Further Discussion

This coarse would packed full of information that we have gone over, but the one thing I felt that should be further discussed would be misleading claims with numbers. When doing test 4 this came up and I was like “huh,” I was not sure what it meant at first, but good thing its open book, so I looked it up and it made more sense to me. Numbers can be in fact misleading when dealing with claims because when numbers are used it looks exact, but a vague or meaningless comparison gets no better by having a few numbers in it. So it does not matter if there are numbers. It may look exact and accurate, but do not let that deceive you because it is not always true. Numbers do not mean it is exact, they can be extremely misleading.  Having numbers in a claim may make it seem important, but when looking deep into the claim itself, you can see that that is not always true.

Most and Least Favorite

My most favorite thing about the class would have to be the group work. I felt that this was nice to actually see other classmates and interact with them. This was a great way to use our new communicating skills and to communicate with one another on what we have learned. However I wished that there would have been different groups each time because it would have been nice to meet most of the class as well.  My least favorite thing about this class would be the blogging. Don’t get me wrong blogging was extremely useful, but I wish that there was not time limit between each blog because this semester I had a really tight schedule and it was hard to keep them 12 hours apart, but I managed to do so. Also the one thing that was not my favorite would be the timed test because I felt rushed when I am taking it. It would be awesome to have had more time on the test. But overall I enjoyed this class a lot.

What i learned

This semester have been packed with tons of concepts that where helpful and knowledgeable. The one concept that stuck with me through the whole semester would have to be claims and arguments.  In everyone’s everyday life they use claims and arguments, but not all the claims or arguments will be strong or valid. Why in fact some are extremely misleading and to vague.  To determine whether or not the argument or claim is strong or valid, the fallacies and the conclusion must be determined. I feel that I use this concept in my everyday life when it comes to debating and mainly speaking at all.  Everyone uses this concept whether or not they realize it or not. This is the most commonly used method when communicating with others.  This concept will be the one thing everyone will use even after this course because in order to speak your mind and disagree with someone, then a claim or argument must be said.

cause and effect concept

The concept I thought was the most interesting would have to be the cause and effect in the Epstein text.  To determine a cause and effect first you need to be able to determine the cause of the problem. Like for example: I trip on a bark and broke my leg. The cause would be tripping on a bark and the effect would then be a broken leg.  To determine that this is a clam we must find the relationship between them. Because I tripped on the bark it, I broke my leg. If I did not trip I would not have broken my leg.  The relationship is that the premises and conclusion are valid and strong arguments.  Cause and effect is used quite often in today’s worlds. When something happens there is always something affected. This is a great concept to learn when writing any type of argument or claim because there will always be a cause and effect.

Mission Critical Website

            What was useful in the Mission Critical website was it gave explanations for parts of an argument like statements, vagueness and ambiguity, inference identifiers, and more.  It even gave details about arguments that we have discussed in our last participation. The explanations are extremely easy to understand.  It also showed the different types of arguments and provided explanations when clicked on.  There were also explanations on fallacies.  The explanation I liked the most would be the appeal to pity. They called it a sob story, which made it easy to understand. It also stated that it is used to replace logic, rather than to support it.  The example they gave was actually easy to relate to: ‘gosh, officer, I know I made an illegal left turn, but please don’t give me a ticket. I’ve had a hard day and I was just trying to get over to my aged mother’s hospital room and spend few minutes with her before I report to my second full0time minimum-wage job, which I have to have as the sole support of the seventeen members of the family.” This is funny because when ever I get pulled over I try to get a sense of pity from the officer to not give me a ticket.  I think everyone does that hoping to get away without a ticket.

Cause and Effect Webiste

            What I found useful in the cause and effect website is that inductive reasoning is based on observation or experience.  It gives us an example that would make sense. The argument that the lawyers could make to help there clients besides the truck driver would be as stated in the website “Normally the bicyclist would have continued in the bike lane, but in this instance h swerved into the lane of traffic. The only significant difference between normally and in this case is the presence of the illegally parked truck. Therefore, the truck caused the bicyclist to swerve. “  This is a inductive reasoning because it shows observations that were made during the accident.  Then the website gives us two rules that are useful when dealing with causation. As stated in the website:

1.The cause must precede the event in time. On one hand, arguments that have the effect before the cause are examples of the relatively rare fallacy of reverse causation.

2. Even a strong correlation is insufficient to prove causation. Other possible explanations for such a strong correlation include coincidence, reversed causation, and missing something that is the cause of both the original “cause” and its purported effect.

Judging Analogies

The one thing I thought was interesting in this weeks reading would be judging analogies. The book states seven steps in evaluating analogy and they are

            1. Is this an argument? What is the conclusion?

            2. What is the comparison?

            3. What are the premises? (one both sides of the comparison)

            4. What are the similarities?

            5. Can we state the similarities as premises and find a general principle that

            covers the two sides.

            6. Does the general principle really apple to both sides? Do the differences   

            matter?

            7. Is the argument strong or valid? Is it good?

An analogy stated in the Epstein text is “a comparison becomes reasoning by analogy when it is part of an argument: on one side of the comparison we draw a conclusion, so on the other side we should conclude the same.”  Writing an analogy we must look over the important general principle that applies to what we are comparing to. And then you must look for any differences to see if one side of the argument is not applied.