Critical Examination of Information and Critical Thinking

The procedure comes straight from philosophy, in that it is an argumentative practice, and from historical criticism, according to their respective and common rules, in a perspective which is both history and language driven.   

To achieve the objectives listed above, we will examine the way in which a line of argument is constructed, the kind of language support and techniques employed, and the possible uses that can be made of it.  

We will deal with the most basic concepts in rhetoric, logic and argumentation, using a wide range of teaching aids, from the oldest to digital. We will also examine the different stages of historical criticism: 

external and internal criticism,  comparison of documents and drawing conclusions on the issues of  causality and meaning. 

This course aims to support and enhance training for citizenship and social responsibility. It is also designed to provide students with the tools to develop verification and validation skills in relation to the relevance of everyday information.  

 

The course is made up of formal lectures (30 hours) and 10 hours of practical exercises on collections of texts. 

The formal lectures will introduce the different stages of historical criticism. They will underline the importance of the issue and documentary research in carrying out a solid piece of academic research. Finally, there will be a review of the different kinds of sources, including digital ones, their contribution to knowledge of the past and their limitations. There will then be a systematic examination of the stages of external criticism, internal criticism and the comparison of witness accounts. Finally, we will draw a conclusion on the issues of causality and meaning. 

We will also introduce different kinds of styles of argument, particularly hypothetical and  syllogistic, to understand why and how we reason. We will study various techniques such as definition, the division of a concept, empirical research on factors, the lines of argument to establish or refute a thesis, as a way of understanding how specific techniques can construct thinking.