The art of the reasoned argument
A graduated course in reasoning and argument — from learning that because gives a reason, to building an objection that survives the strongest reply available to it.
Take the floor.
A structured round against an authored opponent. Choose your chair, and argue it.
Every opponent is rated, and so are you. The judge scores what was said — and what went unanswered.
Rebuttal
A later start gives students the sleep their learning depends on.
You say the sleep their learning depends on. Is it so? An hour moved is not an hour made: whatever starts later must end later.
Rudiments
The first things. Telling same from different, sorting what belongs together, knowing a statement from a question or a command, and learning that the word because gives a reason.
Grammar
The parts of an argument and how to name them. Claim, reason, and evidence; premise and conclusion; the difference between a fact, an opinion, and a preference; and the first fallacies in plain dress.
Dialectic
What follows from what. Categorical syllogisms, the difference between validity, truth, and soundness, necessary and sufficient conditions, the formal fallacies, and the discipline of stating an opponent’s case fairly before answering it.
Rhetoric
Persuasion as a discipline. Ethos, pathos, and logos; the five canons; stasis theory; the Toulmin model; the competitive debate formats and how to flow a round; and the four-step refutation that answers the warrant rather than the words.
Baccalaureate
Formal and statistical reasoning. Truth tables and natural deduction, quantifier scope, inductive strength and Mill’s methods, base rates, the standard statistical misreadings, and close rhetorical analysis of primary texts.
Magisterial
The apparatus of serious disputation. Modal logic and possible-worlds semantics, defeasible and non-monotonic reasoning, Walton’s argumentation schemes and their critical questions, pragma-dialectics, and the art of surfacing an unstated warrant in order to attack it.
Forthcoming — readable now, with sample lessons.
Doctoral
Argument at the frontier. Abstract argumentation frameworks and their extensions, Bayesian confirmation theory, inference to the best explanation and its critics, reflective equilibrium, the epistemology of peer disagreement, and the construction of a novel objection that anticipates the strongest reply available to it.
Forthcoming — readable now, with sample lessons.
The whole roster, and no ceiling.
Everything above is free and stays free — all seven tiers, the whole curriculum, and a rated opponent at every level. A subscription lifts the two limits the free tier keeps.
Unlimited hearts
A wrong answer costs a heart, and they return over the day. On a plan they do not run out, so a hard afternoon costs nothing but the afternoon.
Every opponent
Seven of the forty-three are free, one at each level of the ladder. The rest — Cicero, Aquinas, Hume, Socrates at 2400 — come with a plan.
Written debate
Type your own speeches instead of choosing from four, against a model arguing in the character’s voice, judged on its own rating. Disputant.
See the plansFrom $7 a month. A week free to start.