Favorite Concept

My favorite concept that we learned from the book was how to refute arguments.  I feel like this was by far the most applicable to my life and also it came up a lot in our final project.  This is when I could really see how forming arguments was important, but refuting them was equally important, especially in our mock business world setup.  In making decisions such as who to hire, being able to consider what someone says and then think of the pros and cons logically and be able to weigh them out loud in an argument is an extreme advantage.  The individuals participating in our group who were more skilled at it than others stood out tremendously and seemed to me to be most likely to actually be in a position of power like we set up at a meeting, being able to decide who to hire and not hire.  I hope this skill in particular will take me far in whatever line of work I end up going into. 

Favorite and Least Favorite Things about the Class

My favorite thing about this class was learning how to blog.  Even though my grandparents like to joke about how my generation blogs and “tweets” about everything, I happen to very technologically challenged and I have never even seen a blog before, much less write one.  I was surprised how easy it was for even me to figure out, it actually did not detract from my learning at all like I thought it would.  My least favorite part of the course was sometimes the content seemed a little repetitive or obvious, and even though I liked the focus it had I would have preferred something either a little faster paced or a little bit harder to understand.  All in all this class was nice and was a good experience for my first online class, because the fact that it was online did not detract from my learning experience one bit. 

What I learned

In this class I have learned how to get my point across in the most educated, meaningful way possible.  Someone once told me that it doesn’t matter how smart you are and how many good ideas you may have if you do not have the skills to present them in a positive way to people.  The communication skills in this class are unique because they are not just tailored to getting you through speeches in college or other things that seemed to be a trend in other communication classes; they are applicable to everyday life and also going to be very applicable to everyday life in the work force in all of our futures.  Working in groups, knowing how to argue in the most understandable and convincing way, and being able to come to a conclusion by stating premises that help build your point are just some examples of the major ideas that we learned in this course that I learned that really stuck with me. 

Chapter 15

A concept in chapter 15 that I found interesting is the concept of tracing the cause backwards.  One of my biggest pet peeves is when a person cannot take responsibility for their actions and excuse themselves by blaming other people or things that happened.  A lot of the time this is done by tracing the cause backwards.  Like the book said- you could trace the cause backwards and keep moving the cause of an event backwards forever.  I find the best and most honest and respectable way to explain the cause of something is to put the responsibility on yourself, and then if asked further you could explain some of the other causes that may have triggered an event.  Looking back in time and trying to figure out the exact cause of everything that happened can be a waste of time, what happened is done no matter how it was caused.  So be careful when you are tracing a concept backwards and make sure to, at most, only go back a little bit.   

mission : critical

I really liked the mission critical website.  It covered almost every single idea we have learned in class so far, and it is very organized and designed in a way that makes it very easy to understand.  The first section covers what arguments are made of and the basic element you find in an argument.  For example, in the section called “premises, conclusions, and support”, it explains that an argument has one conclusion, and two premises.  Then, it goes on to describe the many different ways a premises can be supported. It does a great job explaining a difficult concept in a fast, simple way.  I also like how it has lots of examples and practice quizzes, especially once it gets to the next section called “Analysis of Arguments”.  The sections progress in difficulty, which makes most sense and also makes the information the most easy to understand and grasp.  This is a great website and I am going to use it to study.   

Casual Arguements

To be honest, the cause and effect website did not help me very much.  The way it was worded was very confusing and was not straightforward enough to explain a new point.  However, what made it manageable and what was the most helpful thing about this web page was that the tracked the same example throughout the entire page, and every time they introduced a new topic (ie. how acceptable or demonstrable the implied comparison is), afterward they show a snippet of exactly what part of their example argument they are referring to with their slightly confusing statements.  Also, I like how they progress the example they add new information to teach us how tracking the information and events is important to figuring out what caused what and eventually the whole concept of causal arguments.  I would not rank this high as a learning site though, it almost confused me more than it helped.

Reasoning by Analogy

I looked up reasoning by analogy.  Reasoning by criteria was actually more difficult for me but I could not find any other sort of information on it.  Anyways, the page that I read, from Stanford, explains that reasoning by analogy is simply comparing two different things in a logical way.  Through a very lengthy and rather obtuse example about comparing fruit, they explain that in order to compare things you need to look at each individual aspect of them and see how they relate to each other.  Finally, when enough connections are made, or more connections are made to one idea than another, you can reason by analogy that there is a relationship between them.  This particular example REALLY emphasizes the importance of comparing ALL the aspects of the things you are comparing, and that way you have the most accurate conclusion that you can come to by this form of reasoning. 

Reasoning Examples

Reasoning by Analogy- Jo gets good grades and he studies a lot.  Jane studies a lot.  Jane will get good grades. 

Sign Reasoning:  If there is stopped traffic on the freeway, then there is probably a traffic accident.

Causal Reasoning: If you don’t do any of your homework in any of your classes, you will not get good grades.

Reasoning by Criteria: You want to look good for all the ladies, so you should wear this shirt tonight.

Reasoning by Example:  You shouldn’t take the bus to school.  I have to take the bus and it is a huge waste of time. 

Inductive Reasoning: We have gotten out of class at least fifteen minutes early every day this semester, so we will get out at least fifteen minutes early tomorrow.

Deductive Reasoning: If you miss your registration date you won’t get classes.  You missed your registration date.  You don’t get any classes.

Guilt

An appeal to emotion that particularly stands out to me is trying to guilt someone into something.  Unfortunately, however pathetic it is when people pull this kind of thing, it happens all the time.  People love to hold things over someone’s head and play off of their want to make everyone happy.  If someone makes you feel like a bad person for not doing something by bringing up a previous time where they feel they did something to “earn” this favor from you, it probably means that they ran out of other arguments and had to resort to something of this sort in order to squeeze the favor out of you.  People should refrain for making this type of argument because it is annoying to the person receiving it, and because I feel is discredits your reputation as a good arguer.  It’s much better to come up with an actual reason you want someone to do something for you instead of trying to guilt them into it. 

appeals to emotions

Appeals to emotion work on some people more than others.  Unfortunately, there are some people who just cannot say no if someone makes an appeal to their pity, or if they pull a guilt card on them.  Same as there are some people who are way too easily swayed by an appeal to fear, or the idea that two wrongs make a right.  Do not let yourself be someone who is too easily affected by your emotions, it is important to be able to think something over rationally and separate it from your emotions in order to make a good decision.  I think appeal to pity and guilt are the most common appeals to emotion that I see, because more often than not they end up working.  People get too caught up in how they feel to rationally make a decision that may be best for them in the long run.  You see this a lot in situations regarding romantic relationships between two people, and I am sure every has experienced a significant other at some point in time using an appeal to their pity or guilt in order to get them to do something. 

Objective 1

Here is an example of a bad argument calling for affirmative action which uses appeal to pity:

If you care about our country at all and all of the homeless people who have nowhere to sleep at night, then you will vote democrat in the next election.

This is a very bad argument because there is no apparent connection between the premise and the conclusion.  It calls upon the pity of the reader by mentioning taking care of our country and the less fortunate people who live here, but it doesn’t state a reasonable way to fix the problems it mentions.  It would be a much better argument if it explained how voting democrat would in turn help the country and the homeless people who live here. 

I looked into precise generalities because I wanted to get more of an understanding of how they are used in real life.  My google search came up with a bunch of statistic sights, which is interesting to me because I am in an intro to statistic class right now.  I looked at one of the sights and they used the idea of a precise generalization in their abstract.  This makes sense to me because precise generalizations are all about percents and probability, so I can see how they would fit into the world of statistics.  I learned in my statistics class that if something is a high enough percent you can say it is significant, which is the same thing as how the book describes if a percentage that is given is high enough then it makes for a strong argument.  Now I think of precise generalizations as statistics and it makes it easier to remember. 

Here’s the link J

http://www.springerlink.com/content/q5726wj14387p235/

Class Assignments

The assignments that we have done for this class I feel are very relevant to a lot of work we are going to be doing in out college careers.  Being able to think critically about something you find online is something we have to do almost every time we do an assignment outside of the classroom.  It’s important to be able to know what is a good argument versus something that uses tricks to be appealing.  Also, it helps me be able to formulate my arguments better in a way I can be more confident of and help get my point across in the most intelligent way.  The assignments take what we read about in the book and write about on out blogs and turns it into real-life, useful situations.  I like to think of it as the final step after we learn things in class- figuring out how to use them in our lives. 

Chapter 8- Disscusing Not-So-Good Ways to Argue

Arguing backwards with all is commonly heard, especially when making quick judgments based on previous experiences.  I had a roommate who was very smart and would help me with my homework, and people would come over and assume he went to college with me.  The train of thought that brought about this conclusion was all smart people go to college (All S are P), and your roommate is smart (a is P), therefore he must go to college (So a is S).  This is a weak argument and sure enough, not correct. 

Another weak way to argue is reasoning in a chain with some.  An example of this would be college graduates and their work situations.  A person could say some college graduates are out of work (Some S are P).  Also, some people who are out of work are on welfare (Some P are Q).  So some college graduates are on welfare (So some S are Q).  This may be true for a very small portion of college graduates but it is a pretty inaccurate way to describe the average college graduate.  You can see how this may not be the best way of convincing someone of something

Reasoning from Hypothesis

Sometimes, when people make a point they like to state their point first.  Then, if it is disputed, they will back it up with more claims and reasons why their original point is true.  This is a good way to say something if you don’t think you will have to explain yourself.  It could possibly say you time if your point isn’t questioned.  The format for this is stating your point (A) and then in questioned follow up with an argument to support your hypothesis or point (B).  Then, if your argument is valid, “A then B” will ring true.  An example of this would be if someone told me that they wanted to shop online, and I told them that if they wanted to do that they would have to give their credit card information to the website.  If they asked why, I would explain that you can’t pay in cash over the internet and there is no other way that you can pay for whatever you are trying to purchase.  Therefore, If you buy something online you must pay with a credit card. 

Bantering, Chapter 7

Arguments get fun when you start to question and refute them. Some points that you make when you argue sound good, but compared to their counterarguments they aren’t anything specially.  Often arguments go back and forth until a point is made that trumps all the other points, or until one side out-weighs the other.  This is what we do in our heads when we made pros-and-cons lists.  We come up with all of the good things and bad things that have to do with the decision or claim we are trying to decide about.  Other times, we feel one way and one of our companions will feel another way, and each person has to think of all the pros and the other person has to come up with all of the cons or an alternative solutions, which they must prove better than the original.  Bantering back in fourth is fun as long as it is kept light, and can also be a great way to test the intelligence of your friends. J

Conditional Claims and their Contradictories

Conditional claims are something that we hear a lot in our day to day lives.  People expect or assume certain things, and that is why they are so common.  However, a lot of the time a conditional claim can be inaccurate and easily contradicted.  For instance, if I would tell someone that I am only going to class if it is not raining because I don’t want to get my hair wet, they could easily use the contradictory that it is raining BUT I could use an umbrella and go to class without getting my hair wet.  Some contradictories are more simple to figure out than others.  For instance, “If you snap your laptop in half, then it won’t work anymore” is a lot harder to contradict than something like “If you drink a glass of water, then you will not be thirst anymore.”  There are always loopholes to figuring out some sort of opposing situation though. 

The wonderful idea of "Suspending Judgment"

I like the idea that you can “suspend judgment”.  I think a lot of people feel pressured to have an opinion or stance on every little thing.  It is ok to be passionate, but really irritating when people get on their high-horse about subjects they are barely familiar with just because of what they heard someone else say about it.  A lot of the time professors can influence people in this way, because students are prone to thinking every single thing that they are being taught is true and not realizing that the information they are receiving is being shaped by their professor’s opinions.   Sometimes, students who take a class with a spirited professor will come away with a bunch of radical ideas, with nothing to back them up but the word of their professor. 

I think as a country we would be better if we opted for the “suspend judgment” option more often.  Passing judgment when you do not have enough or reliable information to back yourself up is a common error.  This is why racism and gossip, two major judgments, are so prevalent in the US.  If we could just be a little more patient and collect as much data as possible before passing these kind of judgments, then people could get along much better. 

Repairing Arguements

Argument:  You need to get to bed early.  You have two midterms tomorrow. 

Analysis:  The unstated premises that needs to be stated for this to be a valid argument would be, “Getting extra sleep can help you focus better and do well on tests”.  Also, it would help if the word “need” were changed to “should”.  The only thing that is absolutely true is that fact that you have two midterms tomorrow.  Another thing that could be added would be the statement that you do indeed want to do well on your midterms.  However, this is such an obvious standard that it does not even need to be stated in order to be understood.  Even without all of this extra add-on stuff, this argument is OK because the premises is more believable than the conclusion, and there is that one major unstated claim that you do want to do well on your test.  Assuming that the reader assumes this, the argument is believable even before repair, but better with. 

Online Advertising

Below is a link to an advertisement many of you have either seen or seen something very similar to.  Free ringtones sent right to your phone! It features a cute picture of a puppy listening to ear phones.  The cute puppy distracts from the fact that there is no actual information about where these ringtones are coming from, only a flashing button that says “free download, click here!”  If you didn’t know any better,  this would seem like a great deal, but anyone who frequently surfs the web would know better than to click on the button.  Sites like this that don’t give you any information or any sort of source to fall back on usually do one of two things- inject virus’s into your computer or convince you to give them some sort of contact information (or worse- credit card information), and then make your life a living hell by spamming you and forcing you to have to cancel your cards because there is no number or organization to call to retract your participation.  Stay away from sites like these!

http://adserver.adreactor.com/servlet/click/zone?zid=31&cid=1313&mid=2290&pid=53&default=false&random=98613918&timestamp=20100929152815&test=false&custom1=&custom2=&referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fairmp3.net%2Fsubparts%2Fad2iframe.php%3Fa%3D%26t%3D&redirect=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bearshare.com%2Fdownloadmusic%2F%3Fappid%3D133

Relevancy

Relevance is very important to arguments.  It really weakens an argument when the arguer says something that does not support what they are trying to prove.  It makes it seem like they do not know what they are talking about, that their point isn’t valid, and that they are trying to insert fluff to distract the listener and to get them to agree with them.  My friends do this all the time when they are trying to convince me to go do something with them that I might not want to do like go grocery shopping or do chores.  They will just say stuff for fluff like, “Oh you had class this morning, you should come with me,” and I will look at them and say “Why in the WORLD does that matter.”  They just say whatever they can in order to persuade me, no matter if it makes sense or not.

Communicating in Organizations

I feel like I may have more experience than the average college student in communicating in social organizations.  I can think of different examples of groups I have been in that are either very open to voicing ideas and change and on the other end very steady and unchanging.  When I was young, I grew up on a court where there were 14 kids.  We formed a club which we called the “KC Club” and what we did pretty much consisted of having lemonade sales in order to raise enough money to buy slip n’ slides, since every time we bought one we almost instantly broke it.  In this organization, if anyone had any ideas of how we could come up with a way to make any sort of money (we did resort to trimming weeds out of driveways once), they were immediately brought up, discussed, and almost always put into place.  Another organization that I am a part of where communication is encouraged is my sorority.  They always welcome suggestions to change, although the system they have set up is way more tried and tested than my KC Club days, so change is less likely to happen.  Going to church it is even less appropriate to suggest change.  If you were to raise your hand in church and suggest you change a hymn or the way a prayer is done, people would just laugh at you.  There are ways to make suggestions like that, but it is appropriate to know which forum it is most appropriate for bring your suggestions to in each organization, and if you are not sure or new to ask.  That way your ideas can be best heard and considered. 

Arguements Exercise

(1) I'm on my way to school. (2) I left five minutes late. (3) Traffic is heavy. (4) Therefore, I'll be late for class. (5) So I might as well stop and get breakfast.

ARGUEMENT:  yes

CONCLUSION: I should stop to get breakfast on my way to class.

ADDITIONAL PREMISES NEEDED: Something saying, if I am late to class, I automaticly get zero credit. Or something that justifies being later to class.  It is obvious to most people that 2, 3, and 4 are not good enough reasons to come even later to class. 

IDENTIFY SUBARGUEMENT: Independent claims 2 and 3 support 4, which is supposed to support 5.  1 is just setting up background information.

GOOD ARGUEMENT: No, it would need another independent claim to branch the area between me being late (4) and how it is then ok for me to be even more late to class (5). 

Helpful??
I thought these exercises in the book were very helpful, and I actually looked them all over and did them all a little in my head.  It is a lot more difficult to break down an arguement when you did not put it together yourself, because when you make one yourself if you make an error you conciously put it in and then it's not that hard to find or diagnose.  I admit that when I have been doing the reading, I have been skimming over the exercises and most examples unless I am really stuck, but after doing this I will be much more likely to use the examples in the book because it really helped me understand the material more thuroughly.

Test Arguement

The argument I am going to test is “My dad listens to his music really loud. Also, my dad is hard at hearing. He is hard at hearing because he listens to his music too loud.” The first test is to check the premises for plausibility. My dad listening to his music really loud is very plausible and believable, especially if you knew my dad. The fact that my dad is hard at hearing is plausible, but slightly vague because hard at hearing could be maybe he just doesn’t listen to me as well when I am talking to him, or it could mean he is almost deaf. It doesn’t really specify. The second test is to make sure the premises are more probable than the conclusion. I think that the premises are more probable than the conclusion because the hearing damage could have been caused by many other things rather than listening to loud music, although it is still a strong argument. It cannot be valid though because of the fact that saying my dad is hard at hearing is too vague, and also because there are other ways that he could have hurt his ears. This argument is strong.

changing an argument point to make it valid

Arguments are only valid if they include proven facts. Today one of my friends said that she has seen so many Volvos lately, and that it must be the best selling car on the street right now. Just because she said this does not make this a valid argument, it is simply an opinion. I could turn around and say that I have seen a lot of BMWs recently, and argue that since I have seen more BMWs than she has seen Volvos that those must actually be the best selling vehicle right now. Unless you have solid facts to back up your argument, it is not valid. You would be able to argue this if you did some research before, and actually found out that, in fact, Volvos sales had increased dramatically; then looked at sales of other cars and seen that all other car companies were not selling nearly as well. You would have a proven fact, and nobody could dispute otherwise. They could argue with you but it wouldn’t matter because they would have nothing to back their opinion up.

Arguements- Strong vs. Valid

The difference between a strong and valid argument is very subtle, and unless you think about it carefully it may be difficult to tell them apart. A strong argument is persuasive but not necessarily true. For example, if someone were to tell you that they go to college, and all of their friends from college like to wear skinny jeans, therefore all college students like to wear skinny jeans. This is a strong argument because it may actually be true that a lot of college students like to wear skinny jeans based on their observations which are both true. However, it doesn’t take into account the possibility that some people who aren’t their friends might like different kinds of jeans. A more accurate and valid argument to the same affect could be I go to college, and all of my friends from college like to wear skinny jeans, therefore some college students prefer skinny jeans to other types of jeans. By making the result less absolute, you can eliminate the problem of error with your argument, making it true and valid.

Subjective and Objective Claims

Subjective and Objective claims remind me of how critical people are of themselves. People often say about themselves “I am bad at math” or “I look terrible today” making critical remarks about themselves based personal standards. A lot of the time, these subjective claims are not completely accurate because they are completely based on the opinion of the person speaking about themselves. I think subjective claims made about yourself are the most inaccurate because of how critical people are of themselves. A if people were to support these subjective claims with objective claims such as “I got a 42 percent on my math test” or “I didn’t have time to shower today”, then I am more likely to take what I am being told with more consideration. These objective statements are much more true because they are based on impersonal standards, things that can be measured and therefore there is no vagueness about exactly the extent or degree the subjective claim. However, it is more likely that people want to say things with their own twist and you will hear stories about people’s days made out of more subjective claims, because we all love to exaggerate.

Prescriptive and Descriptive Claims

Prescriptive and descriptive claims are interesting to me because I hear them a lot in day to day life. It reminds me of how in my statistics class we are learning about the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, descriptive being explaining how something is and inferential being using that information to make a projection onto the future. The only difference I really see is that in statistics, the descriptions and projections into the future are more based on actual facts and statistics, versus prescriptive and descriptive claims which are more based on feelings and opinions, especially the prescriptive ones. These claims can be different based on the individual’s morals and beliefs. For instance, if someone were to say abortions is murder (descriptive) so women should choose not to get abortions (prescriptive), this reflects the individuals personal opinion and beliefs and there could be a just as strong descriptive and prescriptive claim supporting the other side.

Ambiguousness

Since it is the begining of school, I have heard a lot of my friends complaining on how how they are having such a hard time "getting classes".  This is very vauge because it does not really describe what exactly they are having trouble with, because it could be many things.  Also, it doesnt really describe how hard of a time they are having, or what specific type of classes they have having a hard time enrolling in.  There are many possibilities- there could be not enough sections of a specific class they want and so they cannot enroll it it.  Or maybe they cannot find a class that is at a time that they can make.  Most commonly, and what I assume they mean when I hear them say this, it means that they are trying to add a class and the classes that fit their time schedule are too full and there are not enough spots.  I feel that also it is assumed that when people say they are having a hard time getting classes, the word classes refers to something other than very basic classes that SJSU offers, or in other word classes that are relevent to their major.  A more specific way they could complain about this would be to say, "I am having a hard time trying add a couple of science classes that I am on the waiting list for".  However, usually with a few quick questions these ambiguities can be cleared away and all is well in the world. 

Inrtoduction

I am a sophomore at SJSU, and this is my first online class and experience ever with working with a blog.  I took a COMM class last sememster, but even prior to that I feel I had fairly good communication skills.  I work at a pool where for the past 4 years I have been teaching swim lessons, which requires a lot of practice and preperation especially for the first couple years.  This past year I got promoted to assistant manager, which changed my audience from a bunch of 9 year olds to their parents, and I have gotten really good at listening to people complain and explaining to them what we can and cannot do to help them.  I am really excited to learn from this course how to find my way around a blog, since I have always been technology challenged, and to be able to better my communication skills that can help me at my work and also in my remaining years here at San Jose State.