Critical Reasoning for Beginners | Hacker News Reader

Critical Reasoning for Beginners

philosophy.ox.ac.uk

41 pointsrfreytag8 comments

Oh great, because HN needs more logical fallacy callouts.

I strongly believe that if everyone were to take an introductory philosophy course such as this, the world would be a much better place. It seems most arguments that people make, on both sides of any issue, are fallacious and hide the really important points that should be discussed instead.

Maybe it's just me, but I think the title is kind of off-putting. These really are valuable skills, but anyone who got into arguments or did debate in high school, etc., etc. developed at least the rudiments of making arguments and discerning when a point was/wasn't valid just as verbal 'self-defense'.

> I strongly believe that if everyone were to take an introductory philosophy course such as this, the world would be a much better place.

France has mandatory philosophy classes in the 12th grade. The average French citizen is far from being a model of critical reasoning and a paragon of logical thought.

(this week the "bac" takes place, a final exam French students have to take to graduate high school. A text from Victor Hugo was in the French language exam; shortly after the exam, "Victor Hugo" started trending on Twitter, insulted by high schoolers all over the country [0]).

[0] http://www.france24.com/en/20140619-france-victor-hugo-twitt...

In my philosophy 101 class at a decent public university, people had a lot of trouble actually engaging with the questions, every week we had a couple of asides dealing with what were usually pretty silly points.

I thought the instructor did a decent job with it, but it was always a boring period in the class.

The link to the sixth set of slides is missing from the page, but replacing digit 5 in the URL for the fifth with a 6 gets the sixth set.

I would also recommended to read Douglas Walton - Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation. Good book for understanding the basics.

From the first few minutes, it appears one wouldn't lose much hearing this without the video. Am I wrong?

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