Writing and Reasoning with Joshua Park
The purpose of this course is to learn to become a better reasoner. Reasoning concerns
several cognitive activities: thinking, inferring, making decisions, evaluating evidence, and
more. Although in general we reason well, we often do poorly at these activities, particularly
when under pressure, emotional, or biased about a topic. In many cases, this is because we
are not sufficiently critical of our own reasoning; in other cases, this is because we are not
aware of common “pitfalls” of reasoning that we easily fall into. There are two primary
objectives of the course, a theoretical one and a practical one. The first objective is to gain
some knowledge of the subject matter of critical reasoning, including argumentation, logic,
decision theory, and more. We will draw on a variety of sources in science and humanities.
The second objective is to improve your practical ability to reason in concrete situations, by
analyzing arguments and exploring several case studies.