Concept

A useful concept from the semester was appeal to emotion. There is appeal to fear, pity, spite and vanity.  I learned that in my arguments I have to tailor them towards the people I am talking to if I want it to go my way. I am more likely to use fear and pity. I use appeal to fear to try to get my siblings to teach me to drive a stick. I tell them that if I were stuck in the middle of nowhere and the only thing around was a car with a manual transmission I would be screwed, hoping it’ll scare them into teaching me. Then they pull the truck has no power steering excuse making harder to drive excuse and I’ll crash the other car excuse. Appeal to pity came in handy when I would convince my parents to buy me something. I’d tell them I looked like the poor kid at school when I had an old iPod or wanted more clothes. Now I have a job so I just get it myself.

Favorites

My favorite thing about the class was something that I sometimes dreaded, comments. Whenever I would check my email I got excited when there was a message about getting a comment on a post. I loved reading what people had to say about my posts. I also did not like them because I could not always find three posts to write 100 words back to. I hate word requirements and believe that if I can get my point across in less than the requirement, it should be acceptable. I hated blabbing on about some posts when I only had ten words to go. My least favorite thing about the class was only knowing people by an alias name. One of you could be my BFF! A way to improve the class could be not having to meet in person for the last group project. People take online classes so they do not have to leave home or because they are antisocial. Others do not have time to go to campus. Scheduling my groups facilitation took a while because everyone’s schedule was so different. I had to miss a class and another had to stick around campus for three hours after class. I am glad I took the class though.

Learning

I learned a ton of new concepts throughout the semester but probably the one that will stick in my head is the tests for an argument to be good. The premise has to be plausible, more plausible than the conclusion, and the argument should be valid or strong to be considered good. They are all simple things to check for. It is not as complex as fallacies were. With those, there were different types and then those had subcategories.  If you look at content fallacies, there are ten sub points. I don’t think I even know what half of them are. One thing I learned during the first couple of weeks are how bad some of my arguments can be. Since then I watch what I say and try to be as detailed as possible to avoid vagueness. I look at arguments on TV shows that I watch and analyze them to see if they are valid or rubbish teenage drama. This class is the one where I have put more newly acquired information to use in life, besides reading writing and math.

Interesting

Something interesting from chapter 15 was how to find causes on page 317. I like how the author compared it to how scientists test a theory. To find the cause of the decrease in water the guy in the example “conjectured possible causes” (a leak in the hose, valves, or pond liner, cracked concrete and evaporation) “and by experiment eliminated them until there is only one.” Once the choices are narrowed down, Epstein says to ask yourself “does it make a difference? Is there still an effect? And could there be a common cause?” After testing for the first four causes, the loss was still there. To confirm the problem was due to evaporation, the water flow was reduced. That led to less water loss, confirming that evaporation was the problem. If I had to guess I would have chosen evaporation because he mentioned that he lived in the desert.

Mission Critical

What was useful about the mission critical website was all of its information. In went into depth with each concept and the links made it easy to get to a concept rather than scrolling down the page. It seemed to provide more information than the Epstein text. A confusing part was when I got to the exercises in the qualified statement section.  When I would click on an answer to see if it was right it would take me to a different part of the page and have two answers, so it made answering the other question pointless. In the emotional appeals section, I liked how it listed out other names an appeal may have. For example, appeal to vanity is also known and apple polishing and appeal to fear may also be called scare tactics or appeal to force. The exercises in this section were better than the qualified and specific statement ones.

Cause and Effect Website

The cause and effect website was just like our Epstein book. It taught the concept and then provided an example and activity. From last week, I remember that causal arguments are like cause and effect. What I liked better about the website was during the activity it would explain the answer, whether it was right or wrong. In our text, we have the questions and answers in the back but no explanations. If we get an answer wrong we have to figure out why we got it wrong by ourselves. One question I had some difficulty with was number two. The “most significant difference” part threw me off and I did not get it right until try three, but each explanation made sense. Another useful thing was the mention of three factors, “how acceptable or demonstrable the implied comparison is,” “how likely the case for causation seems to be” and “how credible the ‘only significant difference’ or ‘only significant commonality’ claim is.

Intersting Concept

My interesting concept for this week is reasoning by analogy. While reading what it was I realized that I already use it. It is kind of like when our parents let one of our siblings go out but tell us to stay behind. Sibling A asked her parents if she could go out. They said yes. Sibling B asked her parents of she could go out. They said yes. That is how I use it in an argument. If one gets to go out why should I stay behind? I have always liked working with analogies. They were my favorite part of the SAT’s. Analogies are comparisons between two things. An example is glove is to hand as scarf is to neck. A glove and scarf are things that you wear. One other thing I thought was interesting was sign reasoning, more specifically the logic section. One of the types of syllogism was hypothetical. I never really understood why people would say “hypothetically speaking” and then ask a question. Now I do!