Argument Diagramming: Beginner to Advanced
Learn to robustly analyze and fully diagram arguments with a powerful systematic diagramming method.
Ratings 4.82 / 5.00
What You Will Learn!
- By the end of this course, you will be able to do the following:
- 1. Identify arguments and their parts within written prose.
- 2. Recognize words which function as premise and conclusion indicators within and between sentences.
- 3. Classify and analyze various prose locutions which are not arguments, such as sentences which make unsupported assertions or contain excess verbiage.
- 4. Apply a mark-up coding method to prose so as to readily restructure a writer's ideas into well crafted arguments.
- 5. Construct argument sequence diagrams and argument class diagrams to model the underlying connections of a thinker's central ideas.
- 6. Employ computer assisted diagramming tools to build informative and practical argument diagrams.
- 7. Discover and integrate Enthymemes (hidden claims) within arguments into a thinker's overall argument structure.
- 8. Organize separate and related arguments into larger package and frame structures.
- 9. Analyze professional and academic essays for evidence-based reasoning structures pertinent to their author's overall conclusions.
Description
A map tells you the lay of land, and how to get from one place to another without getting confused, or even outright lost. Learn how to fully map evidence-based reasoning and arguments from any source -- popular, professional, or academic -- using argument diagrams. In this course, I apply the latest research from specialized modeling languages, engineering diagrams, and philosophy of language to teach you how to "find the lay of the land" within another thinker's writings. As distinguished from courses in Symbolic Logic or Critical Thinking, argument diagramming falls under a third area of evidence-based reasoning called Informal Logic -- the discipline which, in my opinion, is the most interesting!
Who Should Attend!
- This course assumes you have no previous knowledge of logic or analytical diagramming techniques. It is constructed as a foundational course.
- It presumes a (U.S. equivalent) High School education level of reading and a desire to use argument diagramming techniques for evidence based reasoning and analysis.
- As the course develops, intermediate techniques are geared toward the cognitive level of upper-division, college undergraduates.
- In the last stages of the course, advance techniques are applied to full analysis of academic- and professional- level papers, which is appropriate for a graduate school level of engagement with the issues.
