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
• Case studies /Incidents (traditional, online)
• Interactive class activities (role playing, business game, simulation, online forum, instant polls)

• Case-studies: each session of the seminar starts with the discussion of a case study presented through a short video or some slides.
• Interactive class activities: the course includes tests and experiments that are carried out in class.

Students have their grade recorded simply as a pass or fail. The seminar includes a continuous assessment or, alternatively, a final examination.

• The continuous assessment consists of 4 multiple-choice tests carried out in the classroom at the end of the seminar session. Those students who do not take the continuous assessment tests or do not pass all of them, have to take the final exam.
• The final examination consists of a multiple-choice test which covers all the subjects considered in the seminar.

• Slides presented during the seminar.
• Lecture notes.

The materials are provided to the students through the Bboard platform.