David Zarefsky

This is the Teaching Company course number 4294 which has 4 DVDs and the course guide book. Reasoning, tested by doubt, is argumentation. We do it, hear it, and judge it every day. We do it in our own minds, and we do it with others. What is effective reasoning? And how can it be done persuasively? These questions have been asked for thousands of years-yet some of the best thinking on reasoning and argumentation is very new and represents a break from the past. At the Center of a Well-Educated Mind This is equally a course in argument and in reasoning. This course teaches how to reason. It teaches how to persuade others that what you think is right. And it teaches how to judge and answer the arguments of others-and how they will judge yours. Your guide to these issues is Professor David Zarefsky, the Owen L. Coon Professor of Argumentation and Debate and Professor of Communication at Northwestern University. Course Lecture Titles 1. Introducing Argumentation and Rhetoric 2. Underlying Assumptions of Argumentation 3. Formal and Informal Argumentation 4. History of Argumentation Studies 5. Argument Analysis and Diagramming 6. Complex Structures of Argument 7. Case Construction-Requirements and Options 8. Stasis-The Heart of the Controversy 9. Attack and Defense I 10. Attack and Defense II 11. Language and Style in Argument 12. Evaluating Evidence 13. Reasoning from Parts to Whole 14. Reasoning with Comparisons 15. Establishing Correlations 16. Moving from Cause to Effect 17. Commonplaces and Arguments from Form 18. Hybrid Patterns of Inference 19. Validity and Fallacies I 20. Validity and Fallacies II 21. Arguments between Friends 22. Arguments among Experts 23. Public Argument and Democratic Life 24. The Ends of Argumentation… (altro)

The Teaching Company Audio CD`s as well as Modern Scholar series are highly reccomended learning tools - College level courses that you can learn from in your car. This is part of the mixed media I use in my pursuit of knowledge. I love music and on the weekends my car primarily blasts music from XM - but during the week , the 45 min - 1 hour a day I spend in the car going to and from work and misc errands , I have these Audio Books that I get from libraries. Sometimes I get lazy with reading the non-fiction I am trying to consume. These courses make it so I am always thinking , always stimulating my mind. As soon as I hop in the car in the AM , I`m forced to use that most important muscle. This is the glue to my self-education.… (altro)

I only had Part I, the first six cassettes, and I can't get the others at any library in the Rocky Mt. region.

The lectures were very interesting. For instance, I had always assumed that Lincoln was an abolitionist. Truth is that, although he didn't like slavery, he believed in colonization; i.e. he wanted the slaves sent back to Africa. He didn't believe that whites and blacks could coexist on an equal basis. And for the time being, he didn't believe in interfering with slavery in the states where it already existed. Of course, from the point of view of the time period he was living in, he was still very forward-thinking about this issue. We have to put things in perspective of the times.… (altro)