| Description | With these 24 Teaching Company lectures, by Professor Zarefsky, you get an excellent introduction on reasoning and critical thinking. As it is an introduction, you do not need prior knowledge on argumentation, rhetoric, math or logic. But that does not mean there is no depth. Zarefsky lectures in an easy to understand and engaging presentation style; after all he is a professor in rhetoric.
The contents of the 24 lecures:
1. Introducing Argumentation and Rhetoric
2. History of Argumentation Studies
3. Formal and Informal Argument
4. The Emergence of Controversy
5. Resolutions and Issues
6. Stasis-The Focal Point of Dispute
7. Presumption and Burden of Proof
8. Argument Analysis and Diagramming
9. Claims and Evidence
10. Reasoning from Parts to Whole
11. Moving from Cause to Effect
12. Establishing Correlations
13. Analogy, Narrative, and Form
14. What Makes a Sound Argument?
15. Fallacies in Reasoning
16. Validity and Fallacies Reconsidered
17. Assembling a Case
18. Attack and Defense I
19. Attack and Defense II
20. Language and Style in Argumentation
21. Arguments between Friends
22. Arguments among Experts
23. Public Argument and Democratic Life
24. The Ends of Argumentation
As one can see, Professor Zarefsky covers quite some ground in this lecture serie. But he never gets dull or dense, he make complicated concepts seem easy and transparent. Thus after this course you will have a much better understanding about how to reason correctly and to think critical about thinks. I highly recommend this excellent Teaching Company course! |
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