Telling the claim someone wants you to accept from the reasons they give for it, and an argument from a report; asking whether a reason is about this claim at all, and how much support it gives; disagreeing about a claim without accusing anyone of lying, and offering a reason on the other side; drawing a small argument map with the reasons pointing up into the claim, and summarizing someone's argument the way they would put it; and making a claim no bigger than its reason, choosing the evidence that would settle a question, and choosing between options for a reason.
around grade 5 → Philosophy of mind and metaphysics
Logic and philosophy
Choose a course designed around topics commonly taught at an approximate age or learning level. This is not school placement or equivalency; start where you feel comfortable and choose another course at any time.
8levels
Freealways
Choose a level
Each level builds on the one before. Start wherever feels comfortable.
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1
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2
Finding the sentence a passage is arguing for, and telling an argument from a report that only looks like one; the premise an argument needs and never says, and what happens to the argument when it is false; six moves that are mistakes in one setting and perfectly good reasoning in another — an appeal to an authority, an attack on the person, a count of what everybody thinks, a restatement of somebody's position, an either-or, and an appeal to what would follow; what a single vivid story is evidence about and what it takes a count to settle; and the four things that can be true when two things go up and down together, only one of which is that the first causes the second.
Take first: Reasons and claims
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3
What a sample covers and who it could never have reached; how a sample was chosen, and the difference between a sound method and a skewed one; what a count out of a sample permits, and what the words some, most and all allow; the two-by-two table behind every claim that one thing goes with another; base rates, and why a good test for a rare condition still gives far more false alarms than real ones; what an accuracy figure leaves out; conditional claims, their converse and their contrapositive; necessary and sufficient conditions and the two words only if; the two valid moves from an if-then and the two invalid ones they are confused with; and the difference between an argument being valid and its conclusion being true.
Take first: Arguments in the wild
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4
Formal logic · Ages 14–18 · about 9 hours
Formal logic
Propositional notation, truth tables, validity, countermodels and bounded natural deduction.
Take first: Reasoning about evidence
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5
Theory of knowledge · Ages 14–18 · about 9 hours
Theory of knowledge
Belief, truth and justification; testimony, scepticism, induction, science and comparative epistemology.
Take first: Formal logic
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6
Ethics · Ages 14–18 · about 9 hours
Ethics
Consequences, duties, rights, virtue, care, metaethics and fair comparison of ethical arguments.
Take first: Theory of knowledge
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7
Symbolic logic · Ages 18+ · about 10 hours
Symbolic logic
Bounded predicates, quantifiers, identity, relations, finite countermodels, proof rules and introductory modal logic.
Take first: Formal logic
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8
Philosophy of mind and metaphysics · Ages 18+ · about 6 hours
Mind and metaphysics
Mind-body theories, knowledge and conceivability arguments, functional organization, understanding, personal identity and free will; reconstruct supplied arguments and evaluate their disputed premises without belief profiling.
Take first: Formal logic