Informal Reasoning Requirement Guidelines

A central part of philosophical writing and discussion is effort toward the reasoned persuasion of an audience, or philosophical argumentation. A corresponding goal for students of philosophy is learning to interpret, evaluate, and engage in such argumentation. The knowledge and skills required to do these things well benefit students in many ways. Of course, students will learn more and perform better in philosophy classes, but they will also find that the same skills underlie successful reading and writing in most other courses at the university. Most important, perhaps, is the way in which these skills will serve students in life after Wesleyan: the need to think clearly and reason well does not go away.

Courses that satisfy the Department’s Informal Reasoning Requirement are specifically designed to help students meet these goals, by incorporating material that makes explicit the fundamentals of philosophical argumentation, and teaching students the skills needed to understand and assess it. Unless explicitly labeled otherwise, all Introductory level courses in the department are designed to satisfy this requirement, though each will do it in a somewhat different way. It is not expected that each course will cover every aspect of this material in equal depth, and courses satisfying the Informal Reasoning Requirement are expected to do so as an integral part of their coverage of other material (e.g., historical or thematic surveys of particular areas of a philosophical tradition).

The remainder of this document gives a high-level outline of the ideas and skills that the Department has determined constitute the core of philosophical argumentation. Each item will be hyperlinked to more information and to examples, as time allows. At the end of the document, links are provided to useful on-line resources that expand on, or overlap with, the subject of informal reasoning.

Core Ideas of Informal Reasoning

• Basics
  • argument
  • reason / premise
  • assumption
  • conclusion
  • language of argument (If, supposing, thus, therefore, etc.)
  • types of arguments (deductive, inductive, analogy; formalized versus real-world)
• Evaluating Arguments
  • Criteria
    • truth
    • clarity
    • validity
    • reliability
    • relevance
    • burden of proof
    • counter-example
  • Types of problematic argumentation (some of these are not always problematic)
    • formal vs. informal fallacies
    • ad hominem
    • appeal to authority
    • appeal to emotion
    • circular reasoning
    • begging the question
    • equivocation
    • slippery slopes
    • false dichotomy
    • non sequitur
• Deductive Arguments
  • logical form
  • validity and soundness
  • antecedent and consequent
  • modus ponens
  • modus tollens
  • all men are mortal...
  • dilemma
  • reductio ad absurdum
• Inductive Arguments
  • inductive strength
• Arguments by Analogy

Other Useful Material

• Toward a Philosophical Lexicon (from the University of Edinburgh)