Week 8: Post #3

When I came across, "The cause makes a difference" in Chapter 15, I found it interesting and fun to read.  An example the book gave was, "Dr. E confidently claims that the wind chime causes the elephants to stay away."  Dr. E then wrote in his diary, "There's a perfect correlation here:  Wind chime up on Tuesday, no elephants."  The problem with this example is that, how accurate is it a fact that wind chimes is the single object keeping the elephants away?  Because there's a possible change that even if the wind chime was not up, elephants would have stayed away.  Hence, "the wind chime doesn't make a difference.  We need to have the cause occur (elephants appearance) for there to be an effect (wind chime to work.)  I've learn in my own example, if I do not do my online homework, I would not get a good grade.  The cause has to make a difference.

Week 8: Post #2

My group chose an article from Yahoo titled, “5 Diet Rules it’s OK to Break” by Lisa Collier Cool to complete our assignment.  We found the main claim to be “Breaking the rules could actually help you slim down- and keep the pounds off over the long term.  In Chapter 11 in section D, Epstein explains the concept of, "Violating the Principle of Rational Discussion" and one principle stood out to me the most. Begging the question is when someone is arguing that a claim is true making all premises of an argument more believable than the conclusion itself.  Cool could have fallen into the trap of Begging the question because her argument could possibly be valid but to my opinion, it doesn’t directly prove the 5 rules to be wrong.  I took away from our first assignment to fully analyze all claims.  We must also identify the supporting details for proof.  Just because it's on the internet and the article is trying to prove a point, it doesn't mean that we should believe the claim blindly.  Prior to our first paper, I tend to believe a lot of things over the internet.  Now, it's a great feeling not being solicited into something rather justify the claim in more details or facts.

Week 8: Chapter 13, Numbers

Chapter 13 discusses about, "Misleading Claims with Numbers."  Many claims can be very vague when it comes to using numbers as general statistic.  An example that Epstein used in the book was, "Zoe has 4 apples and Dick has 2 oranges.  Who has more?"  More of what is the misleading interpretation.  We can sit there for minutes and ponder, hmm, what is the right answer?  When in reality, Epstein is absolutely correct, we always have to be clear and precise on what claiming or trying to prove.  "When numbers are used it looks exact, but a vague or meaningless comparison gets no better by having a few numbers in it."  What I took from this learning is to be precise with my thoughts by making a strong claim even if I want to add numbers by making my claim more visual.  It has to be a valid claim.  From time to time, I would hear over the news that San Jose is one of the safest cities to reside in.  But now I've realized, it could potentially be a valid claim, but it's also a misleading one.  Because it seems to prove a safe point but comparable to what and where or why?  There's not much relativity or supporting details.

Week 7: Question 3

An interesting section that I came across this week was when I read about Reasoning by Example. According to my past experiences, reasoning by example works the best for me. Reasoning by Example is when a person uses their past experiences to persuade a point in an argument. In the earlier chapters of Epstein, we learned that knowledge or past experience can be a good source in an argument. For myself, I could be a little obsessive with using examples sometimes because it'll always help me prove my point in any disclaimers. Especially when it comes to aruging with my boyfriend. I would use past experiences where he has done something wrong and I've asked him numerous time to change, he agree, and we'll be fine for the moment. But if ever it came up again, I would definitely use reasoning by examples and tell him we've distinguish this problem before and it's time for you to show some action rather than making the same mistakes over and over again. I find reasoning by example very helpful and to the point. After reasoning more of the different types of reasoning, it teaches me to be more articulate being making an argument.

Week 7: Appeal to Emotion

After reading Chapter 10, Appeal to Emotion is when we psychologically believe in something, making us agree with that particular argument based on our emotions.  The Emotion that strikes me most is the Appeal to fear.  I remember when I was in high school, my parents were often time very strict with the things that I was or was not allowed to do.  I recalled one occurrence when I went out to hang out with my friends, we were having a lot of fun but the night was getting late and it was time for me to go home because my curfew is 11pm.  My friends urged me to stay for another hour but I was scared my parents would get upset with me so I decided to go home instead of hanging out with my friends.  In this example, I appealed to fear in making the decision to go home rather than enjoying some time with my friends.  I could have stayed longer but knowing how strict my parents are and fearing that I would get scolded with being grounded, I choose not to stay out for longer with my friends.  For me being grounded meant not being able to hang out with my friends for two weeks.  The fear of the consequences lead me to the decision that I made.

Week 6: Post #3

During my reading, I found "Between One and All with Precise generalities" very useful and informative.  I've learned to use accurate facts when making claims especially through using resourceful statistics instead of being ambiguous.  We should always be careful when using, "one and all" to conclude a claim.  An example that the book used to show an invalid argument was, "72% of ALL students who take critical thinking from Dr.E think he's the best teacher they've ever had.  Harry took Dr. E's critical thinking course last year.  So Harry thinks Dr. E is the best teacher he's ever had."  We can analyze this claim and agree that the premise "could" but the conclusion could also be false.  And of course this assumption ties to not knowing the people involve.  Hence, we should not jump to conclusions and always think about the claims we're making.  To avoid this problem, we should think twice before using the conjunction, "all or one" and only make these claims if we have research or facts to buttress our claim.  After understanding this subject matter more, I've learned not to listen to people's sterotyping because premises could prove a point but the conclusion isn't always necessarily true.

Week 6: Post #2

One of this week's Chapter title is, "Aristotelian Logic" and I found Categorical Claims to be most the interesting and fun to learn.  The Chapter starts off by giving the history of Aristotle's findings over 2300 years ago.  It then goes into his findings, as he found a way to to build his argument in the following forms:  "All S are P.  No S is (are) P.  Some S is (are) P.  Some S is (are) not P."  And he teaches us that an argument is valid as long as we follow closely to the enlisted forms.  

Hence, to solve these forms.  We can understand it better by the given examples in the book.  "All dogs bark. = All dogs are things that bark.  No horse eats meat. = No horse is a thing that eats meat.  Some cats eat birds. = Some cat is a thing that eats birds.  Some dogs don't chase cats. = Some dog is a thing that doesn't chase cats."

Everything makes a lot more sense to me now after going over the examples.  I truly believe Aristotle is a genius and would have never thought that there's a way to determine if an argument is valid or not.  It's amazing how he can break it down and make it seem like a piece of cake.  Sometimes we can argue if "All dogs bark?"  But when it's broken down to, "All dogs are things that bark" it makes it more coherent to understand and gives our audience less room for questioning.

Week 6: Chapter 8 Discussion

In Chapter 8, I found, "General Claims and Their Contradictories" interesting because it's important to identify a valid claim.  These claims typically carry true premises but leads to a inaccurate conclusion.  A good example that the book used was, "Some dogs like cats.  Some cats like dogs.  So some dogs and cats like each other."  This is not a valid argument because it's more of a belief.  Then the book goes into teaching us the difference between "all" and "some."  With all meaning, every single one with no exception.  Some meaning, at least one but not all.

After understanding general claims, it made me realized that I do make general claims and it's a bad habit.  I would say things like, all cats give me allergies or some dogs are scary.  Then the book goes into contradictories of these claims.

Claim:  Some dogs are scary.

Contradictory:  No dogs are scary.

Claim:  All cats give me allergies.

Contradictory:  Some cats don't give me allergies.

Hence, I've learned to use more critical thinking on a daily basis to make valid arguments so people cannot contradict me.  It's gratifying when I'm able to make articulate claim that's reasonable.

Week 4: Post #3

Chapter 6 teaches us an abundance about Conditional Claims and something that stood out to me most was, Reasoning from hypotheses.  Basically it tells us to make the hypotheses guess A and make a good argument for B.  Hence, we can create a good argument for "If A, then B."  We always want to have one main claim while reasoning from the hypotheses and use the, "then B" as additional support to our argument.  I've always enjoyed reasoning from hypotheses because it gives off a sense of validity that we're making an educated guess, therefore B should be a valid argument.

It brings me back to when we were doing science projects in grade school and I was asked to make a hypotheses to something like, "What would happen if you put a plant outside for 5 days with sunlight and water?"  I would answer "My hypotheses consisted of, IF the plant had nourishing components, THEN it will eventually grow.  At age 6 or 7, it definitely doesn't come as common sense but thanks to Reasoning from hypotheses, I was able to make an educated guess A then make a good argument for B.  After all, when the results came in, my hypotheses was right for the predicted conclusion.

Week 4: Chapter 7

Chapter 7 talks about, "Raising Objections" and teaches us that, "it is irrational to say that an argument is good and then deny its conclusion."  It's almost like contradicting yourself, "Raising Objection is a standard way to show that an argument is bad.  They have good reason not to believe the conclusion."  The book tells us three ways in the following:  1.) Show that an unstated premise is dubious.  2.) Illustrates why the argument is weak.  3.)  We are making another argument that either calls into question of one of the premise.

I would say that I'm an attentive person and when I'm able to sense a bad argument, I would raise objection.  Raising Objection teaches us how to validate an argument of whether it's good or bad.  People should be open to both, good and bad arguments and debate nicely to why they think the other person's argument is wrong.  A perfect example occurred between my mom and I last Friday because she kept insisting that it was my cousin's birthday that Saturday morning.  I could have taken her word and planned for the day but I could have sworn I saw the invitation a few days before and I recalled that it will be two weeks from then.  So I went ahead and called my cousin to confirm the date and my mom was wrong!  As I thought, it was not the next morning.  Thank goodness I called to check because I could have missed out on a day of fun going to the beach with my friends early Saturday morning.  I'm glad I was able to clarify her argument and not miss the beach day. =)