With political propaganda running rampant and the media constantly telling us what to wear, think and do, students could benefit from a course on critical thinking, the ability to sift through arguments to find the facts and fallacies.

Philosophy 310: Critical Thinking is a three-hour course taught by Professor Barbara Forrest. Students enrolled in this course can expect to learn about logical fallacies and extremist viewpoints.

According to Forrest, the topics covered include “the barriers to critical thinking and the intellectual characteristics of good critical thinkers, identifying arguments and the basics of inductive and deductive logic, logical fallacies and a unit on extremism. I do this last unit in order to help students understand how the failure to think critically can result in fanaticism and sometimes violence. We study religious and racial extremism. I always stress the ‘real life’ aspects of critical thinking.”

Students enrolled in this course will be expected to use critical thinking to analyze extremist literature. Having the initiative to apply good reading and writing skills can make or break a student in this course.  

Tests for this course will include true-false and multiple choice questions with a few bonus questions on each exam. 

All in all, students who are willing to dissect fallacious arguments and apply a skeptical attitude to all information presented may be interested in taking Philosophy 310: Critical Thinking.

“Special Topics” courses give professors a chance to cover topics within their fields of interest that may not be covered in other general courses. Such is the opportunity given to Professor Barbara Forrest, who will be teaching Philosophy 314: Special Topics next semester.

Forrest has decided to cover the Enlightenment period, saying, “This is a new class that I have not taught before, so I am not yet sure what the readings will be, but we will cover major thinkers of the Enlightenment period, which is also called the Age of Reason. We will study people such as John Locke, who wrote the ‘Second Treatise on Civil Government,’ in which he argued for the natural right to freedom of all people, and ‘Letter Concerning Religious Toleration,’ in which he argued for the separation of church and state. We will also read something by Voltaire, who is known as the Father of the Enlightenment. Voltaire also argued for religious toleration and criticized religious persecution in Europe. The readings will be representative of the major aspects of the Enlightenment.”

The exams for this course will be entirely composed of essay questions.

Because this is the first time that Forrest will be teaching such a course, she is unsure at this time exactly how the class will be structured and what specific topics will be taught.