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.