BAEcon Economics and Philosophy

The course focuses on the nature, purpose, and evaluation of arguments. You will learn what arguments are and what they are for; also how to identify an argument in conversation or text, to identify and understand its structure, and to evaluate it. You will learn to distinguish between good and bad arguments, and to articulate what features of an argument make it good or bad, better or worse.

You will learn how to apply these concepts to your essay writing.

You will also be introduced to some basic concepts that form the backbone of any academic discipline, such as: truth and falsity, rational and irrational beliefs, theory, method, proof and evidence.

The unit aims to:

• Introduce students to basic principles of argument;
• Enhance their ability to understand the structure of and critically evaluate other people's arguments, and to formulate and clearly articulate arguments of their own;
• Enhance their ability to avoid common argumentative faults, such as ambiguity, irrelevance, fallacies, and rhetorical ploys;
• Enhance their understanding of key basic concepts, like theory, fact, truth, belief, proof, and evidence.

One two-hour lecture and one one-hour tutorial per week.

Students should be able to:

• Identify and analyse the structure of arguments that appear in academic and non-academic texts, and in everyday conversation;
• Distinguish between evidence and conclusive proof, between belief and truth, and between rational and irrational belief;
• Articulate the fundamentals of the language of symbolic logic.

Students should be able to:

• Evaluate arguments and provide reasons for their evaluations;
• Identify common rhetorical ploys and avoid common fallacies;
• Apply principles of good reasoning in the formulation of valid arguments.

Students should be able to:

• Clearly communicate principles of formal and informal reasoning.

Essay (1500 words) 50%

Exam (1.5 hours) 50%

The School of Social Sciences (SoSS) is committed to providing timely and appropriate feedback to students on their academic progress and achievement, thereby enabling students to reflect on their progress and plan their academic and skills development effectively. Students are reminded that feedback is necessarily responsive: only when a student has done a certain amount of work and approaches us with it at the appropriate time is it possible for us to feed back on the student's work. The main forms of feedback on this course are written feedback responses to assessed essays and exam answers.

We also draw your attention to the variety of generic forms of feedback available to you on this as on all SoSS courses. These include: meeting the lecturer/tutor during their office hours; e-mailing questions to the lecturer/tutor; asking questions from the lecturer (before and after lecture); presenting a question on the discussion board on Canvas; and obtaining feedback from your peers during tutorials.

• Tracy Bowell & Gary Kemp, Critical Thinking: A Concise Guide (Routledge 2002)
• Diane F. Halpern and Dana S. Dunn, Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking (Routledge, 2022)
• Stella Cottrell, Critical Thinking Skills (Palgrave, 2011).
• Matthew Van Cleave, Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking (Open Textbook Library, 2016). https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/introduction-to-logic-and-critical-thinking
• Nicholas Capaldi and Miles Smit, The Art of Deception: An Introduction to Critical Thinking (Prometheus Books, 2007).

Tuition fees for home students commencing their studies in September 2027 will be £10,050 per annum. Tuition fees for international students will be £33,100 per annum.

For general information please see the undergraduate finance pages.

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

We know that student finance can be complicated. The links below provide further information to help guide you.

Learn more about student finance options for UK students.

Learn more about fees and finance for international students.

As an international student you may be eligible for our Global Futures Scholarships . This is open to students starting their studies in September 2026