Critical Reasoning for Beginners
- Free
- No certificate
- Beginner
Critical Reasoning for Beginners is a six-lecture course by Marianne Talbot, published under Oxford Lifelong Learning as open content on the university's podcast site, with a seventh episode of further reading. It is for people who want to reason more clearly, convince others of a point of view, and evaluate the arguments they meet in newspapers, on television or in the pub. The lectures move in order from the nature of arguments and the different types of argument, to setting arguments out logic-book style, to what makes an argument good, including validity and truth, and finally two sessions on evaluating arguments.
The stated aim is that you learn to identify arguments, evaluate them, and stop mistaking bad arguments for good ones. The series is free with no enrolment, assessment or certificate; the lectures are available as audio and video from the series page or through Apple Podcasts and RSS, and every episode page offers a transcript. The recordings carry a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK licence, permitting non-commercial reuse with attribution.
What you’ll learn
- Recognise an argument and tell it apart from other kinds of statement
- Distinguish the main types of argument
- Set out an argument in the standard form used in logic textbooks
- Judge whether an argument is valid and whether its premises are true
- Evaluate everyday arguments without mistaking bad ones for good
Who it’s for
Complete beginners who want to evaluate arguments in the news and in daily life; no logic or philosophy background is needed.
Source: University of Oxford (opens in a new tab) · Verified · Report a change
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