WEEK 12, POST 1

Reasoning by analogy is when someone compares the argument in question to a similar argument. An example of this would be, the glee club is allowed to sell candy for fundraising so the christian club should be allowed to sell candy too. 

Sign reasoning claims that two or more things are so closely related that the presence or absence of one indicates the presence or absence of the other. When there is thunder, there is lightning. Although lightning can exist without any thunder.

Casual reasoning is when one even is the cause of the even after. An example would be if you take out the pan without oven mitts, you will burn yourself. The act of you not using mitts causes your burn.

Reasoning by criteria is defining by a certain guideline, if you will, instead of just getting straight to the point. An example is, being successful and getting a good job requires you to do certain things versus saying, you need to go to school in order to be successful. 

Reasoning by example is using example in an argument. You should tint your windows, all my friends tint their windows no one can look into their car.

Inductive reasoning is making a judgement based on a previous observation but the truth of the premise does not guarantee the truth of conclusion. The paper boy delivers the paper at 5AM. He will deliver the paper at 5AM tomorrow.

Deductive reasoning is true only when the conclusion and premise is true. All electrical equipment requires electricity. My lamp is electric. My lamp requires electricity. 

WEEK 11, POST 3

Undiscussed Concept

An interesting concept I read about was appeal to pity. After reading the short description, this concept is pretty sneaky and underhanded. It puts your audience in a position where they feel awkward or bad if they do not comply or agree with the premise. The appeal to pity is also manipulative like the appeal to fear. If you let your emotions get the best of you and are very gullible, then you are the best candidate for this appeal. Appeal to pity is great to use when you know your audience can easily relate to the issue. For example, if someone was giving a speech about domestic violence to a group of women who have experienced domestic violence, then they would be easily swayed if the arguer said that everyone should know self-defense to protect themselves. Along with the speech, the arguer showed pictures of battered women with black eyes and x-rays of dislocated joints and broken body parts. These instruments aid into the appeal to pity because the women relate and feel the same exact pain they see in the pictures. Assume in a hypothetical situation, these women were defenseless and did not know how to fight. After going through their traumatizing experience, they would want to know self-defense to have a piece of mind. 

WEEK 11, POST 2

http://www.stanford.edu/class/linguist34/advertisements/fear%20ads/pages/flonase_jpg.htm

The advertisement attached is about allergy medication. At the top of the ad, there are several pictures of a woman showing various allergy symptoms. The woman looks very discomforted and the fact that the pictures are in a grayscale make it more dramatic. There are words such as “nasal congestion, itchy nose, and sneezing” to reiterate the message conveyed in the pictures. 

“When you’ve had it with multi-symptoms nasal allergies, all it takes is Flonase for multi-symptom relief” is underneath the pictures. Directly underneath is the same woman, in color, looking very happy and allergy free. The unstated argument is that if you take Flonase, you will no longer have allergies making you a happier rather than when you were having allergies. If you don’t take the medication, you will look like her at the top of the advertisement. This is a good argument that appeals to your emotions and more specifically, fear. 

WEEK 11, POST 1

In chapter 10, Too Much Emotional the idea of appeal to emotion is well, pretty self explanatory. It appeals to.. you know.. your emotions. I feel like the appeal to emotion is one of the strongest appeals you can use in an arguments. Everyone has an opinion on everything whether it is good or bad or maybe with no opinion at all. 

The appeal to fear strikes me the most. It was used a lot growing up in a strict family.
“You should finish your food before you get the slipper!” (If you haven’t figured it out already, I’m Filipino. And don’t worry, I turned out fine. haha) My dad’s argument heavily persuaded me to finish my food because if I didn’t, I would be punished. Appeal to fear isn’t really a good way to persuade your audience though. You would be able to persuade them but you don’t know what the repercussions are. Your audience might not like your or trust you anymore. 

WEEK 9, POST 3

In general,  I think understanding the concept of deciding whether or not an argument was good or not. I think part of the reason I do not understand the concept is that there is so much “repetition”. False premise, false conclusion. False premise, true conclusion. Everything just starts to look the same, if you ask me. Then there’s plausibility of the claim which basically if the claim is believable or not. If someone came up to you and told you that the sky is yellow, the you would come to the conclusion that the premise presented is not plausible and then false. The there is the conclusion follows from the premise. There has to be a connection between the two. You cannot just say that Nancy is a girl. She is a bitch. There is no real connection. If you say Nancy girl. She says a lot of mean things about people. She is a bitch. Then there is a connection between the premises and the conclusion. 

http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/vocab/validity.html

WEEK 9, POST 2

I think Chapter 8 that had to deal with general claims in general was quite confusing. It made sense when I read other people’s blogs about valid and invalid forms it makes sense, but when I try to explain it, it is really hard to. It’s really hard to explain things in words sometimes and they are better explained visually, like diagrams. 

General claims and their contradictions are very common. Words such as all, always, a lot, most, never are used to make your claim stronger when it really isn’t. An example of this would be I say that I’m always tired. Which really isn’t true because I’m not always tired. 

Vague generalities are similar to general claims. They talk about all or part of a collection without specifying a precise number (Epstein 171). An example would be me saying all guys are douchebags. This argument is invalid because all guys aren’t douchebags. 

WEEK 9, POST 1

For our second paper, Critical Thinking and Social Organizations was a bit more difficult than the first. Working on the paper in general as a group, made my group realize that we couldn’t just talk online like we did last time. It was really hard to communicate and it was difficult to discuss in-depth topics via email. As a group, we decided that meeting in person would be better so we could get feedback from each other right away. That’s kind of why I feel like we have group communications book. But getting into the assignment part, it really made us think about what we learned in the book. Instead of regurgitating information, we had to apply the concepts and find the answers on the website instead of the bolded words in the book. I liked the the assignment asked what advertising techniques used to promote the chosen organization.