tracing the cause.

Tracing the cause of an argument backwards seemed interesting. It’s basically all about back tracking your steps in order to figure out what caused the result to occur. But it gets to a point where the possibilities of the cause are endless. The reason why is because “as we trace the cause back further it becomes too hard to fill in the normal conditions.”

The show Doctor Who does this all the time. You have to constantly watch and re-watch episodes in order to figure out what is really going on, or else you’ll be left confused by what the current episode is about. It’s obnoxious and it gets really confusing because what the writers of the show do is that they’d play a current episode from the current season, and then it will somehow relate to another episode that was done 3-4 seasons ago. However, it is really fun to do. It shows how much you pay attention to the series and how creative you are. You’re constantly asking yourself, “What if what this character did had something to do with what happened in that one episode?” Overall, it definitely does keep me thinking of all the possibilities. Sometimes I do go overboard on theories and possibilities, and now I know that it’ll become too difficult to be a normal cause and effect argument.

Someone tell this to the writers of Doctor Who! They’re basically making their viewers think harder than they normally should. Oh well. I’d watch the show either way. X]

mission critical

The Mission Critical website was also a very helpful source because it had pretty much everything that was covered so far. I specifically paid attention to the “Emotional Appeals” section, since it grabbed my attention the most. (It’s probably my favorite section we learned about so far.) I liked how the website pretty much used the same example for each emotional appeal and made it work for each one. I laughed so hard when I read the example that said, “Gosh, officer, but if you even think about giving me a ticket, I’m going to shoot you with this gun.”

For sure, these examples can’t really relate to everyone, but they are definitely humorous to an extent. I certainly enjoyed reading through all the different examples.

Comparing this to the textbook, I have to give it to the textbook when it comes to explanations. I’m not sure if it’s because all the information seems to be squished on the website, but the book’s simplistic definitions were enough for me to understand THIS particular concept. Although I’m not saying the website is less effective. The website can be another outside source in learning about all the different concepts.

Guess it just goes to show you that there isn’t one source for everything. You have to do some hardcore digging to learn the concepts and all that jazz.

cause/effect website.

This website definitely furthered my understanding of causal arguments. It goes into a lot of detail on what it is and provides examples of it being played out. I specifically really liked the exercises that were provided after reading about cause/effect. It was easy to understand. Can I say it was a lot easier to understand the textbook? Because I felt that the book was being a bit too casual with the subject. It’s nice that the textbook wants to connect with us as its readers, but only giving the minimal in formation isn’t helpful at all. It would be surprising if I could fully understand the concept on the first reading. In reality, it takes me at least two times of reading through the book PLUS getting information from another source to help me understand the given concept.

The website, on the other hand, gave more explanation and made it easy to understand. It only took me one time to read through to understand. Even though it wasn’t really being casual with its approach, the main point is that I could understand the concept. Totally recommend this website to use! :)

judging analogies

Judging analogies is important. We can’t just say that one side of an argument is better than they other isn’t really helpful. The analogy should be balanced on both sides, rather than being leaned towards one.

Actors and actresses are allowed to have tattoos while they work on television and movies. People with tattoos should be allowed to work as doctors and nurses without being judged.

First off, how is acting on a television show or movie even similar to being a doctor or a nurse?

The integrity of being a doctor or a nurse is far more important than expressing what’s on your body. The profession isn’t a fashion show. Plus, you wouldn’t want to scare patients with your inked out body. Seriously, if you’re dealing with a scared patient, you don’t want them to be even more scared.

Actors and actresses are allowed tattoos while on television shows and movies because they have make-up artists to cover them up every single day when they film something.

The integrity of the actor/actress is mostly based on looks too.

If they were to come in contact with other people, those people wouldn’t be scared of the tattoos. Rather, they would admire them for expressing their feelings through their tattoos, and would probably convince those people to get one too.

Therefore, since doctors and nurses come in everyday contact with people, they shouldn’t be tattooed.

difficulty in reasoning.

Most difficult? I’d say reasoning by analogy was the most difficult for me to understand. I had to read through the definition of it on Wiki a few times and read other peoples’ entries on it to get the gist of it. What I learned from reading other peoples’ entries on this is that it’s comparing two things and both of them have to have the same conclusion in order for it to be considered an analogy. I think it was difficult to understand because I couldn’t really find a straightforward example on it. Not only that, but I couldn’t really think of one to write about at the time. After one night of letting all the info about it sink in, I think I got it down.

One example I came up with to help me understand this concept was this:

Music is said to be an amazing stress reliever. If all students learn how to play an instrument, they’ll be less stressed out about whatever is in their lives.

Music is a stress reliever. Students are stressed beyond their limits. You put these two things together and you have a positive outcome.

reasoning.

Reason by analogy: comparison becomes this when it’s part of an argument. One side of the comparison we draw a conclusion, and the other side should conclude the same.

• The arts decrease the chances of kids dropping out of high school. Therefore, the arts should be implemented in high schools and not dropped.

Sign Reasoning: two things are closely related to each other, the presence or absence of one means the presence/absence of the other

• Where there’s facebook, there’s status updates. (c’mon, we’ve ALL updated our status at least once on that darn site.)

Causal Reasoning: we have good reason to believe that events of one sort are systematically related to events of some other sort.

• I procrastinate studying for an exam. I take the exam, and find the questions to be extremely difficult. I get the results back and get a bad grade.

Reasoning by criteria: define criteria on what is being judged, then identifying the best decision out of the bunch.

• Playing Angry Birds on your phone all day will make you extremely distracted. Delete that app and you’ll be less distracted.

Reasoning by example: use of examples in an argument

• "You wanna be a starship ranger? Discover worlds far and near? Who gives a care about starship rangers! The greatest life to live is found right here!" -"I Wanna Be (A Starship Ranger)" by Darren Criss
  

(These are song lyrics, by the way. The lyrics are basically a metaphor for asking why should you go out and be something that is out of the ordinary when you can live your life just fine being ordinary? Lovely song, by the way. Check it out if you're interested.)

Inductive: using other observations that were made previously to reason.

• Steppie’s Etsy shop always delivers their products quickly. I bought from them before, so buying from them again, I’ll get the same result.

Deductive: conclusion of an argument has to be true if the premises are true

• All pop songs have the same 4 chords: C, G, Am, F. “Last Friday Night (TGIF)” by Katy Perry is considered a pop song. Therefore, this song must have those chords in it.

(Yeah, this song DOES have these chords. Pretty fun song to play on the guitar and sing.)

fear.

Appeal to fear, in the general definition, was really interesting. Like I said in Monday’s post, it’s used in television all the time. If you can strike fear into someone’s heart, it’s pretty easy to convince them to do something.

Like all my references, I’ll talk about Glee. In the episode entitled, “Asian F,” Mike gets an A- on a chemistry exam. His father takes him to the principal’s office and raises his concern about his son’s drastic grade drop. His dad lists a number of things that could have contributed to this. From the possibility of doing drugs (which ISN’T true) to having a girlfriend, he dubbed these all distractions. He then forces Mike to quit the Glee club because he thinks it’s a waste of his time. Of course, Mike didn’t want to quit the club, so he compromises with his dad that he’ll do better, and that he’ll even hire a tutor to help him with his chemistry.

Mike’s dad used appeal to fear in the hope that his son will do better in this class. I actually have no idea if he DOES do better, but I think he does. In the TV world, anything is possible. When I think of Mike’s character, I think he does do better somehow in this class.

polish your apples.

Apple Polishing is making something look better than it really is. Photojojo.com uses apple polishing when advertising the products that they sell on their site. Even though I absolutely love what they sell, I can’t help but agree that they use this type of fallacious argument to sell their products.

There was this one time where I bought “The Strap Buddy” off their website. The advertisement appeared to make it look like this shiny device that you attach to your camera and it would make it easier to carry around your neck, and it would comfortably sit at your hip. When I got it in the mail, it was just this dinky little piece of metal that wasn’t shiny at all. Also, when I put it on my camera that I use for shooting concerts, it just made my strap twice as tangled than it used to. On top of that, it was very uncomfortable when I put my camera by my hip.

I do not believe that this is a good argument. Its description on the website glorifies this little device and has no sort of negativity towards purchasing it. Although it does have an unstated premise that the buyer may want to have a comfier way to carry their cameras, rather than having it around their neck all the time. From my experience, I believed in this premise. I just felt that after buying it, that is wasn’t all that was meant to be.