PHI 1101: Reasoning and Critical Thinking: Course Notes, Units 1-8 and Test 1 Review

Introduction 1.1 What this course is about 1.2 Taking the online version of this course 1.3 The Art of Thinking 1.4 Truth 1.5 Belief 1.6 Knowledge 1.7 Knowledge and Reasonable Belief 2 Arguments 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Explanations and arguments 2.3 Simple and complex arguments 3 Arguments in standard form 3.1 Real life is messy 3.2 The principle of charity 3.3 Principles or forms of inference 3.4 Unstated premises and conclusions 3.5 Diagramming arguments 4 Evaluating Arguments 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Evaluating Premises: General Remarks 4.3 Evaluating reasoning 5 Validity and Soundness (1) 5.1 Deductive and non-deductive reasoning 5.2 Validity 5.3 Developing a sense of possibility 5.4 Implication and equivalence 5.5 Validity, truth, and soundness 6 Validity and Soundness (2) 6.1 Truth preservation and formal validity 6.2 Proving Validity: A pair of examples 6.3 On Proofs and Refutations 7 Basic Syllogistic and Venn Diagrams 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Syllogisms 7.3 Venn diagrams: the basics 7.4 Two terms; categorical propositional forms 8 Venn Diagrams (2): Syllogisms 8.1 Reminder 8.2 Evaluating Reasoning, Once Again 9 Overview of Units 1-8 10 Exercises for Review 11 Solutions to Exercises