

Holly Orso Vids: 1, 2, 3

11/29

9 pt II

6

 

12/2

Final project

9

 

12/9

Revised work

 

 

 

Final Deadline for all work: 12/14

 

 

For those who start the class late, you will work on a different deadline in the first month.

All work on Chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4 will be due on Sept 27.