Checking date: 10/05/2022


Course: 2022/2023

Logic and Argumentation
(13815)
Dual Bachelor in Journalism and Humanities Studies (2013 Study Plan) (Plan: 305 - Estudio: 282)


Coordinating teacher: RIVERO OBRA, MERCEDES

Department assigned to the subject: Humanities: Philosophy, Language, Literature Theory Department

Type: Compulsory
ECTS Credits: 6.0 ECTS

Course:
Semester:




Objectives
Ability to anlayze the argumentative structures of discourse To master the basic logical structures To examine the daily intuitions about concepts as knwledge, reason or rationality
Skills and learning outcomes
Description of contents: programme
PART 1 (KNOWLEDGE AND REPRESENTATION) 1. Information and knowledge 2. Knowledge and scepticism 3. Introduction to epistemology: virtues 4. Testimony and social epistemology PART 2: REASONING AND ARGUMENTATION Reasoning as exploitation of information and argumentation as reasoning that aims to convince (distinguishing disagreements and conflicts, controversies and polemics, common perspectives and conflicting perspectives on the world (ideologies)). 2. Conditions of truth and meaning (experience shows that students have great difficulty in distinguishing the two and that this is the source of many of the problems in understanding the conditional and the distinction between valid reasoning and correct reasoning). 3. Logical relations between representations (basic relations) (a brief immersion in truth functions, not so much technically as instrumentally correct. Basic introduction to the idea of the possible world created by the linguistic form of representation). 4. Conditionalisation of thought (this is a theoretical-practical introduction to the conditional as an essential form of thought. It has to be an essentially practical subject so that they grasp the distinction between the various forms of conditional, from the material to the relevant conditional with a brief introduction to counterfactuals). 5. Necessary and sufficient conditions (this is a primary version of modal uses in everyday language, not an introduction to modal logic. Above all it is a practical exercise. Focus a lot on the architecture of necessity from empirical necessity through conceptual necessity to logical necessity to conceptual necessity and specific fields related to practice). 6. Reasoning: correctness and validity (introduce the idea of reasoning as a capacity for efficient exploitation of information. This is where logic and epistemology mix. The difference between formal validity and epistemic correctness needs to be taught well). 7. Non-formal reasoning (introduction to the ideas of contextual assumptions, hidden premises, non-explicit steps, etc.). Above all, it is about being able to think about the analytical power of language in reasoning. 9. Concepts of action and emotion with regard to how to apply reasoning in our daily lives. Distinguishing reasoning in natural language. The connection of knowledge with each other and with the world. 10. Argumentation as a capacity for conviction due to the extraction of information (distinguish clearly between rhetoric as a capacity to mobilise feelings and argumentation as a capacity to mobilise reflection). 11. Correct argumentation (material conditions of argumentation, which are not only those of correct reasoning made explicit publicly, but those of a communicative act that is sensitive to the conditions of reception). 12. Concept and types of fallacies (this is a complicated subject, since on the one hand we have to distinguish between rhetoric as a mobilisation of affects and reflexive fallacies. But then there is the problem of contextualism that invades the idea of fallacy. Working especially on the problem of the fallacy of authority). 13. The phases of critical thinking (decomposition, examination of sources, local and global consistency. This is basically a methodological theme, very much inspired by the intelligence manuals). 14. Rationality as analytical capacity: spheres of rationality (this is already conclusive, to raise issues of normativity).
Assessment System
  • % end-of-term-examination 60
  • % of continuous assessment (assigments, laboratory, practicals...) 40

The course syllabus may change due academic events or other reasons.