30527 - SEMINARIO DI CRITICAL THINKING / CRITICAL THINKING SEMINAR

The aim of the seminar is to acquaint students with the most important patterns of reasoning used in social sciences and decision-making. This is done by considering the characteristics of these patterns, their diverse applications, and the psychological biases that affect human reasoning. Each session of the seminar starts with a case study to be discussed in class, enhances a specific set of skills, and includes some tests, or experiments, to help students to understand the potential biases in reasoning and judgment.

• What is an argument?
• How to challenge an argument.
• Pragmatics of argumentation.
• Reasoning with conditionals.
• Reasoning with analogies and explanations.
• Reasoning with causes.
• Reasoning with probabilities.
• Counterfactual reasoning.

• Identify the structure of an argument.
• Use arguments to counter other arguments.
• Understand how arguments are used in human communication.
• Evaluate conditional reasoning.
• Explain a fact or event by using analogies.
• Identify the relationship between a cause and an effect.
• Predict an event based on existing information.
• Draw a conclusion about reality, by imagining a situation that does not actually take place.

• Determine under what conditions an argument is sound.
• Choose the proper argument to counter other arguments in reasoning.
• Apply arguments strategically in interpersonal communication.
• Assess a conclusion based on conditional statements.
• Determine whether the explanation of a fact is convincing.
• Determine whether a fact can be considered the cause of another fact.
• Use statistics to justify a standpoint.
• Evaluate the relevance of a counterfactual situation in decision-making.

• Face-to-face lectures
• Exercises (exercises, database, software etc.)
• Case studies /Incidents (traditional, online)
• Interactive class activities (role playing, business game, simulation, online forum, instant polls)

• Exercises: at the end of each session of the seminar the students are provided with a self-evaluation test.
• Case-studies: each session of the seminar starts with the discussion of a practical case presented through a short video, or through a series of slides.
• Interactive class activities: the course includes tests and experiments that are carried out in class.