appeal to emotion.

Appeal to Emotion is a statement in which you believe in because it makes you feel like a certain emotion. Although that statement may not be true, your emotions make you believe it is. If you read a lot of my posts, they’re based off of television shows. TV is one of the prime examples of using appeal to emotion.

The type of appeal to emotion that struck me the most was the one where you find that fear is a good thing. I see fear used in advertisements all the time, which is why it strikes me as interesting. I won’t actually use an advertisement, but I’ll use a scene in a musical I watched.

In the Youtube musical A Very Potter Sequel, there’s a scene where Harry, Ron, Draco, and Hermione are faced with Peter Pettigrew, the traitor best friend of Harry’s dad. Just when they thought they killed him, he comes back to life and tries to kill the kids. Just then, Ron pulls out his signature prop in the show: Red Vines. He asks Peter, “Wouldn’t killing us would tasted better with a Red Vine?” Peter agrees and tries to grab the Red Vine from Ron, but then Ron does the “Stupefy” spell on him with the Red Vine, and Peter goes flying across the stage. When this happens, Ron faces the audience and says, “Red Vines: What the hell CAN’T they do?”

Despite this confusing notion of Red Vines being a universal tool that could help ward off killers, this is an example of appeal to emotion when it comes to fear being a good thing. Harry, Ron, Draco, and Hermione were stuck in a situation between life and death. Ron pulls out his pack of Red Vines and somehow kills off Peter Pettigrew. If it weren’t for those Red Vines, they would have been killed.

Red Vines can't float on water. That's one thing that it can't do. If you're wondering. ;P

statistics.

I found the “Precise generalities” section of chapter 8 fairly interesting. It was basically stating that it’s not always true when someone uses statistics in a claim. Like stating, “85% of all statistics are made up on the spot.” How are we suppose to trust this? We unconsciously use numbers to describe situations because sometimes it’s just easier to do so. Even though it may be easier, it’s most definitely not strong at an argument’s standpoint. Although, if the statistic is very high or very low, the book states that we can assume it’s a strong argument.

I’ll talk about a general thing I see on campus everyday. If I say “2 out of the thousands of students at SJSU have a bag that’s NOT Jansport, Northface, or Chrome.” You’d be able to trust this statistic because it’s a significantly low statistic, and assuming you’re not as observant as I am and know nothing more about the subject, this statistic could be taken seriously as a real generality.

I have no idea how I know about these things. I guess I’m naturally just a keen observer when it comes to brands in general. Haha Maybe I'm just isolated to one side of the campus, and it so happens that the side of the campus I'm always on, people have those brand of bags. Whatever. x]

second assignment > first assignment

I found the second assignment a bit more useful than the first. It was definitely a lot more in depth, and it felt like I could relate to it a lot more than the first one. Specifically speaking, I felt that identifying fallacies and appeal to emotion fallacies was the most useful. I never really got the hang of all the fallacies, but after this one I understood the concept of a few of the fallacies even more. Since the organization that my group chose was PETA, it was a given that there would be fallacies contained in their information. In fact, it even introduced me to fallacies that weren’t even described in the book. (Thank goodness for Google, right?)

The second assignment also brightened my horizons on whether or not I should trust social organizations I hear about everyday. Even if some celebrities endorse certain organizations, like PETA, and I so happen to adore the living daylights out of the certain celebrity (ie Lea Michele supporting PETA), I can’t fully trust the organization unless there is some reason to believe their statements and claims are false. Also, if I can’t really judge whether or not to trust an organization’s claims, I can always suspend judgment about it until I get more information about it.

general claims: "all"

One concept that I found useful in Ch. 8 were the certain words that could be used in general claims. In particular, I could relate to using the word “all” the most.

In the book, it states that “all” means, “every single one, no exceptions” Although using this word can lead to contradictions in statements.

“All Filipinos are talented. You’re Filipino. So you must be talented.”

This is a statement I hear all the time, especially from all my non-Filipino friends. When I tell them I play guitar, ukulele, piano, and can sing, they automatically stereotype every Filipino to be talented. It may be valid, but it’s not strong. Not every Filipino knows how to do these things. It just so happens that I’m Filipino, and I just grew up in a musical family. (And I learned how to do these things because I was bored and needed something to do.) In other words, “all” in this statement is extremely ambiguous.

If you were to use the word “all” in a claim, it has to be specific.

Sitting in my Environmental Studies classroom, waiting for my class to start, I see a sign on the white board stating, “…ALL windows are closed and latched.”

This is how the word “all” should be used in a claim. It’s specific and cannot be ambiguous in any sense. All the windows in this particular classroom are closed and latched at the moment, if you’re wondering.

;P

false dilemma.

I found that the section about “False dilemmas” in Chapter 6 was very interesting. We indirectly use false dilemmas all the time, especially when it comes to ending an argument. In the book, it states that a false dilemma is “a bad use of excluding possibilities where the “or” claim is false or implausible.”

Usually, these claims are taken to the extreme in order for people to choose “which side.” As I’m typing this, I’m watching the newest episode of Glee. It got to a scene where Kurt, who is running for class president, runs into Brittany, the dumb blonde cheerleader who is running against him. She says to Rachel, who is with Kurt at the time, something along the lines of “You either vote for this guy, who will plummet the school down even more, or you can vote for me, who can run this school even better.” Brittany is basically making Rachel choose between Kurt or her in this presidential race of their high school.

Yay weekend!!! :D

counterarguments.

One thing I learned in this chapter was about refuting arguments. In other words, proving that an argument is WRONG. One way you can prove that an argument is wrong is doing it directly. Every time I’m with my dad, he always tells me that my favorite show of all time, Glee, is horrible. He tells me a bunch of things like, the actors are too old to portray high school students (1), they use too controversial story lines that kids should not watch (2), and their music sounds like it’s been overdosed on auto-tune (3). Therefore, he thinks I shouldn’t watch it. I can’t let this pass because I HAVE to defend my favorite show.

The book states that there are 3 ways to prove an argument wrong in the direct way:

“Show that at least one of the premises is dubious.”

“Show that the argument isn’t valid or strong”

“Show that the conclusion is false”

I can say that the first premise is dubious because his views of how high school students look is different from my point of view and perspective. The argument isn’t strong or valid. The conclusion could be made false because of the ambiguity of the premises.

You can also prove and argument wrong indirectly. This is when you “can’t point to any one premise that is false or dubious, but you know there’s something wrong with the premises.”

Referring to the example above, my dad is saying that I shouldn’t watch the show Glee because of the premises he mentioned. He complains the cast is too old to portray high school students. There are a lot of other shows I can name that have an even older looking cast portraying high school students. Plus, how is it that the creators and casting directors will be able to find people who are cooperative enough to work 14 hours shifts every single week? Certainly not any 15-18 year old, that’s for sure. In that age group, people are bound to complain of tiredness. On top of that, they would still need to complete some sort of high school education. If they have to do that, their recording schedules will be completely messed up. Therefore, they use OLDER actors and actresses to portray high school students because this would stir away from these problems.

All in all, this premise is a pretty absurd way of arguing that a show shouldn’t be watched. Sorry, I just love Glee a lot. :3

compound claims.

Compound claims are talked about in this chapter. There are certain words that can make a certain statement a “compound claim.” For example, “I will write my blog entries at school OR I will do it at home.” There are two statements connected by the word, “or” which makes them a compound claim.

Using the word, “or” is just one way you can form a compound claim. There are also other kinds of claims discussed in this chapter. The second type of claim discussed in this chapter is, “contradictory of a claim.” It states that it has “the opposite truth-value in all possible circumstances.”

“Either the Doctor goes back to save Amy, or Amy will be stuck in a parallel dimension forever and ever, and never see the Doctor again.”

The “negation” for this would be, “The Doctor won’t go back to save Amy, and Amy will see the Doctor again.”

For every statement in the claim, there will always be a “negation.”

(This is such an open-ended question this week, isn’t it?) It’s alright, I like it. :)