Posted in Critical Thinking, Informal Logic, tagged cognitive bias, Cristian Santibanez, David Godden, evolution of reasoning, Jeffrey Maynes, Kunimasa Sato, psychology of reasoning on May 29, 2015| Leave a Comment »
David Godden. Argumentation, rationality, and psychology of reasoning (135-167)
Cristián Santibáñez, What is the Purpose of Arguing? On Value, Function and Normativity in Argumentation (168-183)
Jeffrey Maynes, Critical Thinking and Cognitive Bias (184-204)
Kunimasa Sato, Sensitizing Reasons by Emulating Exemplars (205-221)
Posted in Argumentation, Critical Thinking, Fallacies, Informal Logic, tagged debiasing, defeasible argumentation, John Locke, Watson-Glaser test on December 10, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Informal Logic vol. 31 no. 4
Informal Logic vol. 34, no. 4 is up at the journal’s homepage.
Looking forward to reading that first one, myself! Interesting issue overall, though–do check it out!
Posted in CFP, Critical Thinking, Discussion, Informal Logic, Seminar/Workshop/Program Announcements, tagged AILACT, American Philosophical Association, Central APA 2015 on September 8, 2014| Leave a Comment »
WANTED: Ideas for a paper or a panel discussion or a book review session for the AILACT Group Session at the Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, February 18-21, 2015, at the Ballpark Hilton, St. Louis.
This is a great way to share some ideas and test some arguments with friends. It’s always a fun social occasion too.
Topics include: critical thinking, informal logic, argumentation, their instruction, assessment, and philosophical and psychological foundations.
Please send ideas or questions by September 30 to Kevin Possin: kpossin@winona.edu
Posted in Argumentation, CFP, Critical Thinking, Informal Logic, Rationality, tagged CEAR on September 6, 2014| Leave a Comment »
23-26 September, 2015
Diego Portales Univeristy,
Santiago, Chile
Conference Website: http://www.cear-lact.udp.cl/index.htm
The Fourth International Conference on Argumentation, Psychology of Reasoning and Critical Thinking is a new academic effort of our Centre to continue what was started in January 2008 and continued in October 2010 and January 2013. Just as with the three first Conferences, in which we were together with researchers from Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Spain, The Netherlands, United States, and Uruguay, in this fourth Conference we are not only trying to deepen and update the production of knowledge in the fields that this conference covers, but we are also trying to contribute to a positive valuation of different proposals that develop critical thinking and promote social debate with a standard of reasonableness.
This Conference, organized by the Centre for the Study of Argumentation and Reasoning (CEAR) of the Faculty of Psychology at Diego Portales University, would like to generate tools, approaches and solutions to apply in those fields in which the uses of reason is fundamental: communication, law, education, etc. We do not have an official theoretical position, but rather we value the diversity of angles and proposals. We invite the scientific international community, which works in the topics of the Conference, to participate and share its knowledge, experience and current challenges.
Posted in Critical Thinking, Job Openings, tagged Argumentation jobs, critical thinking jobs, philosophy jobs, York University on January 28, 2014| Leave a Comment »
The Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies invites applications from qualified candidates for two (2) Alternate Stream (teaching focused) tenure-track appointments at the rank of Assistant Lecturer to begin July 1, 2014. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.
The successful candidates must be able to provide documented evidence of excellence in teaching at the undergraduate level and demonstrate commitment to pedagogy with the potential for programmatic leadership. The area of specialization is open and areas of competence are logic and critical thinking. A PhD in Philosophy is required. The successful candidates will be expected to teach multiple sections of the Department’s general education course, Modes of Reasoning, each year along with one or more undergraduate philosophy courses, depending on departmental need. (more…)
Posted in Computation, Connections, Critical Thinking, Discussion, Teaching, tagged argument mapping, Kritisch Denken, Rationale Online on September 28, 2013| Leave a Comment »
A screen shot of Rationale Online, click for a larger view.
It’s no secret to regular readers here that I’m a big fan of argument mapping. I’ve written about it several times and it’s come to be a very important component of my teaching. That’s why I’m happy to have added Rationale Online, a web-based version of the Rationale software package, to the RAIL Resources page. Beyond merely listing it there, though, I thought I’d put up a short post about it as I think it really does represent a positive step in the evolution of argument diagramming software for the classroom.
The diagramming system used in Rationale Online is a descendant of that pioneered by Tim van Gelder (some will remember Reason!Able), wherein one can diagram both arguments and various sorts of rebuttals, with or without incorporating various sorts of argument schemes from a number of different models. (more…)
Posted in Connections, Critical Thinking, Discussion, Teaching, tagged corporatization, higher education, humanities, philosophy on August 25, 2013| 4 Comments »
Paul Gustav Fischer, “A fire on Kultorvet” c.1900
Eric Schliesser, over at NewAPPS, has an interesting post up regarding a dispute between Marcus Arvan and Jason Brennan over the ethics of promoting the study of philosophy by citing empirical data about the success of philosophy majors. For those outside the discipline of philosophy this may seem a tempest in a teacup, but I think it warrants a closer look. For where one reads ‘philosophy’ in these discussions one could almost, in every case, substitute the name of another humanities discipline with no damage at all to the logic of the arguments in play. In the same way, I’m writing this post as a philosopher, but my guess is that a good deal of what I say here could probably be said just as well (if perhaps more eloquently) by my colleagues in, say, English or Communications. (more…)
Posted in Contests, Critical Thinking, Fallacies, Informal Logic, tagged AILACT, AILACT Essay Prize on June 5, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Essay Prize in Informal Logic/Critical Thinking/Argumentation Theory
The Association for Informal Logic and Critical Thinking (AILACT) invites submissions for the 2013 AILACT Essay Prize. This will be the ninth year in which the prize has been offered.
Posted in Critical Thinking, tagged education politics, higher education policy, K-12 education policy, Kenneth Burnstein, NCLB, the Answer Sheet, Valerie Srauss on February 11, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Since the publication of Academically Adrift in 2011, it has been a commonplace that educators in the US are failing to prepare students to think critically. The inevitable question of who to blame for this, sadly, seems almost tailor-made to pit K-12 educators against their counterparts in higher ed. Being in the latter category, a refrain I frequently hear from colleagues in the US is that students are turning up at their institutions every year who are less prepared for college-level work than their predecessors of a few years prior. While many (I would even go so far as to say most if not all) of us do not blame K-12 teachers, whom we know are subject to a great more interference in their professional lives than many of us could ever stomach, we do blame the political dysfunction that causes their woes. Increasingly it threatens higher ed too.
“The Student in His Study,” by Jan Davidszoon de Heem, 1628
On that subject here’s a piece from Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog at the Washington Post that deserves a lot more attention than it’s had to this point. It was written by one Kenneth Bernstein, apparently upon reflection at the time of his retirement as a High School AP government teacher. In this piece Bernstein gives clear voice to the feeling that many professional teachers have that the priorities of the national education agenda in the US are seriously, dangerously out of alignment with the standing mission of K-12 education to produce functional young adults with sufficient critical thinking skills to make them capable of entering either the work force or higher ed. Quoting from a must-read blog post by 2009 National Teacher of the Year, Anthony Mullen, he also captures well the absurdity of an educational system that puts the fate of its charges in the hands of people with neither classroom experience nor any substantive background in education: (more…)
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