PHIL-347N Critical Reasoning is the writing-intensive logic course, and the documents it asks for are unlike anything else in the degree. Instead of building an argument of your own, you take somebody else's, pull it apart into premises and a conclusion, supply whatever it left unsaid, then judge whether the reasoning holds and whether the premises are true. Critical reading is the other half: reading a text for its structure rather than its subject. Opinions earn nothing here. A paper that says an argument is wrong without showing which step fails is scored the same as one that says it is right for the same reason. This page is the manual: turning your rubric rows into a word budget, the standard-form reconstruction a grader expects, how logical vocabulary has to be used, and the six habits that leak points in a reasoning course.
What PHIL-347N actually grades
Accuracy of reconstruction comes first. Before any evaluation happens, you have to show the argument as its author would recognize it: the conclusion identified correctly, the premises listed separately, and any assumption the author relied on without stating written into the list. Most points lost in this course are lost here, because a reconstruction that misses the real conclusion makes everything downstream an evaluation of the wrong argument.
Evaluation comes second, and it splits in two. Is the reasoning any good, meaning would the conclusion follow if the premises were true? And are the premises actually true? Those questions are independent, and keeping them apart is half of what the course teaches. An argument can reason flawlessly from a false premise, and a true conclusion can sit on top of reasoning that proves nothing.
Third is precision of language. This is a course where the technical words have narrow meanings and a grader reads them narrowly. Valid describes a form, not a fact. Sound means valid with true premises. Strong and cogent belong to inductive arguments and cannot be borrowed for deductive ones. Using any of these loosely tells the reader you are working from the everyday sense of the word rather than the course's.
The written work arrives on Chamberlain's schedule: a 16 week semester split into two 8 week sessions, weekly deliverables in Canvas, discussions that do not reopen once you post. A board reply that misidentifies a conclusion stays visible for the rest of the session, which is a good reason to reconstruct in a document first.
How we help in this course
We build the documents: the reconstruction in standard form, the evaluation that tests validity and premise truth separately, the fallacy analysis with each label defended rather than asserted, the critical reading response, and the discussion post written to final quality before it publishes. Send the passage you were assigned along with the scoring guide, and the draft comes back with the reasoning laid out in a form you can talk about in class.
Terms are the standard ones on this site: a premium original draft in 24 to 48 hours, targeted at the A band of your course's scale, through the eight-person pipeline with two QA passes and the floor check, revised free until it lands. We do not sit timed logic quizzes or exams.
Reconstructing an argument this week?
Send the passage and your scoring guide. First premium sample free, floor-checked, back in 24 to 48 hours.
Read the scoring rows before you read the passage
In a reasoning course the prompt often gives you a text and one sentence of instruction. The scoring guide is where the real assignment lives. Copy the rows out of Canvas one per line and strip each to its verb: identify, reconstruct, evaluate, name, defend. That verb list is the paper's outline, kept in the guide's order.
Then convert weight to words. Say the assignment caps you at 1,100 words and the guide carries four rows worth 35, 30, 20 and 15 percent. Multiply straight through: about 385 words for the reconstruction, 330 for the evaluation, 220 for the fallacy or objection row, and 165 for writing and format. Put those four numbers beside your headings before you draft.
That arithmetic corrects the mistake this course punishes most. Students treat reconstruction as throat-clearing and rush to the part where they get to disagree, which spends 100 words on the row worth 385. Reconstruction is not preamble. It is the section where you prove you read accurately, and it is usually the heaviest thing on the page.
One structural check: ask whether the guide wants the premises numbered and displayed or worked into prose. Numbered standard form is easier to grade and easier to defend, and where the guide allows it, use it.
The shape of an argument reconstruction
Every reconstruction does the same eight jobs, whatever the passage is about.
| Step | What it requires | How it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Locate the conclusion | Find the one claim everything else is offered in support of, and quote the sentence that carries it. | Choosing the most striking sentence rather than the supported one. |
| List the stated premises | Number each reason the author gives, one idea per line, in the author's own terms. | Merging two reasons into one line, which hides the step where the argument breaks. |
| Supply the hidden premise | Write the unstated assumption the argument needs, phrased so the author would accept it. | Inventing an assumption nobody made in order to have something to attack. |
| Classify the argument | Say whether it is offered as deductive or inductive, and why the wording tells you so. | Skipping this, then applying deductive tests to an argument from evidence. |
| Test the form | Ask whether the conclusion would follow if every premise were true, and say what the form is. | Rejecting the form because you disagree with a premise, which confuses two separate tests. |
| Test the premises | Take each premise one at a time and ask whether it is true, with a source where the claim is factual. | Accepting a factual premise because it sounds reasonable. |
| Name any flaw precisely | Where reasoning fails, name the pattern and show the sentence that fits it. | Attaching a fallacy label to an argument that is merely weak or unwelcome. |
| Deliver a verdict | State plainly whether the argument succeeds, and what would have to change for it to. | Ending on a survey of considerations with no judgment attached. |
Using the vocabulary the way the course does
Five habits carry most of the difference between a paper that sounds logical and one that is.
Keep validity and truth apart in every sentence. An argument is valid or invalid; a statement is true or false. Writing that a premise is invalid, or that an argument is false, signals in four words that the distinction has not landed. Say the reasoning is valid but the second premise is false, and a grader knows exactly what you found.
Read charitably before you object. Reconstruct the strongest reading the words will bear, including the assumption that makes the argument work. Then object. An objection to the weakest possible reading is easy to write and worth almost nothing, and instructors in this course are trained to spot it.
Name a fallacy only when the pattern is present. Fallacy labels are diagnoses, not insults. Attacking the person instead of the claim is one thing; disagreeing rudely is another. Quote the sentence, name the pattern, then show in one line why the sentence fits the pattern. If that third step is hard to write, the label is probably wrong.
Quote the argument exactly, then paraphrase. Reconstruction is a claim about what somebody said, so the words matter. Give the quotation first and your standard-form rendering after it, so a reader can check your rendering against the original without leaving the page.
Cite where the passage came from and any logic source you lean on. The text you analyze is a source and belongs in the reference list. Where a definition comes from your course reading, cite it in APA author-date form, because the definition is doing real work in the argument you are making about their argument.
What separates a passing analysis from a strong one
A passing paper here identifies the conclusion, lists the premises, applies a term or two correctly and reaches a verdict. It is orderly and it is not wrong, and it sits in the middle of the class because it does exactly what the instructions describe.
Strong papers do three extra things. They make the hidden premise explicit and then test it, since the unstated assumption is where most real arguments actually fail. They say what would change the verdict, naming the evidence or the revision that would rescue the argument, which shows the evaluation was a test and not a preference. And they hold their own tone flat: no adjectives doing the work of reasons, no dismissive summary of a position, because the moment a reasoning paper starts persuading it stops analyzing.
Six habits that quietly cost marks
- Evaluating before reconstructing. Any judgment written before the premises are on the page is a reaction to the topic rather than the argument, and graders can see the order you worked in.
- Confusing what is said with what is meant. A rhetorical question, an aside or an example is not automatically a premise. Include a line only if the argument would weaken without it.
- Fallacy sprinkling. Three labels in a paragraph almost always means none of them was tested. One named pattern, quoted and shown, beats a list.
- Treating a strong inductive argument as a failed deductive one. Evidence-based arguments are not supposed to guarantee their conclusions. Judge them on strength and on whether the sample fits the claim.
- Posting a reconstruction straight into a discussion board. Chamberlain posts do not reopen, and a misidentified conclusion is the kind of error you will want back. Draft in a document, check the conclusion twice, then paste.
- Ending without a verdict. A paper that lists strengths and weaknesses and stops has skipped the row that asks you to judge, which is usually the second heaviest on the guide.
Questions PHIL-347N students ask
How do I find the conclusion when the passage does not announce one?
Is it acceptable to agree with the argument I am evaluating?
The passage my instructor assigned is emotional and one-sided. Does that make it a fallacy?
Where PHIL-347N sits in Chamberlain's programs
Open the exact program map for sequence, credit, and option context. The current student schedule and syllabus remain authoritative after transfer evaluation, electives, state rules, and approved plan changes.
The weeks, one by one
The public curriculum verifies PHIL-347N but does not publish its Week 1 through Week 8 Canvas assignments. Week manuals are added only from verified real deliverables; session length is never used to invent them.