Question 3 Last Question Yay!

First I'd like to say theres a lot of great things I've learned this semester. I don't know if i can pick just one to expand on it but i'll give it a good shot. I think arguing was a very important part of our class. And i think the best part about arguing was trying not to make a fallacy. Fallacies were something I've always heard of but I never really took the time and effort to learn it. I now realize that yelling and arguing without carefully thinking can lead people to think i'm an idiot. I really think knowing the fallacies will help not just my self but everybody from making mistakes. I hate losing arguments but i hate even more to bit my tongue. and even more than that I would be absolutely mortified if i ended up offending somebody. So I think knowing all fallacies from slippery slope to bullying can also help us as people recognize them and point them out. It's all about advancing as a people and I want to be able to have intellectual conversation with somebody without having to worry about being mean and still accomplish things.

Question 2

My favorite thing about the class is the online nature of it. I don't feel like i'm forced to be locked into a classroom for hours and hours. I like the fact that we read on our own time. We do blogs on our own time and we comment on our own time. It's a super flexible class and i really enjoyed that that most. I'll miss having an online class because now I'll have 2 1/2 hours more to be forced into a desk at school. The least favorite thing about this class was probably desire2learn. I didn't find it very useful. Maybe because we spent so much time on the blog desire 2 learn just felt like a waste of time. I think instead of using that the teacher can just put up important things on the blog and try to eliminate desire 2 learn all together apart from the quizzes. I think the only way this class could improve is to have an online lecture. A video recording of lectures would be very good and impressive. It's a colorful addition and a break from the reading. It also shows us more of the teacher. I really know nothing about the teacher. I don't know how she teaches meaning stylistically. I guess the style would be online, but maybe if i felt like a person was there i could feel like I was learning much better. I'm taking this idea from a biology class i took over the summer where we had online lectures and we had a short quiz and the end based on the lecture. I felt it was very helpful.

Question 1

What is it that i've learned in this class. The class is about critical decision making but i don't think that does it justice. I think this class teaches you how to think properly. Logically I don't think I've learned this much since I was in computer science which I didn't ended up hating. I learned how to think things through. I know longer have to go into arguments and ending up looking like a fool. I can end up looking like an average person. I know now when to pick my battles and when to believe whatever it is that i'm supposed to believe. I guess I could be classified as a gullible person. I tend to believe when people tell me things and I don't really think things of it because I trust people. Now i'm kinda weary to believe things unless I put it through my decision making criteria. I think this class is really important and I can see why it's needed for core GE. I think we should learn things like this at a younger age because i'm 20 years old right now and i feel like if i knew this when I was 16 high school would have been less of crap shoot. High school was like people always trying to deceive and lie for no real reason. Critical thinking would have made me think logically and answer back with a smart witty response like a politician. This class and my 100w class have really changed the way I speak and think so thank you for that. Logic FTW.

Cause and Effect in Populations

Cause and Effect in Populations is a very useful topic. Cause in populations is defined as “a claim that If the cause is present, there is a higher probability the effect will follow than if the cause were not present(Epstein 392)”. The example in the book is that smoking lots of cigarettes over a long period of time will cause a higher probability that it’ll cause lung cancer. We know that if you do something, there will be an outcome or effect by it. There is a problem with cause and effect that we actually don’t have an idea nor is it likely that we can state normal conditions for smoking. The one thing that we can do in cause and effect is to point out the evidence that we do have that convinces us that’s the effect of causing something, such as smoking or drunk driving. Evidence must be present in order to have a cause an effect scenario.

Cause and Effect

The Cause and Effect website has very good points on introducing us to Causal Arguments. Causation is connecting the relationship between conducting it and having a result. It’s usually dealt with injury cases. The example of the bicyclist moving into the traffic lane in order to pass a truck illegally parked in the bike lane has a good claim if he were to be in court. The bicyclist will probably say the truck shouldn’t have parked. That is why I swerved into the lane of traffic. One good point from the website is that none of the claims that he made fit the pattern of inductive argument because they aren’t observed or experienced. The last part of the website is the most important, which deals with three factors that give strength in a causal argument. They are to accept or demonstrable the implied comparison, the case for causation, and how credible it really is.

Mission Critical

The Mission Critical website has different parts of an argument and everything that consists of it. The section on Fallacies and Non-Rational Persuasion is what I thought was most useful in the website. There are two different types of Appeals. The first appeal is Misdirected appeals which consist of Appeal to Authority, Common Practice, and Appeal to Common Belief. An appeal to fear is that fear and love are two strong emotions. It affects and threatens the safety or happiness of ourselves or someone we love. This was very useful because people are always trying to get into people’s emotions to get something out of them. It is a very strong appeal to use. The second part of appeals is Emotional appeals. One Appeal in this section is Appeal to Spite. Spite is concerned with hatred and indignation to tap into a person’s feelings about people or things. It is a very powerful appeal.

Question 3 Reasoning By Analogy

Probably my most used form of reasoning even though I use it in dumb ways, is reasoning by analogy. I always try to draw parallels to things that have no correlation with the other thing whatsoever. I like how people compare LeBron James to Michael Jordan. The two players are from different places, they are from different times, and they aren't the same person. Michael Jordan is not dead and reincarnated in LeBron people need to get over that. So when people make the argument that Jordan would have never switched teams in the middle of his career like LeBron that doesn't make much sense. LeBron is a grown man who does whatever he likes not following Jordans every footstep. I'm sorry for the sports reference, but it was a good one in my opinion. I use analogy a lot in my reasoning, but as we see from this example bad analogies make for very bad reasoning. just because somethings are in common sometimes doesn't mean you can follow the same path every time. Each time is a different situation. It's like a fingerprint everybody has their own.

Reasoning by Criteria

Reasoning by criteria didn't make much sense to me at first reading it. Even after going online for a while i didn't really get it. Maybe my mind was wondering or maybe I wasn't paying attention the first time. Well now reading it again today it makes way more sense. Reasoning by criteria just means that we set up the criteria for reasoning. It's all about defining what we want to get in an outcome. For example I hate when a teacher says just write a good paper. What does that mean? Serious a good paper for one teacher isn't the same for another. Every English teacher since 7th grade has been different than the others in terms of grading and style so I get so irritated and confused. I want a teacher to say. "I want your to write a good paper that has effective sentences, a lot of vocabulary, and hits the target well. The paper should be as neat as possible with very few mistakes in grammar and spelling." If teachers told me this maybe I'd be more prepared to write better essays in class. This is reasoning with criteria just explain a bit more and set up a criteria for words like good, great, effective.

Question 1 Example Reasoning

Reasoning by analogy

Michael Jordan was a great player

Great players never switch teams

Lebron isn't a great player.

Sign Reasoning

Is your body feeling hot? Do you have a headache and Body aches? Vomiting?

If you answered yes you probably have the flu.

Casual Reasoning

I lost my keys. I retraced my steps and I couldn't find them. I went everywhere except my classroom its probably in there.

Reasoning by Criteria

get a good SAT score? whats "good"? enough so that the colleges will except you.

Reasoning by example

Don't eat a burger king their food got me sick last week so their food isn't safe.

Inductive

All blankets are warm

I bought a new blanket

It must be warm

Deductive

Garbage was picked up every wednesday

Garbage will be picked up this wednesday.

Question 3 Feel Good Argument

How many times have I seen a scene in school where somebody tries to get on the good side of teacher or at work a boss. "You're not a mean person why would you give me a bad grade" or "You're a nice boss you'd give me time off work right?" I don't think all of these people fail, but most do. Sometimes surprisingly getting on somebodies good side and making them feel bad enough for you actually works. I can think of a few people who had to do "extra credit" to pass high school. Such as cleaning, doing meaningless busy work just to prove to the teacher they deserved a passing grade. Sometimes it actually works so being nice might actually get you somewhere. It's never a good reason to be nice but sometimes it works. It's a horrible argument to tell somebody they're nice guys and girls and they wouldn't hurt a fly but some people are really that nice.

Question 2 Appeal To Spite

Up until Tuesday Political ads have been running non stop. Vote Republican Vote Democrat Vote Tea Party. It's honestly kinda crazy how much effort and money they put into these elections. I don't vote because I really don't care for but I am forced to watch insufferable commercials while I watch TV. These commercials go on and on bashing other candidates. Most look at track record and don't focus on the issues. For example Carly Fiorina was CEO at HP for a long time. She ran a very successful company. She happened to lay off a lot of people and outsource a lot of jobs. Barbra Boxer her opponent ran an ad saying she laid off thousands of workers what will she do in the senate? It makes people think, "ohh that fiorina I don't like her she doesn't care about us and she'll do it again." Even though in a way she has done more for the economy that Barbra Boxer ever has by running a billion dollar company.

Question 1 Appeal To Emotion

Appealing to Emotion is appealing to ones emotions. Meaning that you do something to strike a chord in a person with an argument. For example if I know something scares you like terrorists, and I say don't go to him because he is for terrorists. That is an appeal to fear. I like the appeal to fear the best. I think it's because I see it the most often. Political Ads do appeal to spite. Jerry Brown ran many ads against meg whitman that show her as a person very similar to Arnold Schwarzenegger who most people despise and are very hateful towards. I think the appeal to emotion even though a bad argument I still find it very effective. People try to put emotions into an argument but the real thing we need to look at is facts. There are a lot of feelings out there that don't belong in a rational argument. So appealing to ones emotions is a very useful tactic in arguing with a person or promoting something, but it's still wrong.

Question 3 Strawmen

I want to talk about Strawmen because it was brought up in my other class so i figured it'd be interesting to bring it up once again. A strawman is taking down another person's arguement by saying it's something it was never meant to be. My teacher was telling us that good essays have statements that we're supposed to convince people other wise, but we're not supposed to lie about that statement. Below i've included a statment from wikipedia that explains it better than the book does. Somebody says something on once stance, but the person arguing says that that's not what he's saying at all. Thus knocking down the argument and seeming like the victor, but in reality he just forced his way into a tie. In fact he really lost, but the people who aren't smart enough to recognize this win at all cost argument would see the arguer as the winner.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Person A has position X.

Person B disregards certain key points of X and instead presents the superficially-similar position Y. Thus, Y is a resulting distorted version of X and can be set up in several ways, including:

1. Presenting a misrepresentation of the opponent's position and then refuting it, thus giving the appearance that the opponent's actual position has been refuted.^[1]
2. Quoting an opponent's words out of context – i.e. choosing quotations that misrepresent the opponent's actual intentions (see contextomy and quote mining).^[2]
3. Presenting someone who defends a position poorly as the defender, then refuting that person's arguments – thus giving the appearance that every upholder of that position (and thus the position itself) has been defeated.^[1]
4. Inventing a fictitious persona with actions or beliefs which are then criticized, implying that the person represents a group of whom the speaker is critical.
5. Oversimplifying an opponent's argument, then attacking this oversimplified version.

Person B attacks position Y, concluding that X is false/incorrect/flawed.

Question 2 Assignment Usefulness

The assignments are designed to get us thinking about real world parallels to the book. The newspaper is one that we're supposed to say look at this professional writer he can't even follow the basic rules of critical thinking either, without succumbing to bad habits. The usefulness of the assignment I would rate at 6 out of 10. Yes it's good to see the parallels between real editorials and using our learning to break it down, but I feel like it could be a little better. I wish we were all given maybe the same editorial, or maybe like a political speech, that was designed to get us thinking more. Maybe I just had a problem with the article my group chose, which was more of an article than an editorial. I had a tough time figuring out what the person was trying to convey. All in all I say it was useful, but it certainly would have helped if the editorial that was chosen was more in the right direction of what we were supposed to be looking for.

Question 1 Ch 8

General Statements and Invalid Forms.

General Statements or claims are just claims that aren't really saying anything. It's like if i said, "All green foods are vegetables. Green Jello is a vegetable." It doesn't make sense that jello would be a vegetable but it might be green. General Statements are just sayings that might not prove anything. "Apple a day keeps the doctor away." To be more accurate it should say "eat healthy, work out, and don't do unhealthy habits to keep the doctor away", but the point is we say many of these every single day and we don't stop to correct our selves. Invalid forms would be like the first statement about the green jello. it doesn't make any sense and would be impossible to be true, so it is not valid or invalid. So that is a wrap up of General Statements and Invalid Forms I hope that helps out.

Question 3 anything

Summary/review/critic type thing.

Raising Obejections

According to the book raising objections is the standard way to show an argument is bad. I tend to do this a lot. People will say something I find idiotic and I'll go after it by raising objections. I know it sounds mean but I'm trying not to do so any longer. Raising objections though a good way to argue isn't a very good way to make friends. But yeah Raising objections might not be the best way to go when dealing with friends arguing. I know i've offended many people this way. For example once my friend was telling me how he did the required community service but he wasn't sure if the teacher received it. I told him he should check, and he said it was dumb. I told him he's dumb to not take 5 min of time to ask a simple question, but he was pretty pissed at me for calling him dumb.

Question 2 Chapter 7

Refuting an Argument

Directly:

directly refuting an arguement is pointing out on thing in a persons logic that is invalid or weak. If i were talking about how walking more causes more pollution than driving then I would expect somebody to call me an idiot. They could point to that simple point and say that it doesn't make any sense that a person pollutes less than the machine that that person operates which sends tons of pollutants in the air.

Indirectly:

I'm not that smart of a person, but if I said I got into Harvard a lot of people would doubt me. I mean they know I have less than Harvard quality grades, but they can't figure out why I'm wrong. I might be telling the truth even though I'm not. that is an indirect version of refuting. It's not believing somebody though you can't point directly at my argument and say anything negative about it. My argument isn't very plausible so therefore they dismiss it as a joke.

Question Chapter 6

I just read through chapter 6 and at first I wasn't sure what to talk about if I had 2 things to talk about. I've decided to talk about necessary and sufficient conditions, and about false dilemma. False dilemma is coming up with two things that might not correlate with each other and forcing them in together in an argument. For example if I drive my car at night I won't get as much sleep. These two things might correlate a little bit, but I could just sleep during the day. False dilemmas makes a bigger deal out of nothing rather than rational thinking. Necessary and sufficient conditions are kind of like the true version of False dilemmas. I guess they're be like true dilemmas in a way. If I go to the mall all day Saturday, I can't have time to study. This is an event that correlates with the other unlike the false one.

Question 3

Possibility and Plausibility

I'm not usually one to believe in conspiracy theories so it usually makes me laugh when I see one brewing. I was watching the history channel on 9/11 and they had an episode that dealt with 9/11 conspiracy theories. The most common one dealt with the governments role in the 9/11 attacks. They had experts with college degrees and people working in real industries compared to conspiracy theorists. Now while some people may see that it's possible that the government could have planted numerous bombs and throughout the world trade center, it's probably not plausible. The experts claimed that the world trade center fell because of the planes crashing, and the conspiracy theorists claimed that it was rigged with explosives. I guess we'll never truly know what the cause is, but it's about 99.9% plausible that the planes made the towers come down not, the secret government group designed to gain moral support.

Question 2 internet ad

I found this on some website. I know I see these multiple times daily, even though I put an ad blocker on my browser. I've been going on the internet since I was a child and I know not to click on something that looks like this. It just looks so shady. I didn't click on the link, but I can guess what would happen if you did. Imagine it leads you to a bunch of surveys which require you to reveal very personal information. In the small print it even says "Participation required. See site. Must complete 13 offers." These maybe be very true statements, but for all I know I'll do 13 offers and receive no ipad and have my personal information in the hands of a scammer. I just think about the math involved. An ipad is worth about 500 dollars, but with my information your company will send my one for free? This sounds like a steal. Yeah right it's stealing from me, my information that could require my credit card number to float around the internet charging me thousands of dollars for an ipad I probably won't receive.

Question 1 Fixing Arguments

Me: I'm going to the mall.

J: I hate our mall it sucks.

Me: You suck.

I made this up but it's probably come up in conversation before. The ending part of it I just kind of threw in there, but I want to fix the beginning. I live in an area where there are at least 5 malls within driving distance so for J to assume that I was going to a particular mall is incorrect, but he is implying that our mall, the closest to us, is of poor conditions. I could fix this argument by telling J which mall I'm going to specifically. I also could tell J what it is i'm doing there to change his mind about the mall. For instance if i said, "I'm going to the 5th street mall to find some cheap running shoes" then J might have responded, "I hate the 5th Street mall, but they have nice stores for cheap shoes. By doing this i fully explain the situation repairing an argument and giving much more context to the argument.

Week 3 Question 3

Organizational Culture.

Organizational culture refers to the way in which we are brought up in our surroundings. It's like some people are encouraged to speak and some are not. I find it interesting that some people aren't encouraged to speak much or question their surroundings. I don't believe that that makes for a healthy relationship with anything or anybody. I do think that questioning is what makes a person a smarter person. A smart person isn't one who has all the answers it's what who asks all that questions. The ability to discuss certain issues without feeling bad or feeling shy will make a person so much better off. Ignorance isn't bliss in many occasions. Also the culture involves many different traditions and rituals. It's a lot about being organized and set in your own ways and beliefs.

Week 3 Question 2

Ridicule is making fun of the other person to hurt their reputation therefore helping yourself win the argument. For example I get might get into an argument with the smartest person in the school. He might say that we need to lower pollution in order to combat global warming. If I say don't listen to this nerd and do whatever you want, that is ridicule. I find it funny that this is the way children handle most of their battles, but you still see many people engage in this. I often see people with low self esteems do this because they feel they have no other choice. These people are called bullies. A bully can be old or young but the tactics are the same. Calling somebody out for the way they act or dress and diverting the real problem at hand. These are all smoke screens to distract people from seeing the truth. Ridicule is also quite hurtful for the victims of ridicule. I don't think it has any place in arguments whether professional or juvenile. It just makes me sad when I witness this fallacy first hand. It makes me even more sad when I'm apart of it in a non friendly confrontation.

Week 3 Question 1

I'm on my way to school. I left five minutes late. Traffic is heavy. Therefore, I'll be late for class. So I might as well stop and get breakfast.

Argument? Yes

Conclusion: I might as well stop and get breakfast

Additional premises needed: If the person was hungry then breakfast would make more sense.

Identify any subargument: 2,3,4 are supportive in being late, but they don't support 1.

Good Argument? No, horrible argument, if you're late don't be even later. If you're hungry and dying of starvation then eat.

This exercise doesn't really help in my opinion. I mean it's nice to be able to pick apart arguments, but this seems useless to me. I understand it's a good skill to have, but I don't think it's good in this format. This kind of robotic and it seems like it takes the emotion out of claims. I feel arguments though logical, can still be swayed by emotion and body language, not just claims.

Week 2 Question 3

Leadership is a key factor and major skill that we put into effect in many everyday situations. In the textbook, leadership is defined as “the exercise of interpersonal influence toward the attainment of goals. A key factor in having leadership is the role of communication. Without this key factor of communication, one cannot fulfill the job of being a leader because one must know how to talk and communicate with whom you’re talking too. For example, in a working environment, your manager or boss may have authority over you in which they are the leaders who give you orders that become your goals for that job. There are four different types of leadership. In the book, they are listed as authoritarian, consultative, participate, and laissez-faire. My favorite type of leadership and that I see as being most fair is consultative leadership. It is defined as “bases decisions upon the opinions or ideas of group members”. Authoritarian leadership is defined as the leader having control without any input from members. Without having any input, you aren’t communicating with any group members and that can cause many problems amongst each other.

Week 2 Question 2

Strong and Valid Arguments are not the same thing. I thought they were the same until reading the text.

Valid - a valid argument just means the conclusion can't be false if the premise is false. The argument might not be possible at all, but it's still valid. For example I was talking to a friend the other day about major changes at school. He said they didn't accept his major change because his GPA was below a 3.0. Therefore all people switching majors from this point on will need a atleast a 3.0 to change majors. Is it true? Quite possible, but I haven't checked. According to my friend can the scenario he set up have a false conclusion with a true premise. No.

Strong - A strong argument is one that seems plausible. It's pretty much if you can believe it or not. A friend yesterday told me that one of our friends is pregnant. He has no proof to back this up, but I believe it could be true because this particular is careless in her sexual activities.

Week 2 Question 1

Chris has 15 dollars. A new shirt costs 12 dollars. Chris comes back with a new shirt so Chris must have 3 dollars left.

This a scenario I just made up and now lets test to see if it makes any sense.

The premise is plausible

Chris could very well have 15 dollars in cash and a new shirt can cost 12 dollars.

The premise is more plausible then the conclusion

Chris having money and looking to buy a new shirt is more plausible than him having spent the money on a new shirt.

The argument is weak for many reasons. A who knows if chris bought that 12 dollar shirt as opposed to a 10 dollar shirt. Also who knows if Chris even bought the shirt to begin with.

The argument isn't valid either because the premise and the conclusion might have nothing to do with each other.

Question 3

I know I'm late on posting this, but even if i don't get the credit I'll do it anyways. I want to talk more about vague sentences. Earlier I posted that I am guilty of vague sentences. I would like to try to make a commitment to not making vague sentences any longer. A teacher of mine recently had a discussion with the class on vague sentences. She felt that sometimes minimum word counts were to blame for vague sentences. I totally agree with her statement. It's hard writing an essay with a certain word count. Sometimes even the best of us can't manage 2000 words about a specific topic. That is why students are forced to do essays with vague topics and thesis statements, because we're so afraid of looking like idiots when we can't fill up the pages.

Question 2 Vague Sentences

I'm glad the topic of vague sentences has come up. I have to say i'm guilty of vague sentences, and i'm guilty of laughing hysterically at them as well. One of my favorite shows on TV is 30 Rock starring Tracy Morgan. On the show Morgan plays a character named Tracy Jordan, who for lack of a better word is stupid. In one episode Tracy Jordan gives advice to an intern by saying, "Live every week like it's Shark Week." I always laugh at this line because it doesn't make a bit of sense, but that's just it it doesn't make a bit of sense. I suppose he's trying to convey the message of living every week like you watch Shark Week on the Discovery Channel, but one can't really tell. I understand the writers of the show wrote this line to achieve laughter, but usually comedy is an exaggerated form of real life. I know a normal person wouldn't say something so vague to this extreme, but I know a lot of people who aren't too far off the mark.

Question 1

I hear subjective claims all the time. I was recently talking to a friend about music. He asked me if I liked an album as much as he did. The album is called the Minstrel Show by Little Brother. He said it was one of the best albums of all time and i agreed with him, because I felt like it was the best albums of all time. I said it was in my top 3 albums of all time. Though I believe it's a very good album it's subjective from person to person. Another person could quite possibly hate it.

An objective claim I recently heard was I that San Jose State has 30,000 students. I don't know if this is accurate or totally true, but it seems like it makes sense. It's a claim that we can easily verify as true or false. I also heard at the bookstore that San Jose State graduates 6,000 students every year. That is also an objective claim because it's easily verifiable.

P.S.
I did a little math in my head it takes 30,000 students 5 years to graduate.

GOB

Intro

Hey this is my first blog post for Comm 41. My alias is Gob. I hope to learn better ways to do normal things from this class. I've always thought of myself as a good communicator, but my skills are far from perfect. I've never used an online class before but my friends assure me it's great.

Theres not much else to me. I enjoy making hip hop music, and DJing. I spend a lot of time (way too much) watching sitcoms on netflix, but summer is over now and hopefully this blog can be a new hobby.