The Five Strategies

The concept I thought was interesting would be negotiating effectively in the small group text.  Negotiating is an daily thing everyone does in their life when encountering anyone.  There are five strategies for negotiating;

1.    To listen to the opposing side and listen to the reasons and understanding before you can argue your side first.  So this means that you will find out there reasons and allowing you to understand the circumstances.

2.    You must be introspective. This means you shouldn’t put words in people’s mouth and expect that they are willing to for instance covering a shift at work or doing a part in a project.  You cannot just assume they will be okay with it, just let then speak first before assuming.

3.    Ask fact-finding questions and try to uncover the who, what, when, where, and why of the opposing sides premises. This means that you should know the extent at which they are negotiating as well, so that when your negotiating your side it would be more successful.

4.    You must communicate with an open mind. This means you must be considerate of the other opposing sides argument otherwise the negotiating would come to a stop and would not continue. You would lose the negotiation if you do not take everything into consideration.

5.    You must keep your emotions in check. This means try to not show your anger, sadness, and frustration because this would affect the way you speak and this would just cause strain in the situation causing the opposing side to withdraw from the negotiation.

These five strategies are necessary in negotiating effectively. 

Strawman

The content Fallacy I have decided to discuss is the “strawman.” It is defined as misrepresenting or putting words in the other person’s mouth, which is stated in Epstein.  It is an informal fallacies that misrepresents the other opposing sides argument or statement. An example would be: Person 1: “we should provide more help for the poor and give them a better opportunity to make their life better” Person 2: “So you think we should just hand it to them and not have then work for it. There is no way this would work because this would just show people they do not need to try to make a better life and cause more poverty.” This would be an example of “strawman” because the opponent took person 1’s statement and twisted the words so that it becomes something different then what the person really was stating. This is called putting words in person 1’s mouth.

Complex Argument

Exercise 1: My neighbor should be forced to get rid of all the cars in his yard 1. People do not like living next door to such a mess 2. He never drives any of them 3. They all look old and beat up and leak oil all over the place 4. It is bad for the neighborhood, and it will decrease property value 5.

Argument? (yes or no) Yes

Conclusion: The neighbor should be forced to get rid of all of his cars.

Additional Premises needed? If this neighbor has old cars that do not work, leak oil, beat up, and does not use the cars; and also is messy causing a decrease in property value, then the neighbor should be forced to get rid of his cars.

Identify any subargument: 2 and 4 support 5, while 2, 3, 4, and 5 are independent and supports 1

Good Argument? I believe this is not a good argument

I do agree that 2, 3, 4, and 5 are independent and you can say that they support 1, but I do not think that it leads to a conclusion. Because being messy, not driving his car, or look old, how would that decrease the property value and how would they know that the people do not like living next door to a mess. They might not mind the mess at all.  This is a bad argument because it is his property and the mess is in his yard, it is his property and he can do with it how he pleases.

I found this exercise helpful because it took a lot of thinking to figure out the conclusion and premises.  It helped break down the statement and allowed me to analyze it more thoroughly, which is helpful in learning the materiel

Leadership and Decision Making in Groups and Teams

A concept that I thought was interesting is from the Group communication text it talked about the different kinds of leadership. Defined in the text leadership is stated to be directing and influencing someone. Like the president of the United States, in which his job is to guide us and lead us, but a leader can be anyone who has the courage to lead someone or someone.  The different kinds of leadership defined in the text are authoritarian, consultative, laisse-faire, and participative. Authoritarian and consultative are completely opposite leaderships, Authoritarian is when the “leader” control and makes the decision, while consultative is when everyone is able to contribute there ideas and opinion on a subject at hand. It is similar to Participative because it means working together as a group to accomplish something.  The least effective leadership would have to be Laisse-Faire because there is no dedication to the other group members and there is no great communication between each person. 

Good Argument

            A good argument is where the premises are plausible, the premises are more plausible then the conclusion, and the argument is valid or strong.  An example would be that:

All snakes are reptile,

All reptiles are cold-blooded,

Therefore all snakes are cold blooded.

The premises of the argument are true and the conclusion is true as well making this a valid argument.  There is no way that the premises and conclusion to be false. These premises are plausible because of snakes were reptiles and reptiles are cold blooded then snakes must be cold blooded too. There is no reason for this not to be plausible. The conclusion can be false if there was a new species of snakes that are warm blooded but it is not likely that would happen because snakes must be cold blooded in order to survive in their surroundings. So all snakes have to be cold blooded.

Valid Vs. Strong Argument

A strong argument is when good evidence is used to support the claim therefore making the premises true. For example I recently discovered that I was allergic to nuts. I began getting rashes on my arms and face and could not figure it out for the longest time, but one day when I was eating sushi I got the rash again. I was wondering why I kept getting it till I figured that every time I had gotten the rash I had peanuts or any type of nuts with it. So because of the evidence I was able to declare that I was allergic to nuts.

            A valid argument is when the premises are true and the conclusion is true as well. An example of this would be when my friend and I were watching the Superbowl he stated that since some of the Steeler’s players are injured and must be taken out that they will lose. In the end they lost.  So this makes it a valid argument because both the premises and conclusion is true.

Epstein Concept

A concept from Epstein that I thought was interesting and am going into greater details would be vague sentences. Vague sentences can range from numerous things. Giving a vague sentence is simple, but it gives no vivid description of the subject, person, or place.  A vague sentence can go several ways in meaning like the type of sandwich one wants, the looks of a person, and many more.  Without making something clear to the point where the recipient cannot understand is a vague sentence. A vague sentence is extremely hard for many people to agree upon without any type of other description. An example of a vague sentence would be “it’s a nice day out” or “look at that man.” Both sentences are extremely vague by saying it’s a nice day out does not mean much without saying why it’s a nice day out like the sky is blue, birds are chirping, and the sun is big and round in the sky. By saying look at the man, this raises many questions, what does the man look like or where is he located specifically. 

Vague Sentence

A vague sentence that i have heard recently was during work. I work at Hot Dog on a Stick so we have two kinds of hot dogs, one on a bun and one on a stick. Are menu is simple and easily read and understandable, but this lady came up to me while i was working one day and asked " You guys sell dogs here right?" and all i could say was "yes ma'am." I thought it was odd because the menu is right in front and are store is called Hot Dog on a Stick, so of course we sell hot dogs! She then asked " Can i have a hot dog and a lemonade." This question was vague because we have two types of hot dogs and several choices of lemonade. She did not give a vivid enough answer to what type of hot go, what size lemonade, or what flavor lemonade.  This made her sentence vague because she was unable to give a good description or a more vivid description of what she wanted.

Discussion Post 1

A Subjective Claim can be true or false because it is solely based on personally opinion; it could not be proven false or true by any means. While a objective claim is quite similar to a subjective claim, but an objective claim can be proven false or true in anyway what so ever.  Therefore an objective claim is not based on one’s own opinion but if it could be proven or not.

            An example of a subjective claim is when I was entering a hair salon to get my haircut, I could not help but notice a lady that just had her hair colored and cut into a bob. I felt as if it was the worst haircut that I have ever seen, but for some reason she loved it and raved about it until she left.  This is a subjective claim because there is no way to prove if your hair is terrible or not because it was my own opinion. Some people may think it looks great and other might think that it looks terrible there is no way to prove if it’s false or true.

            An example of a objective claim is like when my friend stated that her room was far smaller then mine. This could be true or false but this is an objective claim because we were able to measure our rooms and find the area and compare our results. It was easily proven that her room was the exact same size as mine.  We were able to prove the claim, so it was not just an opinion but fact.