Week 15 — Reasoning About Values and the Course Synthesis

Welcome to your Week 15 Start Here page.

Why this matters

A nursing student deciding whether to report a classmate's shortcut and a club treasurer splitting a shared prize both need the same habit: separate the value question from the factual one, and state the other side at its strongest.

In plain language

This week is about arguments that say what someone ought to do. A moral argument (an argument about what is good, right, or required) usually joins a value premise (a claim about what is good, right, or required) to a factual premise (a claim about what the situation is). Each kind of premise needs its own support, and many arguments about right and wrong turn out to be arguments about facts. You learn three ways of laying out moral reasons, how to state the other side at its strongest, and how to build and defend an argument of your own. Then you put the whole course together: which test fits which kind of argument.

• Already covered: Weeks 1 to 14 built every test, from standard form to the bias check.
• This week: value and factual premises, three frameworks, steelmanning, and the synthesis.
• How they connect: a moral argument is still an argument, so every earlier test still applies.

Focus

How do you reason well about what ought to be done, and which test fits each kind of argument?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] split a moral argument into its value premise and factual premises
• [ ] argue both sides of a question from each of three frameworks
• [ ] steelman an objection, reply, and name your argument's weak point
• [ ] match each kind of argument to the test that fits it

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 15 (about 50 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
3. Do the Argument Workshop (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: name the value premise and the factual premises of the library argument.

You've got this

This is the last teaching week; the cumulative final follows in Week 16. Ask your instructor if a step snags.

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