Critical Thinking Online Course

Lesson 1 • Epistemological Roots of Judgment

Judgment is traced to its epistemological origins in perception, inference, and testimony. Students see how knowledge claims depend on judgmental acts.

Lesson 2 • Logical Structure of Judgments

The internal form of a judgment—subject, predicate, copula—is analyzed. Students learn to decompose complex judgments into evaluable components.

Lesson 3 • Defining Judgment in Philosophy

Judgment is distinguished from opinion, belief, and decision. This anchors all subsequent analysis in a rigorous conceptual baseline.

Lesson 4 • Overview of Major Philosophical Traditions

Key traditions—rationalist, empiricist, pragmatist, and phenomenological—are mapped onto their theories of judgment. Students orient themselves within the intellectual landscape.

Lesson 1 • Aristotelian Judgment and Predication

Aristotle's account of judgment as predication in the Categories and De Interpretatione is examined. Students trace how truth and falsity attach to judgmental acts.

Lesson 2 • Stoic and Medieval Contributions

Stoic lekta and medieval theories of mental language extend the classical framework. Students see how propositional content was refined across centuries.

Lesson 3 • Cartesian and Rationalist Judgment

Descartes locates error in the will's overreach beyond the intellect, reframing judgment as a volitional act. Students analyze the implications for epistemic responsibility.

Lesson 4 • Humean Skepticism and Belief

Hume reduces judgment to vivid belief states governed by custom and association. Students evaluate whether this naturalistic account preserves normative force.

Lesson 1 • Phenomenological Accounts

Husserl's intentional analysis and Heidegger's existential reframing of judgment are compared. Students learn how phenomenology challenges purely logical treatments.

Lesson 2 • Inferentialism and Normative Pragmatics

Brandom's inferentialist account treats judgment as a move in the game of giving and asking for reasons. Students evaluate this social-normative model against earlier theories.

Lesson 3 • Frege's Logical Revolution

Frege separates the act of judging from propositional content, introducing the judgment stroke. Students grasp how this move grounds modern logic and semantics.

Lesson 4 • Russell and Early Analytic Judgment

Russell's multiple-relation theory and his debates with idealism are examined. Students see how logical atomism shapes a correspondence-based account of judgment.

Lesson 1 • Truth, Validity, and Correctness

The criteria of truth, logical validity, and epistemic correctness are distinguished and related. Students learn to apply each standard to concrete judgmental contexts.

Lesson 2 • Aesthetic Judgment and Taste

Kant's account of aesthetic judgment as claiming universal assent without a concept is examined. Students contrast aesthetic with cognitive and moral judgment.

Lesson 3 • Moral and Evaluative Judgment

Moral judgments are analyzed as a special class with distinctive normative features. Students examine cognitivist and non-cognitivist accounts of evaluative judgment.

Lesson 4 • Justification and Warrant

Internalist and externalist accounts of justification are applied to the act of judging. Students distinguish justified judgment from lucky true belief.

Lesson 1 • Probability and Degrees of Belief

Bayesian and frequentist frameworks for graded belief are introduced. Students learn to represent uncertainty quantitatively and update judgments on new evidence.

Lesson 2 • Epistemic Humility and Fallibilism

Fallibilism holds that any judgment may be revised in light of new evidence. Students develop a principled stance of epistemic humility without collapsing into relativism.

Lesson 3 • Risk, Ambiguity, and Decision

The distinction between risk and Knightian uncertainty is applied to judgment. Students evaluate decision frameworks that operate under deep ambiguity.

Lesson 4 • Collective and Distributed Judgment

Judgment aggregation, wisdom of crowds, and epistemic peer disagreement are examined. Students assess when collective judgment outperforms individual judgment.

Lesson 1 • Aristotle's Phronesis Revisited

Phronesis as the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom is analyzed in its Aristotelian context. Students distinguish it from theoretical knowledge and technical skill.

Lesson 2 • Judgment in Ethical Deliberation

Practical judgment is applied to ethical dilemmas where principles underdetermine action. Students practice balancing competing moral considerations.

Lesson 3 • Cultivating Practical Wisdom

Practical wisdom is a cultivable disposition, not merely an innate talent. Students identify concrete practices—reflection, mentorship, case study—that develop phronesis.

Lesson 4 • Professional and Expert Judgment

Expert judgment in professional domains is analyzed as a form of trained practical wisdom. Students examine how expertise shapes and constrains judgmental acts.

Lesson 1 • Evaluating Evidence and Sources

Criteria for assessing the quality, relevance, and reliability of evidence are established. Students apply these criteria to evaluate judgments in professional and public contexts.

Lesson 2 • Argument Reconstruction and Analysis

Judgments embedded in arguments are extracted, standardized, and evaluated. Students learn to identify hidden premises and assess inferential strength.

Lesson 3 • Counterargument and Steelmanning

Steelmanning—constructing the strongest version of an opposing judgment—is practiced. Students develop intellectual honesty and dialectical rigor.

Lesson 4 • Judgment Auditing in Practice

A structured audit process for reviewing past judgments is introduced. Students apply the process to case studies, identifying where reasoning went wrong and how to improve.

Lesson 1 • Judgment in the Age of Algorithms

Algorithmic decision systems are analyzed as non-human judgment proxies. Students evaluate when algorithmic outputs should override or defer to human judgment.

Lesson 2 • Cross-Cultural Dimensions of Judgment

Cultural variation in epistemic norms and evaluative standards is examined. Students assess whether a universal theory of judgment is achievable or desirable.

Lesson 3 • Integrating Theories into a Personal Framework

Students synthesize rationalist, empiricist, pragmatist, and normative insights into a coherent personal theory. The framework is tested against hard cases from prior chapters.

Lesson 4 • Capstone: Defending a Judgment

Students construct and publicly defend an original, philosophically grounded judgment on a contested issue. Peer critique and revision complete the synthesis process.