Syllabus

PHIL 150. Critical Thinking (intermediary)
Fall 2018, TR 3:30-4:45PM.
© Professor Huaping Lu-Adler, Georgetown University.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

    1. Read closely. Write clearly. Communicate effectively. These are the most basic conditions of quality thinking.
    2. Get an informed and realistic picture of how we think as embodied, culturally situated, and socially oriented human beings. Study your own thinking habits, uncover and scrutinize your previously unexamined or even unnoticed assumptions, register the actual and/or potential obstacles to your critical thinking, and make a concerted effort to take your level of thinking up a few notches from wherever you started. Clear-eyed self-knowledge and self-assessment is the key.
    3. Learn to identify arguments – or lack thereof – in both your own and other people’s claims, so that you can properly assess them and, if necessary, revise or refute them effectively.
    4. Gain a basic understanding of scientific reasoning and learn to differentiate genuine and bogus scientific claims.
    5. Learn the basics of how data – especially Big Data – are used and how such uses influence nearly every aspect of both our personal life and our society as a whole, often in disconcerting ways.
    6. Recognize that being a critical thinker is a matter of degree, that there is always room for improvement, and that every age and society – such as ours right now – may present its unique challenges that require creative responses. Learn to take ownership of your involvement, find your own voice, and set your own pace in this process, rather than passively getting along.
    7. Help to cultivate a diverse ecosystem of critical thinkers around yourself. How well people around you – be they your friends, colleagues, or mere strangers – think and what information gets transmitted to you through them can profoundly, but often in ways that are subtle and barely noticeable, influence the quality of your thinking. To that extent, it is your indirect duty to yourself to use the critical thinking resources and skills you have learned in this class to inform and engage people around you, regardless of whether they share your worldview.
    8. In so doing, you should continue to develop and strengthen fairmindedness, intellectual humility, intellectual courage and perseverance, among other valuable intellectual traits.

ASSESSMENT: ASSIGNMENTS, PROJECTS, and PARTICIPATION

25 completion assignments, 2 points each.

  • These are low-stakes, though by no means easy, assignments to facilitate your learning (as opposed to performing). You should do your best each time, without the pressure to get everything right.
  • To count as complete, an assignment must (a) address all the components mentioned in the stated guidelines, (b) be evidently informed by the relevant course materials, and (c) use good diction and have few to no typos. A submitted assignment that doesn’t meet these conditions may receive a credit between 0 and 1.5.
  • You’ll find preliminary guidelines for most assignments in this syllabus. But I may adjust the guidelines when I post the assignment on our Canvas course site, where all assignments will be managed (unless otherwise noted). Please always follow the guidelines you see on that site. And please feel free to ask me for clarification if needed (don’t wait till the last minute in that case).
  • The assignments due before the class are meant to prepare you for informed participation in class. I will try my best to read all timely submissions. In class, I may ask you to talk about something you’ve written.
  • Under normal circumstances, for each assignment that is due two hours before class, you will receive up to 1.5 points if you miss the deadline but submit it by the start of the class. No later submission will be accepted, unless you have made a special arrangement with me in advance due to excusable circumstances.
  • You must complete at least 15 assignments in order to receive a passing grade for this course.
  • In order to receive an A for the course, you must complete at least 23 assignments, and the missed assignments cannot be the ones that will be part of group discussions or the ones that will become the basis for one of the Digital Projects.

4 Digital Projects, 5 points each. 

  • These projects are higher-stakes assignments. They, with your name attached, will be posted on a website (managed by Georgetown Domains, referred to as “resources website” henceforth), where we will share resources on various aspects of critical thinking with other college students (at Georgetown and beyond) and with professors who may be looking for non-traditional ways to teach critical thinking that show greater sensitivity to our changing times. (You do not have to worry about technicalities of the website. You’re simply to provide quality content.)
  • These projects are graded for completion, with the same completion requirements as stated in the second bullet point above. A submission that doesn’t meet all the requirements will receive a credit between 0 and 4.5 points.
  • A late submission will lose 1 point for every calendar day it is late, until the point of 0.

1 Final Project, 15 points.

  • This is your highest-stake assignment. All the assignments and projects mentioned above are meant partly to prepare you for this one.
  • This assignment will not only be posted on the resources website mentioned above, it will also be graded for its quality.
  • You can find the preliminary guidelines for this project at the end of this syllabus. More detailed guidelines will be announced at least 2 weeks before the due date, together with an assessment rubric.

Participation, 15 points

  • Attendance, needless to say, is a necessary condition of participation.
    • You are granted 1 complementary absence without penalty, so long as it does not occur on any day that involves group work. Please save it for a rainy day.
    • 1 point will be subtracted for every additional unexcused absence.
    • To qualify for an A-level course grade, you cannot have more than 2 unexcused absences, including the complementary one.
    • To qualify for a B-level course grade, you cannot have more than 5 unexcused absences, including the complementary one.
    • To receive a passing course grade, you cannot have more than 10 unexcused absences, including the complementary one.
    • You are considered absent if you sleep through much of the class.
    • Arrival after I have started the class, usually right after the bell, counts as being late. Persistent tardiness will no doubt have a negative effect on your participation grade.
    • You are considered too late if you are 15+ minutes late. Being too late thrice equals one absence.
  • In-class participation
    • We stress quality of participation, which is not about having correct answers, but about whether your remarks are thoughtful and well informed by the relevant materials.
    • The best way to ensure high-quality participation is to be thoroughly prepared beforehand.
    • At the beginning of each class, I may solicit your reflections on the assigned materials. I expect you to volunteer. However, to give everyone a fair chance to participate each time, I may invite you to share your thoughts if you have not volunteered.
    • If you have concerns or reservations about participating in class, please discuss them with me as early in the semester as you can. I will try my best to work with you.[1]
  • Your regard (or lack thereof) for the policies about the use of electronic devices in class.

SCHEDULE

Week 1

Aug.30 (Th)    Introduction: what is critical thinking? How good are you at it?
Assignment 1, due in class: Complete an introductory worksheet in class and discuss the results.

Week 2

Sept.4 (T)        Think critically about critical thinking: a philosophical debate
Readings: Huemer, “Is Critical Thinking Epistemically Responsible?”; Ritola, “Critical Thinking Is Epistemically Responsible”
Assignment 2, due 2 hours before class: Write a one-page report, in which you i) summarize the main arguments made in each paper, and ii) state and briefly explain your own position.

Sept.6 (Th)      “The intuitive dog and its rational tail”:[2] a sobering account of thinking
Readings: Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, chapter 1 (The Characters of the Story) & chapter 3 (The Lazy Controller)
Assignment 3, due before class: Write a one-page report, in which you i) summarize the overall lessons from the readings, and ii) give a real-life example to illustrate one of those lessons.[3] The representation of the example can be textual (e.g. newspaper clip), visual (e.g. a TV news segment or a YouTube clip), or audible (e.g. a radio excerpt). Canvas accommodates all three forms. [Space permitting, you may also raise doubts and/or questions.]

Week 3

Sept.11 (T)      A sobering account of thinking (cont.)
Readings: Kahneman, chapter 5 (Cognitive Ease) & chapter 9 (Answering an Easier Question); Lack, “Why Can’t We Trust Our Brains?”
Assignment 4, due before class: Write a one-page report, in which you i) summarize the overall lessons from the readings, and ii) give a real-life example to illustrate one of the lessons. The representation of the example can be textual, visual, or audible, as explained in Assignment 3. [Space permitting, you may also raise doubts and/or questions.]

Sept.13 (Th)    What stands in the way of critical thinking?
Readings: Kahneman, chapter 19 (The Illusion of Understanding); Vaughn, “Obstacles to Critical Thinking”
Assignment 5, due before class: select exercises (details on Canvas).

Week 4

Sept.18 (T)      Critical thinking as strategic thinking I
Reading: Paul, “Parts of Thinking”
Assignment 6, due before class: select exercises (details on Canvas).

Sept.20 (Th)     Critical thinking as strategic thinking II
Reading: Paul, “Strategic Thinking”
Assignment 7, due before class: select exercises (details on Canvas).

Week 5

Sept.25 (T)       Workshop on Digital Project I: annotated resources
Assignment 8, due before class: Review the readings assigned so far and your own notes and reports. Create an annotated list that contains 3 theories/concepts/exercises that have left the most impression on you and that you would like to share with other college students like you. You should succinctly and compellingly explain your choices with your targeted audience in mind. Keep all that in one page. (Think of them in terms of elevator pitches.)

Activity in class: In groups of 4, discuss and assess your individual list. Generate a collectively edited, negotiated, and refined list, signed off by all contributing members of the group. This list will be your first digital project to be included in our resources website.

Digital Project I due at noon on Sunday, Sept.30.

Sept.27 (Th)    Tune up your BS detector
Readings: Frankfurt, “On Bullshit”; Stokke & Fallis, “Bullshitting, Lying, and Indifference toward Truth”
Assignment 9, due before class: Write a one-page report, in which you i) state your basic understanding of the term ‘bullshit’ before reading the assigned articles [you should record this before you sit down with the readings], ii) formulate your updated definition of the same term, as inspired by the readings (you don’t have to agree with any of the authors, although you should definitely take their discussions into account), and iii) use a recent real-life example to illustrate why the new definition is preferable. The representation of the example can be textual, visual, or audible, as explained in Assignment 3.

Week 6

Oct.2 (T)          Our ecosystem of BS: fake news and disinformation campaigns
Preparation: Search online and find discussions of “fake news” and “disinformation.”
Assignment 10, due before class: Give a report of no more than 1.5 pages long, in which you i) state what you observe to be the now commonly used meanings of those concepts (if you use particular sources for this, state your sources in a footnote or bibliography); ii) find examples – preferably more or less recent ones – to illustrate those meanings, one example for each identified meaning (the representation of the examples can be textual, visual, or audible, as explained in Assignment 3); and iii) explain, briefly, whether or why we should be highly concerned about the phenomena and how you think a concerned individual should do to confront them.

Oct.4 (Th)        Let’s defend truth and start with basics: identify arguments
Reading: Bowell & Kemp, “Introducing Arguments”
Assignment 11, due before class: Complete all the exercises on pp.23-26. (If you have a PDF Pro or something of the sort, you may be able to complete the exercises digitally within the document. Alternatively, you may print out these pages, do the exercises by hand, and then upload a scanned copy of the completed work.) Your answers will be peer-marked in class.

Week 7

Oct.9 (T)          Evaluate arguments 1: deductive reasoning
Reading: Bowell & Kemp, “Logic: Deductive Validity”
Assignment 12, due before class: Complete select exercises 6 & 8-11 on pp.94-98 (marked in yellow). Follow the same format instructions as Assignment 11. Your answers will be peer-marked in class.

Oct.11 (Th)      Evaluate arguments 2: probability & inductive reasoning
Reading: Bowell & Kemp, “Logic: Probability and Inductive Reasoning”
Assignment 13, due before class: Complete select exercises 2 & 4-7 on pp.128-31 (marked in yellow). Follow the same format instructions as the previous assignment. Your answers will be peer-marked in class.

Week 8

Oct.16 (T)        Evaluate arguments 3: an inventory of fallacies
Reading: Vaughn, “Fallacies and Persuaders”
Assignment 14, due before class: select exercises (details on Canvas).

Oct.18 (Th)     Scientific reasoning: correlation vs. causality
Reading:   Vaughn, “Causal Arguments”
Assignment 15, due before class: select exercises (details on Canvas).

Week 9

Oct. 23 (T)      Scientific reasoning: inference to the best explanation
Reading:   Vaughn, “Inference to the Best Explanation”
Assignment 16, due before class: Complete select exercises 8.3-8.6 on pp.176-80 (marked in yellow) & Revisit the page on Canvas>Pages titled “Arguments and explanations about effects of minimum wage increase.” Find the answers you provided a couple of weeks ago. Given what you know now about arguments and explanations, please
(i) reconstruct the arguments for/against minimum wage increase to $15 (if you don’t like tying this issue to the tipped-wage case, that’s fine; if you would like to replace the arguments with more suitable alternatives, that’s fine too);
(ii) rethink your answer to the second part of the original prompt (about possible explanations for the hypothetical scenarios); and
(iii) evaluate the arguments you’ve reconstructed: are they deductively or inductively sound?

Oct. 25 (Th)     Workshop on Digital Project II: record, analyze, and assess real-life arguments [@ Lauinger-140, reserved with technical support 3-5pm)]
Preparations:
(i) Choose a debated issue that you care about. Find one to two people you know who disagree with you on that issue or, alternatively, who share your basic conclusion but with fundamentally different reasons. Ask their permission to have a recorded discussion with you. (You should make it clear to them that the recording may be shared on our website without revealing their identities.) All parties involved must give reasons for their positions. (You may have to intervene to get a participant to go beyond making mere assertions.) Bring the recording to the class.
(ii) Review the materials on arguments since Oct.4, to prepare yourself for an expertly analysis of the recording just mentioned.

Activity in class: Go through the recording, find the parts where different sides present their reasons/arguments for their respective positions. Reconstruct the arguments, and assess them for their validity & soundness or inductive strength. Take note of formal and informal fallacies wherever applicable.
Expected product: An edited recording that contains the materials that you end up using. A written report that contains your reconstruction and detailed assessment of the arguments.

Digital Project II due at noon on Sunday, Oct.28.

Week 10

Oct.30 (T)     Think critically about data 1: statistical biases
Assignment 17, due before class (independent research with no assigned readings): Please answer the following questions in a single document:
(i) What would be your rough, colloquium definition of “bias”? What other concepts do you typically associate with it? (Don’t overthink this question. Just report what immediately comes to your mind.)
(ii) There are all sorts of statistical biases (i.e. biases in data collection and analysis). Do some research and single out 3 such biases.  Explain what each bias comes down to and think up an example of your own design to illustrate it. (Please state the sources that you end up drawing on, even if not directly quoting from, for your answers.)
(iii) Suppose you want to conduct an anonymous survey to figure out the percentage of students in your school/college (e.g. SFS, BS) who have registered to vote during the upcoming mid-term election. How would you design and conduct the survey so as to avoid a biased result?

Nov.1 (Th)      Think critically about data 2: data visualization, deception, and persuasion
Readings: Data Visualization that Mislead; “The Persuasive Power of Data Visualization” (Pandey et al., 2014); Excerpt from Storytelling with Data (Nussbaumer, 2015)
Assignment 18, due before class: Based on what you’ve learned from the readings, find two actual examples of data visualization by scanning newspapers and magazines. (Ask a librarian if you need help to find the examples.) Use one example to illustrate a misleading data presentation, and the other to illustrate what seems to be a persuasive and at the same time honest presentation. EXPLAIN, using the conceptual apparatus from the readings, what makes one misleading while the other persuasive. (In the latter case, describe what the intended audience might be like.)

Week 11

Nov.6 (T)         Think critically about data 3: Big Data & algorithmic biases
Readings: Lipton, “The Foundations of Algorithmic Bias”; Noble, Algorithms of Oppression (excerpts); O’Neil, Weapons of Math Destruction (excerpts)
Assignment 19, due before class: Write a one-page report, in which you i) summarize the overall lessons from the readings. Your summary should reflect a close reading of all three readings. As usual, you should provide specific textual references even when you are not directly quoting from the texts.
ii) Connect the phenomenon of algorithmic bias with statistical biases and/or cognitive biases that we’ve studied in this class. If you see any connection with other theories we’ve studied, it would be great (though not required) for you to point them out as well.
iii) Give a real-life example to illustrate one of the lessons described in (i). The representation of the example can be textual, visual, or audible.

Nov.8 (Th)       Practice debunking: the case of poverty
Preparations:  
(i) Study the UN report on “extreme poverty” in US, June-July 2018.
(ii) Listen to any one episode from On The Media’s podcast series, “Busted: America’s Poverty Myths” and see if you can connect it with the UN report.
(iii) Find and study reports of UN ambassador Nikki Haley’s dismissal of the UN report.

Assignment 20, due before class: Write a one-page report, in which you i) single out what you take to be one misconception/BS about poverty in US that can have serious practical implications, and ii) debunk it with any (combination) of the tools you’ve obtained since Oct.25 as well as the ones obtained before then. You may use graphs, videos, etc. to present a compelling case.

Week 12

Nov.13 (T)       Are we in a post-truth era? Either way, any implications for critical thinking?
Preparation: Search online and find arguments for and against the claim that we now live in a post-truth era.
Assignment 21, due before class: Give a report of no more than 1.5 pages long, in which you i) state what you observe to be commonly used meaning(s) of the concept “post-truth” (specify the sources that led you to the observation); ii) summarize main reasons for and against the claim that we live in a post-truth era; and iii) regardless of where you stand, list and briefly explain the implications that each conclusion may have for the practice of critical thinking in our time. [You may present your report in a mixed-media format.]

Nov.15 (Th)     Know your audience: how to debunk BSs and promote truths effectively.
Readings and audio: Cook & Lewandowsky, The Debunking Handbook; Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, chapter 11 (Anchors); Podcasts listed in the segment “INFORMED ENGAGEMENT in CIVIL DISCOURSE”

Assignment 22, due before class: Write a one-page report, in which you i) state your main takeaways, and ii) use an example – preferably a real-life one – to illustrate one takeaway. The representation of the example can be textual, visual, or audible, as explained in Assignment 3.

Week 13

Nov. 20 (T)     Workshop on Digital Project III: practice expanding the Critical Thinking ecosystem around you
Preparations:
(i) Review the materials covered, the notes you’ve taken, and the assignments you’ve completed since Oct. 18.
(ii) Select one case that involves faulty – but not obviously so to untrained eyes – scientific reasoning and/or data use.
(iii) Show the example to two willing acquaintances from different backgrounds (consider variations in age, gender, education, etc.), who you know have not received training in scientific reasoning or proper uses of data. Solicit and take note of their reactions. (Do not reveal their identities.)
(iv) Using the critical thinking tools that you’ve acquired so far, help them to think more critically about the given case. Take notes and keep track of (a) which tools you used, (b) how you presented your analysis of the case to each person (ideally, your approach should be informed by an understanding of your audience), and (c) each person’s response afterwards. [Take the relevant materials to class. You may present them by whichever medium you see fit.]

Activity in class: In groups of 4, discuss the prepared cases and help one another to improve on them. Each student will submit their own Digital Project III, which brings together the last three components just mentioned. Further details will be announced on Canvas.

Digital Project III due at noon on Sunday, Nov.25.

…………………………. THANKSGIVING ……………………………….

Week 14

Nov. 27 (T)     No meeting. Take-home assignment.
Preparation: Listen to the podcast “Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus” from Data Skeptic (Oct. 2018); Watch the documentary “Merchants of Doubt”(on Canvas>ShareStream-MediaManager).

Assignment 23, due at the end of class: Look for the parts from the podcast and the documentary that connect with what you have read and learned in this class. Write down 4 connections that you found to be most salient and/or worth noting. Please be specific in explaining your choices.

Nov. 29 (Th)    Think “factfully” and focus on actionable resolutions
Readings: Rosling, Factfulness, chapter 10 (The Urgency Instinct); Nathaniel Rich, “Losing Earth: the decade we almost stopped climate change” (NYT Magazine, Aug.1, 2018); the October 2018 IPCC report on climate change—summary for policymakers. [N.B. you can just scan the topic sentences to get a general sense of the report.]

Assignment 24, due before class: Write a one-page report, in which you i) describe a case in which you or someone else handled a problem out of the urgency instinct and could have done differently following Rosling’s advice; and ii) assuming (regardless of whether you actually agree) that Rosling is right about how the urgency plea can backfire and cause inaction in the case of climate change, imagine how we may approach the issue differently than, say, Al Gore reportedly did.

Week 15

Dec. 4 (T)         Workshop on Digital Project IV: share one of your best assignments
Preparation: Revisit your work on assignments 9-10 and 17-24. Pick two that you can refine, develop, and combine into a single presentation that showcases some of the theoretical and practical tools you’ve acquired in this class. All parts of your presentation should add up to a coherent narrative. And it must be a mixed-media presentation. Bring your prepared materials to class.

Activity in class: In groups of 4, help one another to improve on the prepared cases.

Dec. 6 (Th)       Review and reflect.
Assignment 25, due in class: Complete a review-and-reflect worksheet in class. (Details and instructions for advance preparations TBA on Canvas.) There may be group discussions, and the results of the discussions may be entirely or partially posted on our resources website, as signed off by all contributing participants.

Digital Project IV due at noon on Sunday, Dec.9.

Tuesday, Dec.18, at noon: Final Project due. In this project, you will synthesize select materials from the whole semester, to create a personalized and realistic manual for continuing self-coaching in critical thinking and for growing a diverse critical thinking ecosystem around you. You will again be asked to make a mixed-media presentation. (Further details will be announced on Canvas.) Your submitted project will be posted on our resources website.

[1] If you suspect that you are an introvert and that this affects your participation, you may find the following site helpful: http://www.quietrev.com/ – or check out Cain’s book Quiet, which inspired the Quiet Revolution. Much of my pedagogical designs are informed by what I’ve learned from Cain’s work.

[2] This phrase is the title of chapter 2 of Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion, New York, 2012.

[3] Do not name the people involved, unless it involves you and you feel comfortable presenting the character as yourself; in this case, you have the option to use a fictional name to mask your identity.