PHL 201 - Logic and Critical Thinking, 3 credit hours

In a society rife with misinformation good reasoning is essential for successfully navigating the infosphere and successful problem-solving. Topics studied in this course include identifying arguments and judging their validity and strength, identifying common fallacies of reasoning, use and abuse of language in persuasion, and principles of fair play in argumentation and debate. Students learn to (1) translate ordinary arguments into formalized symbolic languages (Propositional Logic & Predicate Logic), (2) test arguments for validity, and (3) perform derivations and proofs. No prior knowledge of mathematics or philosophy is required.