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.