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.  

inductive reasoning

The reasoning that was most difficult for me to understand would have to be inductive reasoning.  So I did some research online to understand it more and this is what I learned. Inductive reasoning is a more broader generalizations and theories.  It is a major kind of reasoning process in which a conclusion is drawn from particular cases. Here is always a possibility that the premises may be true while the conclusion may be false, since there is not a necessarily a logical relationship between premises and conclusion.  It is mainly uses when generating hypothesis.

 An example would be Look at how those people are behaving. They look angry. This is a huge generalization because they might not be mad but who knows unless you ask.  Another good example of inductive reasoning is all swans are white, so the next swan we will see if white. This is an inductive reasoning because not all swans are white, the conclusion is false. This is a general fact.

REASONING

The types of reasoning listing in the instructor's blog are Reasoning by Analogy, Sign Reasoning, Causal Reasoning, Reasoning by Criteria, Reasoning by Example, Inductive Reasoning, and Deductive Reasoning.   Examples of each reasoning are:

-Reasoning by Analogy: Having everything thing you desire like clothes, money, toys, game, and ect. Does not always make a person happy. By analogy wealth does not make us any happier.

-Sign reasoning: There is bird poop on my windshield; a bird must have flew by my car.

-Casual Reasoning: My legs are extremely sore, it must have been from going to the gym yesterday

-Reasoning by Criteria: Your friend probably is going to need new clothes for that date, so let’s just get her that hot pink skirt.

-Reasoning by Example: You should not straighten your hair so much if you want to grow it out healthy. My mom use to straighten her hair ever day till she stopped and her hair has never looked better.

-Inductive Reasoning: Since Cyndi is an amazing person, her sister must be amazing as well.

Deductive Reasoning: All bachelor’s are single, Matt is single, therefore he is a bachelor. 

interesting concept

A concept that I have not yet to discuss in my blog would be the appeal to pity. I have already discussed appeal to fear, so I am going to talk about appeal to pity, which seems to me to be the opposite of one another.  An appeal to pity is used quite often in organizations, like the American Red Cross. They use images and sad commentary to provoke us to help.  Using the appeal to pity is not just about giving because you feel bad, but that your giving because you have the ability to help  so you should send donations.  An example of appeal to pity would be: “help Haiti the children are the ones that are suffering the most with no home or family. With a couple dollars months you can help this child survive.” When seeing this statement it makes you feel that I have all these nice things and should give back  to the those less fortunate.

Appeal to fear exercise #3

An advertisement that uses an appeal to fear that I thought was interesting would be the stop smoking ads, which are used extensively now to prevent people from smoking cigarettes.

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This ad states that smoking kills so why bother starting. It also states that cigarettes cause strokes, very addictive, raises blood pressure, reduces stamina, and more. All of these things frighten people beyond repair. This is a good argument because it is the premises and conclusions are true. When you smoke cigarettes it can cause all these bad effects. Thinking about how it can kill you makes you not even want to start smoking or quit smoking.  This ad appeals to fear because it gives all these bad side effects of smoking, making it less desirable and puts a sense of fear to whoever uses it.  This appeals to others fear because no one wants to have any bad effects from smoking and wish not to die. 

Appeal to the Emotion

Appeal to emotion is just a premise that says, roughly, you should believe or do something because you feel a certain way, stated in the Epstein text.  Everyone has emotions and it plays a crucial part on all of our lives.  There are several different types if appeal to emotional appeal to pity, appeal to fear and appeal to spite.  The type of emotional appeal that strikes me the most is the appeal to fear.  Appeal to fear is used a lot to strike in a fear in someone to do something. For example use a condom or you will end up being pregnant and lose your figure. This appeals to the fact that you don’t want to be pregnant or lose your figure and that scares you therefore you will always use a condom.  This type of appeal is used most by politicians and advertisers to pursue you to vote for them or buy whatever it is they are selling.