Transfers ToUC and CSUCal-GETC Area 1B · IGETC Area 1B · CSU GE Area A3DescriptionThis course instructs students in critical thinking skills emphasizing the relationship of language to logic, leading to the ability to analyze, criticize, and advocate ideas, to reason inductively and deductively, and to identify the assumptions upon which particular conclusions depend. Students will gain the ability to distinguish fact from judgment, knowledge from belief, truth from falsehood; to use elementary inductive and deductive processes; and to recognize common logical errors or fallacies of language and thought. Topics include: definitions of critical thinking, language and meaning, claims and reasons, argument and inference, argument identification and reconstruction, inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning, underlying assumptions, evaluating assumptions, assumptions and evidence, worldviews as a context for critical thought, evaluating arguments, sound and fallacious reasoning, informal fallacies, casual inference, and scientific method. As part of the course requirements, students will write at least 5000 words demonstrating both skills in composition and critical thinking. 