BASS Sociology and Criminology

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 course 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.

By the end of the course, students will have enhanced their ability to:

• engage in and cultivate reasoned arguments, by way of both written presentation and (in seminars) oral argument; 
• produce (by a specified deadline) concise and appropriately structured discursive essays addressing a key philosophical issue, with accurate and appropriate use of sources;
• undertake independent online and library-based research, and use that research to formulate theses and summarise philosophical arguments and positions;
•  interpret others’ arguments, and to address their strongest and weakest points in a constructive manner; 
• engage in textual interpretation, and put textual evidence to work in the independent development of arguments; 
• think clearly, to identify and assess competing principles, and to identify and solve philosophical problems;
• discuss such problems orally and to articulate relevant conclusions.

• identify and analyse the structure of arguments that appear in academic and non-academic texts, and in everyday conversation Essay and exam 
• distinguish between evidence and conclusive proof, between belief and truth, and between rational and irrational belief Essay and exam 
• grasp the fundamentals of the language of symbolic logic

• evaluate arguments that is, judge whether (and in what sense) they are good or bad and articulate their reasons for that judgment Essay and exam
• spot common rhetorical ploys and avoid common fallacies

• critically engage with the philosophical texts and to advance and justify independent views

• apply principles of analysis and good reasoning Essay and exam
• formulate valid arguments
  
   

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 fora 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 Blackboard; and obtaining feedback from your peers during tutorials.

The following reading list is indicative, and students are not required to read all of the publications listed.

T. Bowell & G Kemp, Critical Thinking: a Concise Guide (Routledge 2002)
J Shand, Arguing Well (Routledge 2000)