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Elliot D. Cohen, CAUTION: Faulty Thinking Can Be Harmful To Your Happiness, 3rd Edition (cited below as Faulty Thinking)

BELIEF-SCAN 4.0/4.1 for Windows, Artificial Intelligence for Detecting and Diagnosing Faulty Thinking (cited below as Belief-Scan). Only students who have their own personal computers should purchase this software. All other students should use an IRCC computer lab.

Philosophical Counseling: How Philosophy Can be Good Therapy (audio presentation)

Ch. 2, What Goes on in an Emotional Crisis, WWAD

Fallacies of Interpersonal Relations

Ch. 7, Reports that May be Behind Your Self-Destructive Emotions and Actions, WWAD

Finding Meaning in Life

Ch. 11, How to Set Yourself Free: Antidotes to an Oppressive Upbringing, WWAD

This course aims at helping you deal more effectively with the problems of everyday living by teaching you how to think more rationally about such matters. In particular, it shows you how to locate and identify irrational, destructive premises in your practical reasoning; and it shows you how to refute these premises and to construct rational, constructive "antidotes" to them. It provides in-class, skill-building group activities for these purposes. The course also utilizes interactive, "Belief-Scan" software technology that provides facility for practicing these skills outside the classroom environment, in the context of your personal life issues and problems. It also aims at increasing your analytical skills as applied to writing and analyzing argumentative essays. (See "Learning Outcomes" below)

Upon satisfactory completion of this course, students should be able to do the following:

3. Demonstrate tolerance for a wide range of global, social and cultural points of view:

2. Three objective (scantronable) exams, including the final (each to count equally); to be announced at least one week in advance. The following grading scale will be used:

            A=   90-100
            B=   80 - 89
            C= 70 - 79
            D= 60 - 69
            F=    0 - 59

3. One 1000 word essay providing a logical analysis and critique of an (assigned) article on a controversial issue. Articles and due date to be announced in class;

4. The keeping of an electronic log, maintained in a file folder, consisting of printouts/copies of general summary and evaluation components of Belief-Scan analyses you have run of your own beliefs--at least 350 words per essay (one essay per week, collected biweekly, not graded).

5. Class work (attendance and interactive group participation), and evidence of careful self-evaluation (as based on computer work) will be considered in determining final grades in "borderline" cases. For these purposes, a borderline case will be defined as no more than one percentage point less than the next grade category (for example, 79% or 89%). Excessive absences can affect final grades (see attendance policy for details).

6. Practical Logic Assessment Inventory (PLAI) OPTIONAL This program should be taken twice in the semester. First you should take the Pre-test, and at the end of the semester, you should take the Post-test. This test consists of a battery of questions that asks you to rank the degree in which you think in certain ways. There are about 48 questions to answer and it should take you approximately ten minutes to complete the inventory. The program then converts your responses to fallacies, the same ones that are applied by Belief-Scan. The program allows you to print and view these lists (you can also copy and past them), and it also converts your responses to numerical values.

7. Your Top Three Fallacies. This is a list of the three fallacies that have come up most frequently in your Belief-Scan Summaries. So you will need to use these summaries to build this list. You should list your fallacies in descending order, with the most persistent fallacies listed first, the second most persistent fallacy listed second, and the third listed last. This will give you an objective evaluation of the fallacies you need most to continue to work on upon completion of this course. Include a brief discussion (150-300 words) about what "antidotes" you have taken or plan to take to avoid each of these fallacies in the future.

Directions for Term Paper: Type written, double-spaced 500 word paper.

Select one of the following articles:

Myths of the War on Terrorism (Click to see article)

Vice President's Remarks on the War on Terror (Click to see article)

Using the methods of creative and critical thinking developed in this course, carefully analyze and criticize the article you have selected. Discuss whether the author of the article proves his/her conclusion by the reasoning he/she uses to back it up. This involves the following analytical activities:

Checking for fallacies in the author's premises,
Refuting the fallacious premises (see types of refutation in chapter 9 of What would Aristotle do?),
Exposing mistaken assumptions,
Checking for accuracy of factual claims,
Showing that there are objections to the author's argument that the author fails to address,
Determining whether the evidence provided is sufficient to establish the conclusion,
Suggesting a creative "antidote" (solution) to the main problem you find with the author's view.

You are free to use Belief-Scan for checking for fallacies. However, you should be discrete in the fallacies you identify using this tool. As some findings may be less significant than others, you should be selective in what you use from your Belief-Scan analysis. (Identifying one or two major fallacies which you carefully examine and discuss is far better than pointing to many trivial or relatively insignificant ones). Remember that this is an essay and not merely a list of fallacies that were picked up in scanning the article.

Since this assignment is to criticize the view taken by an author in one of the articles given above, it is preferable to choose a selection that you think can be most successfully be criticized--that is, most readily shown to have a weak argument for its conclusion. Note however that you can agree with an author's conclusion while not necessarily agreeing with the reasoning by which the author arrived at that conclusion. E.g., many people believe that abortion should not be illegal but that doesn't mean they would agree with a pro-choice proponent who thought that abortion should be legal because a fetus was merely a cluster of cells.

Grading of Term Papers:

Term papers will count 10% of the final grade. To receive a satisfactory grade (C or higher) a student must NOT do any of the following: (1) spend all or most of his or her words summarizing what the author says. (2) offer little or no analysis of the views presented in the article. (3) claim that the author makes logical mistakes but not carefully cite the relevant passages of the article where the logical mistakes were committed. (4) fail to apply course materials (fallacy classifications, definitions, methods, etc.) in analyzing the assigned article. (5) attempt to apply course materials in analyzing the assigned article but often applies them incorrectly. (6) fail to carefully discuss the assigned article (for example, talk on the general subject of physician-assisted suicide without carefully analyzing the particular article that was assigned on that subject). (7) plagiarize the work of others.

Papers will receive grades of 4 (=95), 3 (=85), 2 (=75), 1 (=65) based on the following rubric:

Holistic Critical Thinking Scoring Rubric

Adapted from Peter A. Facione. Noreen C. Facione (The California Academic Press, 1994.)

4 Consistently does all or almost all of the following:

Accurately interprets evidence. statements. graphics. questions. etc.
Identifies the author’s central argument (conclusion and premises)
Provides detailed analysis and evaluation of the key assumptions and premises of the author’s central argument.
Draws warranted. judicious. non-fallacious conclusions.
Explains assumptions and reasons.
Offers a rational, creative alternative view that avoids the criticisms made against the author’s view.
Fair-mindedly follows where evidence and reasons lead.

3 Does most or many of the following: .

Accurately interprets evidence. statements. graphics. questions. etc.
Identifies the author’s central arguments.
Provides analysis and evaluation of some key assumptions and premises of the author’s central argument.
Draws warranted. non-fallacious conclusions.
Explains reasons.
Offers a rational alternative view that avoids some of the criticisms made against the author’s view.
Fair-mindedly follows where evidence and reasons lead.

2 Does most or many of the following:

Misinterprets evidence. statements. graphics. questions. etc.
Identifies the author’s central argument but superficially analyzes and evaluates it.
Draws unwarranted or fallacious conclusions.
Seldom explains reasons.
Misinterprets or misapplies logical distinctions (e.g. types of faulty thinking errors)
Focuses on trivial points at the expense of avoiding key ones.
Does not offer a rational alternative view to that of the author.

1 Consistently does all or almost all of the following:

Offers biased interpretations of evidence. statements. graphics. questions. information, or the points of view of others.
Fails to identify the author’s central argument.
Presents its own biased point of view instead of attempting to identify, analyze and evaluate the author’s argument.
Argues using fallacious or irrelevant reasons, and unwarranted claims.
Does not explain reasons.
Regardless of the evidence or reasons, maintains or defends views based on self-interest or preconceptions.
Exhibits close-mindedness or hostility to reason.

Students in this course are expected to do a substantial amount of writing in satisfaction of the Gordon Rule Requirement. Satisfactory completion of the term paper and electronic log will satisfy this requirement.

Attendance is required. Three (3) unexcused absences will result in the lowering of final grades by one letter grade (10 points). All absences must be documented. Ordinarily, a student will be allowed a maximum of three (3) excused absences.

Students are encouraged to take exams at the time they are administered in class. With the discretion of the instructor, a student will be permitted to make up no more than one exam. Exams not taken will be given a failing grade.

Any student who plagiarizes work in this course (including term papers and computer essays) will receive an automatic failure (F) for this course.

Access on Indian River Community College computer equipment of materials of a sexual or ethnically derogatory nature is in violation of the College policy on harassment, which assures a positive learning environment. Violation may result in disciplinary action.

Click on the below setup program file, and save it to a folder on your hard drive. Then double click on it to install the Practical Logic Assessment Inventory.

1. Click on the below zip file and save it to a folder. Open the folder. Double click on plai2002.zip (now saved to your folder). Drag all of the files in the opened archive to the same folder in which you saved plai2002.zip.

INDUCTIVE ARGUMENT= Df. Argument whose conclusion follows from premises with a degree probability (less than certainty).

DEDUCTIVE ARGUMENT = Df. Argument whose conclusion necessarily follows from premises.

VALID DEDUCTIVE ARGUMENT =Df. Argument having a valid deductive argument form.

VALID DEDUCTIVE ARGUMENT FORM =Df. Deductive argument form wherein any substitution instances making its premises true also makes its conclusion true.

SOUND DEDUCTIVE ARGUMENT =Df. Argument (1) having a valid deductive argument form and wherein (2) all of its premises are true.

Philosophical Counseling: How Philosophy Can be Good Therapy (audio presentation)

Ch. 2, What Goes on in an Emotional Crisis, WWAD

Fallacies of Interpersonal Relations

Finding Meaning in Life

Ch. 11, How to Set Yourself Free: Antidotes to an Oppressive Upbringing, WWAD

Valid Deductive Argument Forms

If p then q

Invalid Deductive Argument Forms

So, not-q

If p then q

If p then q