PHIL 101: Logic, Reason and Persuasion As taught by (P.) Justin Kalef, Spring 2021
What this course is all about, and how it will be taught
This is an introduction to critical thinking (not to be confused with ‘critical theory’, which could hardly be more different). In this course, you will learn how to think fairly and reasonably about everything you read, hear and think. The point of critical thinking is not to lead you to accept some ideology, or become cynical about the world, or be confident in your own cherished beliefs, but rather to thoughtfully doubt, question, and interrogate ideas and arguments, especially your own and those of your peer group. The tools you learn in this course will be useful to you for the rest of your life. It is important to the world of the future that you continue to apply them as the decades go by.
Meta-content warning: This course will involve discussions of both interesting and trivial things. The interesting things will involve the most divisive and controversial issues of the day. These will come up often and unexpectedly, and sometimes because students choose to raise them. Moreover, when they do come up, we will have to spend time examining both sides sympathetically. This is a good thing for the world, since people with the ability to engage in such analysis are needed in the world: where we cannot resolve things through careful, reasonable discussion, we can only resolve them through unreasonable means, which tend to lead to much worse outcomes over the long run. If you are only comfortable working in a course that looks at certain issues from one side, or that avoids certain topics altogether, this would not be a good course for you to take.
Though we have no scheduled meeting times, it is important for you to treat this as the 3-credit course it is. I will prepare two 80-minute lectures for you each week, just as I would if we were meeting in person. You should set aside regular times each week for watching them in a distraction-free environment, just as if you were in a classroom with me and your fellow students. You should also make sure that you have set aside enough time to handle the rest of the work for the course. A good rule of thumb is to set aside 2-3 hours of home preparation for every hour of class time. Since a 3-credit course has 3 hours of weekly class time, you should be sure to set aside from 6-9 hours per week for this course on top of the 3 hours you spend watching the weekly video lectures. In other words, you should be sure that you can devote 9- 12 hours per week to this course. If you do not have that much time, then this would not be a good course for you to take.
If you’re still interested in the course after knowing that, please read on!
Where to find everything, and how to find me
My email address is [email protected]
Course materials and lectures are on Canvas, here.
I will hold office hours on Zoom from 6pm to 7pm on Mondays and Thursdays.
How your grade will be calculated
Students in this course may earn up to 100 points for regular coursework, plus up to 10 bonus points as noted below. The highest possible total score is therefore 110. Final letter grades will be assigned as follows:
A 90 or higher.
B+ 85 – 89.999
B 80 – 84.999
C+ 75 – 79.999
C 70 – 74.999
D 60 – 69.999
F Below 60
40 points of easy work
Some students are able to handle an asynchronous course like this one (that is, a course with no regular meetings), while others have a hard time learning under those conditions. What students demonstrate in the first week of class is typically a reliable indication of how they will do in the course. That’s a good thing, because the last day on which you can drop this course without a W is Tuesday, January 26th.
I want to make sure that you will have all the information you need to make a wise choice on that day. I am therefore making several small assignments due by the end of the first week of class (Saturday, January 23rd). That will give me all day Sunday to grade everything as quickly as I can so that you may know your score on all that work before you need to make that decision.
40% of your course grade will be determined by the work you will have completed by the end of the first week. However, this work will be the easiest work of the course by far, and most of it will not be very time-intensive.
These easy assignments, all of which you will find on our main Canvas page, are as follows:
1. Complete the survey (10 points). This can be done at any time. It does not require any understanding of any course materials. You simply have to complete a general knowledge survey to help me understand how to teach certain aspects of the course. Regardless of which answers you give, you will get 5 points out of 5 just for completing it by Saturday the 23rd.
2. Open an email address (if you don’t already have one) that doesn’t give away your identity, send me an email (by Friday at the latest) from that account identifying yourself, and follow the invitation link I’ll send you to join the Slack for the course. (10 points). If I see on Saturday that you’ve joined the Slack, I’ll give you a full score of 5/5.
4. Send me your intended schedule for watching the weekly videos, your acknowledgement that you have understood the average workload for the course and the content warning, and your plans for getting access to the readings. (5 points). Again, this is at and needs to be submitted by Saturday the 23rd.
5. Take my syllabus quiz (15 points). This quiz will test your understanding of the syllabus. You should only take the quiz after you have read and studied the syllabus carefully and watched the syllabus video attentively. The quiz is made up of five multiple-choice questions. Each question is worth 3 points, for a total of 15 points. Once you start the quiz, you will have five minutes to answer all five questions. Please be sure to take the quiz by Saturday the 23rd at the latest. You will find the quiz here.
Only under extraordinary circumstances will students be given an opportunity to make up missed points from the first week of class. Those who do will be required to take a one-on-one oral exam, on Zoom, on everything covered in the course up to the time of the exam.
60 points of difficult work (and another 10 in bonus points)
Those who continue after the first week will earn the remainder of their points as follows:
1. Daily Quizzes: 20 points. Starting on Monday, January 25th, there will be a short quiz available twice per week: once on Monday/Tuesday, and once on Thursday/Friday. The quiz will almost always cover the most recent reading and lecture, so you should be sure that you have read and watched those carefully before beginning the quiz. The quiz will always involve a single question, and will always be worth one point. You will only be graded on your best 20 quizzes. Since there will be 27 quiz days in the course, there are plenty of days – an entire month’s worth, in fact – to cover all reasonable emergencies. No other makeup quizzes will be offered for any reason. If you miss a quiz for some reason, simply take the next quiz. There is no need to give me any excuses.
2. Discussions on our Slack channel: 20 points. At least once each week, I will post new discussion topics on our Slack site. There, you will have the opportunity of applying and exploring ideas from the textbook and lectures. About every two weeks, all submissions to the Slack will be graded as follows: - Original, well-written, relevant contributions that show a clear mastery of all the material and move the discussion forward productively: 2 points. - Contributions similar to the above, but slightly deficient in writing style, mastery, or helpfulness: 1 point - Contributions that merely repeat points made elsewhere (including by me, by the author, or by another student), or that are unclear at some point, or that merely agree with things that were already said, or that show a serious misunderstanding of one of the concepts or terms of the course: 0 points.
While the standard for these contributions is high, you will have many opportunities to earn these points. You may make as many submissions as you like, and keep earning points until you have 20, if you can make it that far (20 is the cap). Even students who will ultimately thrive should expect their first submissions to earn grades of 0.
3. Final exam: 20 points. The final exam will be held whenever the office of Scheduling and Space Management indicates it. It will cover everything in the course. More details will be given later in the semester.
Bonus: up to 10 points. At various times during the course, I will offer bonus assignments. These will always be scored out of 10 points. You will never need to do any of these: even if you skip them all, you may still earn up to 100%. However, at the end of the semester, I will take the average score you earned on these bonus assignments (counting those you didn’t do at 0 points). I will add that many points to your percentage before converting it to your final letter grade.
Schedule of topics and readings:
Tuesday, January 19th: Introduction to the course. Reading: None
Friday, January 22nd: Reality and interpretation. Reading: None
Tuesday, January 26th: The problems with relativism and subjectivism. Reading: None
Friday, January 29th: Dialectic and its purpose. Reading: None.
Tuesday, February 2nd: Knowing you’re right. Readings: Chapter 16, plus ‘What Jennifer Saw.’
Friday, February 5th: Scientific reasoning, failures of imagination, and questionable causes. Reading: Chapter 15.
Tuesday, February 9th: Trapped by theory: falsification and falsification-evasion. Readings: Popper, ‘Science as Falsification’ (on Canvas)
Friday, February 12th: . Dogmatism and eristic: some general considerations. A new application of the Golden Rule. Reading: Chapters 1 and 2.
Tuesday, February 16th: Arguments and their features. Reading: Chapter 5
Friday, February 19th: The principle of charity, ‘mind-reading’, and the straw man fallacy. Reading: Chapter 4.
Tuesday, February 23rd: Relevance and the red herring fallacy. Reading: Chapter 6.
Friday, February 26th: Illegitimate appeals to emotion; social shaming as a last (or first) resort of the sophist. Reading: None.
Tuesday, March 2nd: The burden of proof, the fallacy of appeal to ignorance, and the importance of skepticism. Readings: Chapter 8
Friday, March 5th: The importance of definitions and the fallacy of ambiguity. Reading: Chapter 9
Tuesday, March 9th: Social engineering through control of language: the Orwellian move. Also: loaded language, motte and bailey, concept inflation. Reading: To be determined.
Friday, March 12th: Ad hominem moves, introduced. Reading: Chapter 3 to page 40.
Spring Recess
Tuesday, March 23rd: More ad hominem variations, including guilt by association. Reading: the rest of Chapter 3.
Friday, March 26th: Appeals to authority, introduced. Reading: Chapter 10.
Tuesday, March 30th: Some specific appeals to authority: popularity, tradition, and ‘lived experience’.
Friday, April 2nd: The pitfalls of backward reasoning: the fallacies of affirming the consequent and denying the antecedent. Reading: Chapter 14.
Tuesday, April 6th: Begging the question and self-sealing arguments. Reading: Chapter 13.
Friday, April 9th: . Slippery slopes and other problems of vague boundaries. Reading: pages 204- 208
Tuesday, April 13th: Dilemmas and black-and-white thinking. Reading: pages 211-217.
Friday, April 16th: The golden mean and the Overton window. Reading: pages 220-223.
Tuesday, April 20th: Arguments by analogy, introduced. Reading: pages 164-172.
Friday, April 23rd: The fallacy of faulty analogy, and analogical arguments as demands for consistency. Reading: None.
Tuesday, April 27th: Some statistical fallacies. Reading: Chapter 17.
Friday, April 30th: Further statistical fallacies. Reading: None.
Final exam: as scheduled by Rutgers Scheduling and Space Management.