The Mission Critical website was a very amusing website. It’s a website that I believe contains almost everything that we learned so far in critical thinking; there are also addition concepts that I didn’t know either. I knew most of the materials that were in the basic arguments, several concepts in the analysis of arguments, and fallacies. Some of the materials that I didn’t know about were universal syllogisms, non-universal syllogisms, circular reasoning, and unfair fallacies. I am not sure if we have cover these materials in the text yet because they seem new to me.
Overall I find this website to be very helpful for those who still have trouble with some of the types of arguments. The exercises that are provided in this website are really helpful. Most of the concepts that are on this website have the exercises option to help those understands the material better. It’s almost like a database for most of the critical thinking materials.
I agree with you that this website seems to summarize most of the concepts we have learned so far, as well as others that we may still discuss. The concepts presented seem to be the key arguments that we have discussed like premise, conclusions and fallacies, as well as some new fallacy ideas. Some of the other newer concepts you mentioned were still difficult to understand even after reading the definition. I agree that the exercises were very beneficial and helped clarify the concepts. What I found even better was that the website provided a clarification for the incorrect answers as well – so hopefully the correct answer seems more obvious in the future :-)
ReplyDeleteYes they summary does a great job and has various concepts that we have learned about already as well as new concepts that I had not seen the Epstein text. The thing I really like in this website is that it provides you with exercises to the concept of your choosing and the exercises clarify you of the right answer if you get it wrong. The exercises is good practice because if your not understanding a concept it gives you practice and the website does a good job of explaining. So I agree with you that this website and its exercises helps clarify some concepts that students had trouble understanding in the past.
ReplyDeleteI liked your sentence at the end where you said "it's almost like a database for most of the critical thinking materials", as I feel that's the perfect description for the mission critical website. It's really the best tool I've seen that perfectly summarizes most (if not all) of the concepts we've covered and have yet to cover this semester. I immediately bookmarked the page as I knew it would be useful for any future studying or to clear up any problems I have with any of the concepts we've covered. Also, most websites that cover a bunch of concepts usually only have "walls-of-text" that are pretty hard to read. This site is extremely easy to read and navigate, plus it has examples for some of the concepts for extra practice to make sure you understand the material. It's a great site.
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