The octopus
Course one of four · Logic and Argumentation
Take an argument apart and say precisely why it holds or fails.
Not a critical-thinking survey and not a formal-logic course. One semester of doing the same operation on harder and harder material until it's automatic: find the claim, find what's offered as support, name the move that connects them, and judge whether that move earns the conclusion. You will not be talked into things you did not choose.
See the six Worlds →
$60
$50
Founder's price · full course · any length
Length
1 semester
Time
~18 hours
Worlds
6 + capstone
Prerequisites
None
Math required
None
No gates, ever.
Every World carries a depth rating. It's a description of the water, not a door. Nothing is locked.
Stands alone, or take all four.
PROOF depends on no other course, and no other course depends on it.
You leave with evidence.
An artifact at the end of every World, a capstone with your name on it, and a portfolio index to show someone.
$60 a course. Any length.
The unit is the course, whatever its length. The founder's discount is shown at the top of the page.
Outcomes, stated plainly
What you'll be able to do
Restate an argument its author would sign
Charitable reconstruction comes first, always. You can't take apart something you haven't stated fairly.
Separate whether it follows from whether it's true
Two verdicts, delivered separately. A lot of public disagreement is people confusing the two.
Name the exact move that fails
Not just "that's a fallacy," but which move, why it fails here, and what the arguer would have to add to repair it.
Check a claim instead of trusting its tone
Especially when the prose is fluent, confident, well cited, and produced by a machine.
A mirror, not a gate
Start with the Surface Check, or skip it
Eight items, about ten minutes. It suggests a World to start at and does nothing else: no score is kept, nothing is locked, and skipping it costs you nothing. If you do well, it tells you plainly to start at World 3, because the first two will be review.
About 2.5–3 hours each
The six Worlds
Each World is a briefing, three to five exercise sets, one artifact and a review. Depth ratings are advisory: take them in order, or don't.
01
Claims
10 m · Shallow
~2.5 hrs
Conclusion, premise, and the enormous amount of writing that is neither. Finding the conclusion when it's buried, implied or deliberately absent, then restating someone's argument in a form they'd sign before you touch it.
Artifact
The Reconstruction
Take a 600–900 word opinion piece you chose and render it as a bare claim-and-support skeleton its author would sign off on.
02
Validity vs Truth
30 m · Open Water
~3 hrs
The distinction that does most of the work in the whole course. An argument can be perfectly valid and completely false. Conditional reasoning taught by shape rather than notation, and the two mistakes everybody makes with it.
Artifact
The Split
Four supplied arguments; for each, separate the validity verdict from the truth verdict and defend both.
03
Induction & Evidence
30 m · Open Water
~3 hrs
What makes evidence actually support a conclusion. Samples and generalization. What an anecdote is legitimately good for. Analogy as argument versus analogy as decoration. Correlation and causation done properly, with confounders named.
Artifact
The Evidence Audit
One news article making a causal claim; list every alternative explanation it did not rule out.
04
Fallacies in the Wild
30 m · Open Water
~3 hrs
Fallacies as diagnostic tools, not a vocabulary list. Every one is introduced through a real specimen, and you name the move and state what the arguer would have to add to fix it. Includes the fallacy fallacy, the honesty check on everything else.
Artifact
The Field Guide
Ten specimens you collected in one week, each named, diagnosed and repaired.
05
Rhetoric & Manipulation
60 m · Deep
~3 hrs
Where the argument isn't in the argument. Framing, loaded language, the true statement that misleads by omission, statistics used as rhetoric with no math required, and emotional appeal told apart from manipulation.
Artifact
The Rewrite
One accurate paragraph written twice, once up and once down, changing no facts, with every lever annotated.
06
Machine Claims
60 m · Deep
~3 hrs
Why confident, well-formed prose is no longer evidence of anything. Fabricated citations and how to catch one in a minute. Tracing a quote to its source. What a reverse image search can and can't tell you. Using AI output honestly.
Artifact
The Verification Log
Ten claims from AI output, each traced to a primary source and confirmed, corrected or marked unverifiable.
100 m · Below the Thermocline
The Teardown
One real, substantial piece of public argument that you choose yourself (an op-ed, a policy brief, a product launch post, a school-board proposal), taken apart in full. Eight to twelve pages with your name on it. This is the piece you show somebody.
1
Reconstruct
the argument, charitably, in a form its author would accept
2
Assess validity
claim by claim, separately from truth
3
Audit the evidence
what's offered, what it supports, what it doesn't
4
Name the failures
with the repair each one would need
5
Inventory the rhetoric
every lever pulled, and what each one does
6
Verify
every factual and quoted claim, back to a primary source
7
Deliver the verdict
and state what would change it
A teardown that can't name its own defeater isn't finished. Step seven is what separates this from an opinion.
Instead of a boss fight
The Review Board
Thirty items in thirty-five minutes, drawn from all six Worlds and written in the style of a reasoning section. Retake it as often as you like. It shows where you are. It isn't a grade, and nothing about it is reported anywhere, to anyone.
Honest alignment
There is no PROOF certification
No industry body certifies logic and argumentation, and we won't invent one. PROOF prepares for the reasoning sections of the LSAT, GRE and GMAT, and is aligned to the argumentation strand of AP Seminar and the rhetorical-analysis strand of AP English Language. It promises no score.
10 skills LSAC publishes for LSAT Logical Reasoning, all practiced in PROOF.
16 AP Seminar learning objectives in the argumentation strand (of 29 in the course framework).
Your progress is shown as coverage of those published lists, not as points. Exam fees, registration and scheduling are between you and the awarding body. We aren't affiliated with any of them.
Questions
Do I need PROOF before the other three?
No. Nothing in LEDGER, INFERENCE or SIGNAL depends on PROOF's content. Taking it first makes the others land harder. That's a recommendation, not a requirement.
Who marks my work?
You do, against the rubrics that ship with the course, with model answers to compare. Nothing you write is submitted to us, and we hold no learner data.
Is this politically loaded?
Deliberately not. Specimens come from across the spectrum in every set, most aren't political at all, and no side is ever the standing example of bad reasoning. That's a written editorial standard, not a hope.
PROOF, complete
Six Worlds, seven artifacts, one teardown. One semester.
$60
$50
Founder's price · full course
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Levitation Education
Published by Levitation Automation.
PROOF and the octopus mark are marks of Levitation Automation. Not affiliated with LSAC, ETS, GMAC or the College Board. Independent of any exam body; awards no academic credit.
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