PHIL 101 Critical Thinking (GE A3)

Critical Thinking is the best defense against intellectual trickery and self-delusion. It provides specific techniques and tools whereby we can avoid basic fallacies in our own thinking and detect them in the thought of others. Reasoning is a highly complicated human activity and cannot be satisfactorily studied in an intellectual vacuum. Hence, in this course, critical thinking and uncritical thought are contrasted in the context of the world of human interests and activities-social, political and scientific. All of the basic 'tricks' for persuading people to accept false premises and conclusions as true are systematically laid out and their detection practiced. Some basic works of world philosophers will be studied to substantiate and contextualize the technical focus of the course. Satisfies GE A3 (Critical Thinking).