CRITICAL THINKING

The course aims to provide students with thinking tools, that ought to enable them to delve into different fields of knowledge and scholarship in a critical - i.e. connscious and autonomous - fashion. The methods and concepts addressed by the course can be applied to different areas, such as politics, law, economics, science, religion, and philosophy.

The course expected learning result is students' ability, individually and as members of groups, to analyse arguments from the point of view of their reliability; to recognise their assumptions, conclusions, and forms of justification; to recognise fallacious arguments and to distinguish between credible and non credible sources of information; to evaluate what type of reasoning is suitable in a certain circumstance. Students are also going to become acquainted with the most common strategies to debunk and discover incorrect arguments.

The only precondition is the will to learn, to reflect, and to discuss one's ideas openly, sincerely, and frankly.

1 - Why ought one to be critical?
The significance of critical thinking in personal life
The significance of critical thinking in learning and scholarship
The significance of critical thinking in society

2 - Attitudes towards theses
Authority, leadership, tradition
Justification

3 - Credibility
Reliability of information
Sources
Truth and credibility

4 - Reasons
Thinking and acting on reasons
Reasons to believe, reasons to act

5 - Arguments
What are arguments?
Premises, conclusions, reasons

6 - Identifying arguments
Language and rhetorics
Rhetorics and logic

7 - Types of arguments
Deductive arguments
Inductive arguments
Other forms of arguments

8 - Truth and validity
Truth in the real world
Political truth, historical truth, juridical truth, scientific truth
Relative truth? Post truth?

9 - Debunking | Some strategies
Logical criticism
Deconstruction
Dialectics
Reduction

Bowell,Tracy, Cowan, Robert, Kemp, Gary: Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide, Routledge, 2019
Fisher, Alec: Critical Thinking: An Introduction, Cambridge University Press, 2011
Hacking, I.: The Social Construction of What?, Harvard University Press, 1999

Active participation during learning sessions
Mid-course tests
Final test

Lectures by the teacher
Discussions
Excercises
Discussion of case studies

English

written and oral

This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Human capital, health, education" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development