Deductive arguments are supposed to be valid in the sense that the premises guarantee that the conclusion is true. In this course, you will learn how to use truth-tables and Venn diagrams to represent the information contained in the premises and conclusion of an argument so that you can determine whether or not the argument is deductively valid. Suggested Readings: Students who want more detailed explanations or additional exercises or who want to explore these topics in more depth should consult Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic, Ninth Edition, Concise, Chapters 6 and 7 by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Robert Fogelin. Course Format: Each week will be divided into multiple video segments that can be viewed separately or in groups. There will be short ungraded quizzes after each segment (to check comprehension) and a longer graded quiz at the end of the course.

Speculative metaphysics is challenging, but this course will whet your appetite for it, because it explains fundamental metaphysical problems and views in terms of what you can find in your kitchen and what happens in it when you cook and enjoy food. Here are the 8 bites on the menu. - The first module 1 explains that metaphysics is about the ingredients and recipes of the world, i.e., which kinds of entities exist and how they relate to one another. - Modules 2 and 3 invite you to reflect on whether the properties of ingredients -such as their shape and weight- are separate from and if so, how they come together in the ingredients. - Modules 4 to 7 are about cooking: its most important ingredient is time and most cooking consists in causing changes to the ingredients over time. Yet some ingredients persist: although they undergo changes, they remain the same. Moreover, cooking minimally involves putting two or more ingredients together, so that they compose a whole. Hence modules 4 to 7 deal with time, causation, persistence and composition respectively. - Finally, the last module touch on the smells, tastes and other qualitative aspects of our experiences when enjoying food. Bon appétit!

Critical reasoning skills are a key success factor for students entering their first year of college. They must be able to think logically and form arguments. This course, designed with incoming college freshmen in mind but open to anyone, provides an essential grounding in critical reasoning skills. Faculty from multiple disciplines at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill offer guidance on applying critical thinking skills in the context of specific disciplines. By developing these skills, students will learn more, enjoy their courses more, and experience greater academic success. This course will help you understand what critical thinking skills are and why they're so important. You will also learn how critical thinking skills vary across disciplines, as well as see them applied across several fields, including, chemistry, history, psychology, law, English, and American Studies. You will develop your own critical thinking skills by working through scenarios or problems posed by scholars across these fields, and you will better understand how your college courses will differ from your earlier education.

It is often claimed that relativism, subjectivism and nihilism are typically modern philosophical problems that emerge with the breakdown of traditional values, customs and ways of life. The result is the absence of meaning, the lapse of religious faith, and feeling of alienation that is so widespread in modernity. The Danish thinker Søren Kierkegaard (1813-55) gave one of the most penetrating analyses of this complex phenomenon of modernity. But somewhat surprisingly he seeks insight into it not in any modern thinker but rather in an ancient one, the Greek philosopher Socrates. In this course created by former associate professor at the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, Jon Stewart, we will explore how Kierkegaard deals with the problems associated with relativism, the lack of meaning and the undermining of religious faith that are typical of modern life. His penetrating analyses are still highly relevant today and have been seen as insightful for the leading figures of Existentialism, Post-Structuralism and Post-Modernism.

The workplace of tomorrow is an uncertain place. We live in a rapidly changing world, and design innovations such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, and big data are rapidly changing the fundamental nature of how we live and work. As these technologies continue to evolve at an exponential rate - it is becoming critical to understand their impact on contemporary work practices, and for businesses and employees to understand how to design a secure future amidst this disruption. What new, disruptive technologies are on the horizon? How will jobs change? What challenges will employers and employees face? How can the design process help businesses and employees to create innovative solutions to overcome such challenges? The course is a collaboration between UNSW Sydney Art & Design and AMP Amplify, AMP's innovation and ideas program. It brings together leading business and design thinking to help answer these questions, and investigates design strategies that businesses, employees and designers can adopt to find new opportunity in such a rapidly changing professional landscape. WHAT WILL I LEARN? The course provides you with a unique, authentic, and industry relevant learning opportunity. You will have access to current theory, industry examples and expert advice from leaders in the field. This course will help you to: • Recognise how the integration of design approaches are shaping technology and business practices, and how these changes bring immense possibility and uncertainty to the future of work • Analyse important skills and attributes that designers, employees, and businesses need to be successful in a speculative, technologically enhanced future • Understand the importance of unique human attributes in increasingly automated workplaces • Evaluate challenging issues related to potential change in processes, people and automation that might impact the future of your own employment or business • Plot your own possible, probable, and preferable trajectories, and synthesise a design strategy to maximise your ability to adapt, grow, and realise opportunities in your own work future. WHO WILL MY INSTRUCTORS BE? You will learn effective design thinking strategies from leading UNSW Australia Art & Design academics. You will also examine case studies from business and service design perspectives that demonstrate how design can transform business processes to become more adaptive to and predictive of technological and social change, and this can help to capitalise on new opportunities. Direct from our industry partner AMP’s innovative Amplify program, you’ll hear personal insights and advice about how to develop attributes and skills that will give you an advantage in the workplace of the future, from the following business leaders, futurists, entrepreneurs, and innovators from around the world: • Sean Brennan, Head of Design & Innovation, AMP • Megan Dalla-Camina, Co-Founder/CEO, Lead Like a Woman - via Amplify • Susan David Ph.D, CEO, Evidence Based Psychology - via Amplify • Dr. Norman Lewis, Director, Futures-Diagnosis Ltd - via Amplify • Heather McGowan, Author & Advisor, Work to Learn - via Amplify • Ramez Naam, Exponential technologies, Machine learning, Artificial intelligence, Singularity University - via Amplify • Dr. Andy Polaine, Regional Design Director, Asia-Pacific, Fjord • Michael Schrage, Research Fellow, Innovation Thought Leader, MIT Sloan School's Center for Digital Business - via Amplify • Chris Shipley, Curator, MIT Solve. via Amplify • Sue Suckling, New Zealand Qualifications Authority, Chair of Callaghan Innovation, Chair of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority - via Amplify • Professor Nick Wailes, Director, AGSM, and Deputy Dean, UNSW Business School. UNSW Sydney.

Skepticism is about doubt, and doubt is everywhere in the world around us today. There are doubts about whether man-made climate change is real, whether vaccinations are harmful, whether we can trust our politicians or our media, and so on. When is such skepticism warranted, and when does it stray into unreasonable territory? How widespread can such skepticism get while still being coherent? How might a radical skepticism have pernicious social consequences, such as by leading to relativism (and just what is relativism, and what is problematic about it)? These are all questions that we will be engaging with in this course Along the way we will consider some important philosophical issues, such as what the nature of knowledge is, whether there are any good arguments that show that knowledge is impossible, and how a moderate skepticism might accord with an ancient conception of the good life of human flourishing, one that essentially involves the intellectual virtues. This course is aimed at anyone who is interested in learning more about philosophy, along with those who are looking for strategies to combat extremism in their communities. Using these approaches, no matter what your skill levels in topics you would like to master, you can change your thinking and change your life. In this course, learners will: Explore the concept of Skepticism Discuss the role of Skepticism in contemporary society Identify common responses to Skepticism Compare/Contrast various forms of Skepticism Apply knowledge of Skepticism to form a personal stance Recognize why knowledge is more than just true belief

The greatest risk in emerging technology is the perpetuation of bias in automated technologies dependent upon data sets. Solutions created with racial, gender or demographic bias, whether unintentional or not can perpetuate tragic inequities socially and economically. This is the first of five courses within the Certified Ethical Emerging Technologist (CEET) professional certificate and it is designed for learners seeking to advocate and promote the ethical use of data-driven technologies. Students will learn what emerging technologies are and how they can be used to create data driven solutions. You will learn types of bias and common ethical theories and how they can be applied to emerging technology, and examine legal and ethical privacy concepts as they relate to technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science fields. Throughout the course learners begin to distinguish which types of bias may cause the greatest risk and which principles to apply to strategically respond to ethical considerations.

How can we use the things we share in common to address some of the most challenging problems facing the world? This course examines issues concerning poverty, the environment, technology, health care, gender, education and activism to help us understand better how to initiate positive change.

Effective altruism is built on the simple but unsettling idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the most good one can. In this course you will examine this idea's philosophical underpinnings; meet remarkable people who have restructured their lives in accordance with it; and think about how effective altruism can be put into practice in your own life. All the features of this course are available for free. It does not offer a certificate upon completion.

Should all our genetic information be made public in order to eradicate genetic diseases from this world? Who owns your genetic data once it becomes publicly accessible? What is your responsibility to family members when you know more about genetic diseases than they do? Who decides what kind of genetic information is relevant to a person? And what does genetic privacy mean to you? In this challenge with Robert Zwijnenberg (Professor in Art and Science Interactions) you will critically reflect upon the issue of genetic privacy. You will dive into the ethical questions that come up with the disclosure of genetic data in biobanks and through genetic tests. This course encourages you to think about the cultural, philosophical and political tensions present in the debate around genetic privacy. You are invited to identify and listen to the viewpoints and values provided by the different stakeholders that shape this debate: corporations, researchers, consumers and patients. Furthermore, you will go off the beaten track by exploring the issue from the unique perspective of art and culture. After a lot of thinking, supplementing, deleting and adjusting, you will be asked to share a recommendation on how to regulate practices of disclosing genetic information, while taking into consideration the concept of genetic privacy. Your advice could serve as an eye-opener for policy makers! This online learning experience is a spin-off of The Mind of the Universe documentary series created by the Dutch broadcasting company VPRO and professor Robbert Dijkgraaf, Princeton University. A number of universities in the Netherlands have used the open source material of the documentary series as a starting point to create similar experiences.