FYS 1102 - Critical Thinking

Credits: 4
Until recently, I believed that groundhogs didn’t climb trees. It turns out that my belief was false: groundhogs do, in fact, climb trees. On what basis did I change my mind? Well, on what basis do any of us change our minds? On what basis should any of us change our minds? Do we have reasons for believing what we believe? If not, shouldn’t we? What kind? Should we ground our beliefs in scientific evidence? And how do we sort out solid scientific evidence from pseudoscientific conjectures? How do others (notably politicians, pundits and marketing execs) seek to manipulate our beliefs and behavior for their own benefit? Critical thinking empowers students to recognize fallacious reasoning, manipulative rhetoric, and other dubious defenses of faulty beliefs. Through direct analysis of texts both classic and contemporary, one massive role-playing game, and an individualized research project, students will gain first-hand experience exploring various methods of justification, explanation and argumentation in order to understand why we believe what we believe.
McDaniel Plan: First-Year Seminar, Textural Analysis