The professor encourages the students to engage from an intuitive perspective, but since they have no training in formal logic, their comments are usually misguided and of no consequence for the listener. This is surely a fun course in person, but it does not work as a podcast. The worst thing about the lectures is that I CAN’T HEAR THE STUDENTS, SO THE PROFESSOR’S TALK BECOMES FRAGMENTED AND LOSES MEANING SINCE YOU ONLY HEAR HALF THE CONVERSATION. To make things worse, I can’t even hear the professor half the time since she keeps milling about the class to engage with the students and thus walking away from the microphone. A discussion section does not work as a podcast. Since you can’t give all participants a professional microphone, only lectures make good podcasts.

Absolutely brilliant set of lectures! An invaluable resource for anyone who has any interest in improving themselves intellectually.

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Sound quality is sometimes bad. Lecturer allows themself to be frequently interrupted and taken on tangents by students, which is difficult to follow as we cannot hear what the students are saying. The lecture relies heavily on graphics being shown, yet this is merely an audio recording, and while slides are given separately, it is rarely easy to know what slide the lecturer is referring to. Lecturer is also given to supplying the class with incorrect examples only to come back and correct them moments later, as well as giving examples and then immediately saying "that's a bad example" without often offering a better one. I have no doubt this professor is learned but there are things you need to do to make an audio class work, and this one doesn't.

The topic was very interesting and the professor delivered the information well. The format for audio only was a problem because a large portion of the information relied on being able to see the content. Additionally as other reviewers have pointed out you could only hear at the professor, not the students. Since the professor encourage discussion, the audio listener really misses a lot of the content.

This course was absolutely incredible. I really learned a lot from it, and it is easy to understand the subject, even for a beginner. A lot of this is due to the teacher; Marianne Talbot. She is incredible, very easy to understand, enjoyable to listen to and very passionate about what she is teaching. The only problem is that it is audio only (a video version is available, but this is the audio one) and a few times she refers to something she has written down, presumably on a blackboard. Thankfully the slides she uses are included, so often after a little guessing, you can figure out what she is saying. It happens very rarely, but is worth a mention, and is the reason I rated 4/5 instead of 5/5. I recommend this course highly to anyone interested in the subject.

This class suffers from bad audio. It's not a strong approach to the material to begin with. It's slow. It's boring. It takes strong powers of concentration to follow. There is a lot of dead air. As an alternative I suggest the Coursera class "Think Again: How to Reason and Argue." Its web targetted material, its more engaging, has better pacing, covers more material and etc.

I THOUGHT THE LECTURES WERE VERY HELPFUL AND HAVE GIVEN ME AN ADDITIONAL BASIS TO HELP FORMULATE ADDITIONAL THESIS IN LIFE…. NOTHING TO INTENSE… WELL…. -REGARDLESS THIS LOGIC COURSE WILL PROVIDE THE BASIS TO EXPLAIN THAT STATEMENTS ARE JUST LIKE MATH EQUATIONS…. GIVEN A TRUE UNDERSTANDING OF VALIDITY IN ARGUMENT… YOU CAN BULID ANY CONCEPT IMAGINABLE FOLLOWING THE AXIOMATIC LOGIC HEREIN.

Unfortunately the quality of this recording made it almost unusable for me. Between the lecturer talking about things written and not verbally described and the incessant class discussion (none of which could be heard!)...it was just too much trouble trying to pull something useful from the course. I suspect the info is there...but what a pain trying to get it!

I had this class 20 yes ago at a local university. I enjoyed it then and am enjoying it even more now. The instructor is very easy to follow and is complete in her teachings. I think it's first class lectures.

This presentation on critical thinking was the best I have ever heard. Clear concise and to the point. Thank You.

I'm 15, Year 10, and this IS the first iTunes U lecture I downloaded. I was mind-blown. I understood the basic concepts from the lecture but this philosophy is so in-depth that I haven't even thought about things as abstract as such. You won't see the world ever again the same way.

The course was great.....can improve by making a video version and expanding the lecture series. Hope to see more work from the professor.

Here are 3 features that make this my favorite course so far. 1) the speaker has a great voice and entertaining style. This makes it easy to concentrate 2) each lecture is preceded by a separately recorded introduction so you "know where she is going" 3) the material is challenging and useful for constructing and presenting my own arguments as well as evaluating those of others.

I've learned a lot and really enjoyed this series. Taught by a very gifted and articulate professor. It's long, and the sound is not so great, but it's worth it. Rafael (Austin, TX)

Good stuff here folks.

Love it!

I would LOVE to listen to this lecture series. The premise is fascinating, but the sound quality is horrible. Questions from the students are almost completely out of the range of the microphones, and the professor's voice periodically becomes inaudible. The technical flaws definitely detract from the content.

So far I have listened to the first two and have found them to be informative, interesting and a bit humorous as well.