Course/Section: Philosophy 105.03: Critical Thinking
Instructor: James DiGiovanna
Class Time: TTh 4:15-5:30
Class Room: T 233
Office hours: by appointment (I'm usually available in the afternoon)
Office: NB 8.63.12 (that’s the “new building,” 8th floor, suite 63, room 12)
Contact Information: 212-237-8336 jdigiovanna@jjay.cuny.edu
Course Description: Critical thinking is the discipline that teaches you how to argue for
a claim, how to recognize arguments, and how to criticize them. In other words: how do
you convince someone, and when should you be convinced by what someone says? We’ll
look at attempts to convince in the news, in editorials, in advertising and in ordinary life.
In critical thinking, you'll learn how to write clear, well organized arguments. Arguments
are elements of essays, and a good essay will generally include good argumentation. So,
we'll be a series of short papers, some of which will just be bare-bones arguments, and
some of which will be more full-fledged essays. With your final paper, you'll present a
well-reasoned, efficient, and effective argument and you'll know how to defend that
argument from counterarguments.
A big part of critical thinking is knowing how to distinguish reliable and reasonable
sources of information from unreliable and unreasonable sources. Science reporting has a
lot of both, and we’ll be reading Ben Goldacre’s excellent, highly readable text, Bad
Science which does a great job analyzing modern science reporting. We’ll use Richard
Epstein’s textbook Critical Thinking to acquire a technical vocabulary for our course, and
use that vocabulary and the concepts it supports in discussing Goldacre’s book.
Work: There’s a lot of homework in this class. A lot. For every class expect to spend
about 1 hour doing exercises in the Epstein’s Critical Thinking and read one chapter of
Goldacre’s Bad Science.
SERIOUSLY: THIS COURSE INVOLVES A LOT OF WORK OUTSIDE OF
CLASS TIME. THINK ABOUT THAT CAREFULLY. IF YOU DON’T HAVE
TIME TO DO A FEW HOURS OF HOMEWORK A WEEK, DROP THE
COURSE NOW!
Every Monday you’ll submit a short paper, many of which will involve independent
research wherein you’ll be asked to cite several reliable sources.
THERE’S A PAPER DUE EVERY WEEK!
Homework exercises in Epstein’s Critical Thinking will be assigned each class, based on
how much we’ve covered that day, so you’ll need to show up to get the assignment.
Availability: I'll be regularly checking my email. I can best be contacted in that way.
You, for your part, will be obliged to maintain and regularly check an email account
that is registered with the Blackboard site for this course. I'll explain how to do that
during the first class, and if you have any trouble with it please ask me. You must keep
this email account functioning: this involves regularly deleting old emails because the
server gives limited space to students. If I send an email through Blackboard and it
bounces from your account, I'll try to contact you to let you know, but you'll be
responsible for any work missed as a result.
Quizzes and Exams: There will be a quiz every two weeks, during the first 20 minutes
of the Thursday class. I’ll drop the lowest quiz grade. If you miss a quiz you cannot make
it up, so try to show up on time! There will also be a mid-term and final exam.
Participation: I’ll call on each student every class to answer questions from the
homework. So you have to participate in class. If you don’t want to participate, or feel
uncomfortable doing so, you should probably take a different class.
Grading
Papers: 32%
Quizzes: 32%
Final and Midterm: 32%
Homework/Class participation: 4%
Rules and Regulations:
Attendance: No more than four absences are allowed. Exceeding that will result in
failure of the course. No distinction is made between excused and unexcused
absences! Your attendance is important because much of what you'll learn is dependent
on what you've learned before. If you miss any part of it, you'll likely be lost.
No texting or using a cell phone or any electronic device in class without permission. If
your cell phone rings in class I’ll add three hard questions to the next quiz. If you’re
caught texting while in class I’ll factor an “F” in among your paper grades. If you’re
caught doing it twice you fail the midterm. Third time you fail the course. Seriously. Do.
Not. Send. Text. Messages. While. In. Class.
Plagiarism: Plagiarism will result in an immediate F grade on the paper that contains the
plagiarism, and, depending on the severity of the case, immediate failure of the course.
Below is the statement on plagiarism from the John Jay College Bulletin (page 225):
Plagiarism is the act of presenting another person’s ideas, research or writings as your own. The following
are some examples of plagiarism, but by no means is it an exhaustive list:* Copying another person’s actual
words without the use of quotation marks and footnotes attributing the words to their source; * Presenting
another person’s ideas or theories in your own words without acknowledging the source; * Using information
that is not common knowledge without acknowledging the sources; * Failing to acknowledge collaborators on
homework and laboratory assignments. Internet plagiarism includes submitting downloaded term papers or
parts of term papers, paraphrasing or copying information from the Internet without citing the source, and
“cutting and pasting” from various sources without proper attribution.
Texts:
Critical Thinking by Richard Epstein, available at the bookstore
Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, also at the bookstore
Homework: There will be homework assignment from the text due every class. The
following homework assignments will be assigned in order, though it will sometimes take
us more than one class day to get through an assignment. Besides doing the exercises,
you are obliged to READ the ENTIRE assigned chapter. The chapters are short, and if
you want to pass the class you’ll read them through at least twice, once before doing the
exercise, and again as you do the exercises. If you miss a class, find out from a friend or
from Blackboard what was assigned:
1. Chapter 1, exercises 4-9, 11, 14-22
2. Ch. 2, section A, ex. 1-7, 9, 11; Ch. 2, sec. B, ex. 1, 3, 5, 6, 8
3. Ch. 2, sec. C, ex. 1-12; Ch. 2, sec D, ex. 1-7 (don’t skip 6!); summary exercises (p 32)
1-13
4. Read Handout on Standard Format Arguments: from here on, all arguments must be
presented in Standard Format unless otherwise specified. Ch. 3, sec A-C, ex. 1-24
5. Ch. 3, p.49, ex 1-16
6. Ch. 4, sec A-D, ex. 1-10, 12-25
7. Ch. 4, sec. E, ex 1-7; Ch. 5, sec. A-B1, ex. 1-4, 10-17; sec B2 (p 91) ex. 1-3, 5, 9, 11,
15 (don’t skip 15!), 17, 25
8. Ch. 5, sec. C, ex. 1-3 (don’t skip 3!), 6-9 (don’t skip 9!), sec D ex. 3-7, 9-20
9. Review exercises, p.108, ex. 1-32
Mid Term Exam
10. Read Handout on Counterarguments. Ch. 7, ex. 2, 3, 5, 9-20, 23-26
11. Ch. 9, ex. 1-4, 10, 13, 14-22, 28, 39, 43, 47
12. Ch. 10 ex. 3-21
13. Ch. 11, ex. 1-30
14. Ch. 13. ex. 1-19, 28-34
15. Ch. 14. sec. B ex. 1-9; chapter exercises (pg. 292) 1-27
16. Chapter 15 on cause and effect, if we have time.
Papers: We’ll have weekly writing assignments. In general, the papers will be extremely
short, and will usually involve arguments in the standard form (see handout.) You must
hand your papers in every Tuesday. Late papers received the same week will be accepted,
but marked down. Here’s a tentative list of the first 8 writing assignments. We will
almost certainly alter this to accommodate the state of progress in the English course, so
you'll need to attend class to find the actual assignment
These are the sorts of weekly assignments we’ll have. Each week, I’ll announce the
assignment for the next week, generally based on our progress in the texts. We’ll
also be drawing heavily from newspapers, political speeches, and advertising as
source materials, so that current events will shape our assignments.
1. Write a short argument.
2. Write 10 subjective and 10 objective claims. FIND, in the assigned reading from
Goldacre’s Bad Science, 10 claims, and classify them as subjective or objective.
3. Write 10 prescriptive claims. Say what the basis for each claim is, and whether
it’s a subjective or objective basis. FIND in in Goldacre’s Bad Science, or in a
newspaper editorial, 5 prescriptive claims.
4. Write 4 valid, 4 strong, and 4 weak arguments. Reconstruct an argument from
Goldacre’s Bad Science. Remember that arguments are composed of claims, and
that claims must be clear enough to be true or false.
5. Find an argument by a politician. Break it down into premises and conclusions
6. Find an example of misleading language in an advertisement for a health or
beauty product.
7. Find an example of a newspaper article that cites a think tank. Find out who funds
that think tank, what their areas of expertise are, and what biases they might have
8. Etc.
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this course you should be able to:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
f.
g.
h.
i.
j.
k.
l.
m.
n.
o.
p.
q.
identify claims and non-claims
distinguish subjective from objective claims
identify premises and conclusions
find arguments in texts
distinguish between strong, valid and weak arguments
distinguish between good and bad arguments
produce strong and valid arguments
understand the basics of the scientific method
be able to critique a claim made for the efficacy of a drug, therapy, or treatment
understand how to determine if a claim is true
know how to distinguish good from bad sources
create counterarguments and counter-counterarguments
link argument into longer arguments
spot fallacious reasoning
understand the basic elements of generalization
understand some ways that charts and numbers can be used to deceive
write an essay that cogently argues for a point using nothing but premises,
conclusions and definitions, and avoiding fallacies and misleading rhetorical
appeals