Avoiding Your Own Fallacies: Reasoning, Conversations, and Intellectual Honesty

The greatest benefit of studying fallacies comes from applying the lessons to your own thinking. Everyone reasons poorly sometimes, including the people who study fallacies. The goal is not perfect reasoning but a slow, steady habit of catching yourself and adjusting. This course is about building that habit. You will work through written reflections and planning exercises that look at your own characteristic patterns of poor reasoning and develop practices that gradually reduce them. The course respects that intellectual honesty is harder than spotting other people's errors. What you'll learn: - Recognize your own characteristic fallacy patterns through honest written reflection - Apply structured pauses in important decisions and conversations to catch reasoning errors - Strengthen your own arguments by checking them for fallacies before sharing them - Engage with disagreement in ways that invite better thinking rather than triggering defensive reactions - Build intellectual honesty habits including changing your mind publicly when evidence warrants - Plan a sustained practice that compounds over years without becoming anxious or performative The course begins with self-recognition, moves through structured pauses, strengthening arguments, engaging disagreement, and finishes with intellectual honesty habits and sustained practice. A capstone written exercise asks you to draft a one-year practice plan for your own reasoning grounded in your honest current patterns. This course is designed for thoughtful adults committed to better reasoning, including students, professionals, and citizens engaged in public conversations. It is approachable for committed beginners willing to do the foundational work first. No specific background is required. The course is about lifelong practice rather than tactics that age within months.