In this course, students are introduced to techniques for evaluating and understanding three types of reasoning: 

• formal reasoning
• probabilistic reasoning
• decision theory

These basic tools equip students with one of the core philosophical capacities: identify and distinguish good and bad reasoning. In formal reasoning, students learn Propositional Logic, which explains what is wrong with this argument: Students will pass the course only if they study hard; Anand studied hard; therefore, he’ll pass the course. In probabilistic reasoning, students learn how the probability of the premises of an argument being true constrains the probability of the conclusion being true. One interesting puzzle we discuss is the Monty Hall Problem. In decision theory, students will learn general rules that govern the reasoning of a rational agent’s choice based on their preference.