Critical thinking is the ability to figure out what conclusions you ought to draw from a body of information, and what assumptions someone is making when they draw conclusions from some body of information.
This ability is crucial for solving problems that face us everyday (from personal decisions about which job to take or which place to live, to political decisions about which policy to support or which candidate to vote for), and also crucial for understanding how other people are reasoning about those same issues. Duke University’s course Think Again was so wildly popular with every global audience (across all ages and geographies) that we are excited it is running for the 2nd time, starting August 26th.
2 FUN FACTS ABOUT CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS
1. Career Success
Critical thinking is necessary for success in some of the most competitive and well-compensated professions, including medicine, law, finance, engineering, science, and statistics.
2. Happiness and Self Esteem Improvement
Critical thinking skills correlate positively with happiness and self-esteem. For all these reasons, it is important that we have strong critical thinking skills.
2 WAYS THIS COURSE WILL IMPROVE YOUR CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS:
1. You Will Learn the Rules of Good Reasoning
These are rules that you can follow in your own reasoning, and rules by means of which to understand the reasoning of others.
2. You Will Get To Practice Applying These Rules to a Wide Variety of Cases
From politics, from business, from ordinary life, and even from bizarre science fiction – these cases will allow you to practice your reasoning!
Although this course has been taught and refined for nearly three decades to a live audience of college students, the lectures and exercises are now available online, for free, through Coursera.
The course is taught by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Chauncy Stillman Professor of Ethics at Duke University, and Ram Neta, Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Here is what people are saying about the course:
“I’d like to thank both professors for the course. It was fun, instructive, and I loved the input from people from all over the world, with their different views and backgrounds.”
“Somewhere in the first couple weeks of the course, I was ruminating over some concept or perhaps over one of the homework exercises and suddenly it occurred to me, “‘Is this what thinking is?” Just to clarify, I come from a thinking family and have thought a lot about various concepts and issues throughout my life and career…but somehow I realized that, even though I seemed to be thinking all the time, I hadn’t been doing this type of thinking for quite some time…so, thanks!”
“The rapport between Dr. Sinott-Armstrong and Dr. Neta and their senses of humor made the lectures engaging and enjoyable. Their passion for the subject was apparent and they were patient and thorough in their explanations.”
We hope that you will take this opportunity to sign up for this course, and enjoy the lectures and exercises while you improve your critical thinking skills. See you in class!
