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Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning, 2nd Edition cover art

Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning, 2nd Edition

Written by: David Zarefsky, The Great Courses
Narrated by: David Zarefsky
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Publisher's Summary

What is effective reasoning? And how can it be done persuasively? These questions have been asked for thousands of years, yet some of the best thinking on reasoning and argumentation is recent and represents a break from the past.

These 24 engaging lectures teach you how to reason, how to persuade others that what you think is right, and how to judge and answer the arguments of others - and how they will judge yours. Professor Zarefsky makes argumentation accessible and familiar by breaking it into five easy-to-understand components: The tools of formal logic, while essential and even definitive for mathematics and programming computers, are inadequate to decide most controversial issues.

This course shows more useful approaches. Arguments can be divided into three parts: a claim, evidence, and an inference linking the evidence to the claim. All arguments fall into a handful of distinctive categories, and the same issues are at stake each time one of these distinctive patterns occurs. Three kinds of evidence can be advanced to prove an argument that something is true: objective data, social consensus, and personal credibility. There are six kinds of inference that link evidence to a claim: example, cause, sign, analogy, narrative, and form. How to use and challenge each is explained.

Along the way, you'll look at numerous actual controversies with a perspective that allows you to see the structure of all disputes. In this way, argument becomes an exchange, not just a flurry of words.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

©2005 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2005 The Great Courses

What listeners say about Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning, 2nd Edition

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Pedantic

Slow moving. Chock full of the obvious, supplemented by superficial irrelevancies. Hours of my life wasted.

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worth price

A little complex at the start but a good job bring it all together in last few chapters.

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Almost a must listen

I purchased this along with a few other courses during the Lockdown; my expectation were low, but the price was right.

In a time when personal, technical and public “arguments” are usually presentations, persuasions or quarrels, it was very helpful for someone to lay out the purpose, the starting point, the ground rules, framework, fallacies, etc in the field of argument.

Every chapter had something. I even went back and did a condensed notes version from the PDF for my own future reference.

This is one of those courses where you think to yourself that this should be mandatory adult eduction. Foundational for discussion and listening.

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Real thinking stuff in this course!

I admit, I learned Korean than I thought I would when I bought this course. Thank you.

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