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.