30527 - SEMINARIO DI CRITICAL THINKING / CRITICAL THINKING SEMINAR

The aim of the seminar is to acquaint students with the most important patterns of reasoning used in social sciences and decision-making. This is done by considering the characteristics of these patterns, their diverse applications, and the psychological biases that affect human reasoning. Each session of the seminar starts with a case study to be discussed in class, enhances a specific set of skills, and includes some tests, or experiments, to help students understand the potential biases in reasoning and judgment.

• Cognitive biases
• What is an argument?
• How to challenge an argument
• Reasoning with conditionals
• Counterfactual reasoning
• Reasoning with explanatory hypotheses
• Reasoning with causes
• Reasoning with probabilities

• Identify the structure of an argument
• Use arguments to counter other arguments
• Understand how arguments are used in human communication
• Evaluate conditional reasoning
• Identify the explanation of a fact or event
• Identify the relationship between cause and effect
• Formulate the prediction of an event based on existing information
• Draw a conclusion about reality, by imagining a situation that does not actually take place

• Determine under what conditions an argument is acceptable
• Choose the proper argument to counter other arguments in reasoning
• Apply arguments strategically in interpersonal communication
• Assess a conclusion based on conditional statements
• Determine whether the explanation of a fact is convincing
• Determine whether a fact can be considered the cause of another fact
• Use statistics to justify a standpoint
• Evaluate the relevance of a counterfactual situation in decision-making

• Online lectures
• Case studies /Incidents (traditional, online)
• Interactive class activities (role playing, business game, simulation, online forum, instant polls)

• Case-studies: each session of the seminar starts with the discussion of a case study presented through a short video or some slides.
• Interactive class activities: the course includes tests and experiments that are carried out in class.

The exam aims to evaluate the understanding of the notions discussed in class (how arguments are used in human communication, what their structure is, how to use them to counter other arguments) and the ability to apply those notions to particular questions (by determining the properties of an argument presented in the test, or selecting the right solution to a given problem).

Students have their grade recorded simply as a pass or fail.

There are two partial tests or, in alternative, a final general test. All tests consist of multiple-choice questions on the subjects considered in the seminar.

NB: to access classes and tests, students in debt must send a B in Touch message to get enrolled in the requested class of the current a.y. (2022/23)

• D. CANALE, R. CIUNI, A. FRIGERIO, G. TUZET, Critical Thinking. An Introduction (Milano: EGEA, 2021), with the exception of chapters 5 and 11, and sections 6.4 and 7.3.4.
• Slides presented during the seminar.