JPPW / Chamblin's hosts "Civil Discussions" ... A free, public, community, event

[Purplebike]

http://www.meetup.com/Jacksonville-Public-Philosophy-Workshops

Civil Discussions w/ Karla Pierce
Saturday, October 1, 2011, 5 - 7 pm
Chamblin's Uptown, 215 North Laura Street, Jacksonville, FL

Discussions, espeecially discussions about difficult and/or controversial issues, are too often undermined by defensive questioning, poor reasoning, and a lack of understanding about how to construct and evaluate basic arguments.

When we stop seeing discussion partners as “opponents”, and begin to ask questions that seek truth, meaning, and logic, as opposed to wins, we can more meaningfully contribute to, and maintain, more civil discussions. That’s part of my rationale for this workshop, anyway.

Informal Logic (a branch of Logic) yields several tools and techniques that can be used to achieve this goal. In this workshop I'll cover three such tools: basic argument construction and evaluation, fallacies, and Socratic Questioning.

AGENDA
1. Introduction & activities set up
2. Constructing and evaluating basic arguments
3. Avoid common reasoning errors that frequently occur in discussions
4. The difference between open-ended and loaded questions
5. How to ask open-ended questions
6. Review & Wrap