Week 10 Post 3: Chapter 14

Something that I found from Chapter 14 interesting is about Generalizations. From the Epstein text means that we are to make a claim about an issue, such as for a group or population to generalize an argument. There are three different things to point out for generalizations: 1. The sample is representative 2. The sample is big enough 3. The sample is studied well. What I just listed are all the things for premises to be considered as a good generalization.  In other words, for generalizations to be accurate, we need to consider the population as a whole with enough data to prove the problem. There should also be a small error margin for the population. This also includes variation, because it gives the data different things to compare it with. If we were to just compare one issue by itself, there wouldn’t be a correct answer due to the fact that you are basing your answers with one type of generalization.

Week 10 Post 2: What I Learned

There were so many things that I have learned from this class. To begin with I wasn’t taking this class seriously, but as the semester went on, I found that a lot of the things that we learned in class is beneficial to our every day lives. The skills that I have obtained from the class consist of learning how to communicate effectively with people in general.  This skill was most used when we had to do our group presentations. We needed to learn how to communicate with each other effectively such as, set up times to meet up to discuss with group projects, how to divide up the work and how we should write the paper itself. I also learned how to visually see how people communicate from our last group project, the group facilitation project. I was able to spot who the leader is and how the group interacted throughout the meeting. I feel that learning this technique has bettered my communication skills.

Week 10 Post 1: Best, Least and Improved

My favorite part about the class is that I was able to do all the stuff online. This made it convenient for me to do it at the comfort of my own house. I also liked how the professor made it so easily to contact her and help me whenever I was in need. She is a quick responder and is willing to help to the full extent. My least favorite part about this class is that when we are to post up blogs, we have to wait a full 12 hours until we can post our new blog. I feel that it’s unnecessary and we should be able to post stuff regularly and whenever we feel like without the time constraint. I feel that this class is good the way it is. It is straight forward and easy to understand. To improve this class, I feel that if we just skipped the 12 hour limit would be more helpful and easier for students.

Week 9 Post 3: Chapter 15- Tracing the Cause Backwards

After I read Chapter 15, I found many topics in there interesting and fun to talk about. If I were to choose one thing to focus on, it would be about tracing the cause backwards. I thought the example in the Epstein text very funny brought up many situations that happened in the real world. In the text, it has an incident were Spot caused Dick to wake up. But did he really? An example that happens in the real world would be car accidents. One thing leads to another to cause something to happen. It usually has a lot that leads up to the accident, such as it was raining at night and Sam didn’t see the car in front of him stop abruptly. But the car in front may say that it was because there was a woman crossing the street when she wasn’t suppose to. The woman may say it was because she was late for dinner. This can lead to a very long and difficult story. But with tracing the cause backwards, we can see step by step to see what caused the problem.  

Week 9 Post 2: Mission Critical Website

I found the Mission Critical website easy to follow and understand. I liked the fact the there is everything you need to understand terms. Bullet points used in the website made it easy to locate and search for, especially difficult concepts. I thought that this website should be shown to everyone taking a Comm class because it is really useful. As I clicked in Appeal to Pity, a whole page of information came up about this topic. It gives great examples and definitions of the word that made me understand it better. I also like how it has review problems for fallacies. For me, fallacies were one of the difficult concepts to understand. Therefore having the fallacy exercises really helped. It also includes answers and examples of you are stuck on a problem or you don’t understand the question. Looking at this site, I tried to review other topics that I didn’t understand and I found this site to be very handy, I will definitely add to it my bookmarks. 

Week 9 Post 1: Cause and Effect Website

In my opinion, I thought that the Cause and Effect website very helpful and interesting. In the beginning as I was reading I thought it was kind of confusing due to the format of the website. It looks exactly like a textbook. But as I kept reading, I found it easy to understand because it had a lot of examples and the terms were easy to comprehend. I like how it lists out what is important on the site. Such as listing out what is needed in a causal argument, in other words, what to look for.

On the website it says that to be a causal argument it needs to fulfill 3 things:

1. how acceptable or demonstrable the implied comparison is

2. how likely the case for causation seems to be

3. how credible the “only significant difference” or “only significant commonality” claim is.

I felt that the examples that came after the 3 things listed were straight forward and helped me understand the whole concept. 

Week 8 Post 3: Casual Reasoning

There were a lot of things in this week’s reading that I found interesting. This includes all the different types of reasoning such as sign reasoning, reasoning by example, and the one that interested me the most casual reasoning. I think I was most attracted to causal reasoning because it’s the most basic. You don’t have to give a lot of in depth detail because it is based upon making it simple to understand. An example of causal reasoning would be, “ I need to find a dress for this weekend’s dinner dance. Therefore we should go shopping.” As you can see it is based on everyday life and it comes in and out of our daily conversations. After learning about this type of reasoning, it made me realize the little things when I talk to my mom or friends and how causal reasoning comes to be. Causal reasoning is one of the easy and simple reasoning’s to understand, but there are much more out there that can be made simple and fun to like. 

Week 8 Post 2: Inductive Reasoning

As I was looking through all of the different types of reasoning, the one that was hardest for me to understand was inductive reasoning. The first time looking at that type of reasoning made me literally scratch my head. When I was trying to search online for this type of reasoning, it started making more and more sense to me. I found out what inductive reasoning means, it is to take one specific thing and turn it into a general idea. An example of this would be, “My turtle’s shell is green. Therefore all turtles have green shells.” This example shows how one specific thing such as my turtle can be turned into a general claim. This argument is most definitely false because I have not seen other people’s turtle before and therefore I cannot make and assumption of the general. But to make inductive reasoning work, I can say that,” only my turtle has a green shell.” Saying it this way allows for my argument to be right and tell others that it is because it is my turtle only makes it specific. Here is a site that I thought would be useful when looking at inductive reasoning. http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/dedind.php

Week 8 Post 1: Reasoning Examples

Reasoning by Analogy

            Premise: My mom likes to make pancakes in the morning.

            Premise: My sister likes to make pancakes in the morning too.

            Conclusion: Therefore, everyone likes to make pancakes in the morning.

Sign Reasoning

            Premise: The water in the fish bowl is turning murky and looks dirty.
            Conclusion: It's time to clean the fish bowl. 

Causal Reasoning

            Premise: I missed the bus for school today.

            Premise: Therefore I was late and didn’t have time to eat breakfast.

Reasoning by Criteria

            Premise: Marisa loves purple orchids.

            Conclusion: I think it would be a great idea to get her orchids for her birthday.         

Reasoning by Example

            Premise: Learning how to swim is not as hard as it seems.

            Conclusion: You can look at Kim and learn from the way she does the back float.                

Inductive Reasoning

            Premise: Troy has to drive his daughter Ella to school at 7 o’clock.

            Conclusion: He will also drive his daughter to school tomorrow.

Deductive Reasoning

            Premise: They sell lots of fruits and vegetables at Safeway.

            Premise: Orange is a fruit.

            Conclusion: Oranges are sold at Safeway. 

Week 7 Post 3: Appeal to Pity

Another topic from this chapter that interested me was the appeal to pity. In the Epstein text, it shows that appeal to pity means to feel sorry for someone. The text itself gave an example of “If you feel sorry for poor kids, you should give money to any organizations that says it will help them.” As for my own example I want to relate it back to PETA, where PETA allow us to feel sorry for the animals and tells us not to harm animals. They do a good job of this by using videos of animals and very cruel descriptions of how animals are tortured and raised and ends up on our dinner table. This is where appeal to pity comes in, in my own opinion, I start feeling bad for them and at times it makes me so disgusted that I would actually want to consider being a vegetarian. On top of that, I would want to donate to organizations like that to help animals and protect them from cruelty.

Week 7 Post 2: Exercise #6

I choose to do exercise # 6, looking for an example of appeal to spite. As I mentioned before appeal to spite means to hopefully look for revenge on someone and causing him or her to fail. When looking at that and it tells me to link it to political views such as campaigns. This is a great idea for me because it was November 2 was the day to vote. Hopefully everyone went. But getting back to topic, I remember watching a commercial about Meg Whitman, she was running for governor of California. I remember watching a commercial where she was saying exactly all the same things that former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said. My reaction to this was ,“Wow!” she sounds exactly like him. In my opinion, I felt that it was a funny and convincing commercial that Meg Whitman will be exactly like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and do the same thing and not help the state of California. 

Week 7 Post 1: Appeals to Emotions

There are so many types of appeals to emotions from Epstein’s text. It is stated that appeal to emotions means “An argument is just a premise that says, roughly, you should believe or do something because you feel a certain way. Often we call the entire argument in which such a premise appears an appeal to emotion.” The appeal that sticks out to me the most “appeal to spite.” This appeal got my attention because it comes shows me that people will really try to get revenge on people because they didn’t help you do something in return.  This in our society seems to be happening with people always in the background trying to pull someone down. It gives a sense of Karma. This to me says that we have to “please” everyone, or else its going to come back to us because we didn’t help them in the first place. I think it is also a bad thing because that also means we have to agree and do what we don’t want to. To make it fair I believe that to even it out, we should only agree and do what we think is right and not just ignore them because the person didn’t help you before. 

Week 6 Post 3: Futher Discussions

I  think there were a lot of topics in this book that were hard  for me to understand. But most of them were easier to understand than the other ones, such as concealed claims. That was one of the concepts that i thought would need further discussions on. In the book, concealed claims had a lot to do with the words we chose to use in our arguments. There are different types of concealed claims that can affect with the way you write your claims. Loaded questions are one of those, that is sometimes hard for me to understand. http://www.fallacyfiles.org/loadques.html I found this site to help those types of issues with understanding loaded questions. As I browse through this site, I found that it also offers help to understanding fallacies, another concept that was hard for me to understand as well. I think that the best way to understand difficult concepts is to just reread the chapters and discuss with your fellow classmates. Whoever can give me more details for concealed claims please leave a comment below :)

Week 6 Post 2: Chapter 8

A concept that was talked about in Chapter 8 is about general claims and their contradictories. This uses the “all or some” of the claim. In the Epstein text, it shows that, All means “Every single one, no exceptions.” Sometimes all is meant as “Every single one, and there is at least one.” Which reading is best may depend on the argument. And some means “At least one.” Sometimes some meant as “At least one, but not all.” Which reading is best may depend on the argument. An example of “all” claims would be: all grass is green, grass is green, every grass is green and everything that’s grass is green. An example of “some” would be some flowers have scents to them and at least one flower smells. Another concept that I learned from this chapter would be “only and no” when used in a claim.  I found that in the text it shows us that No means “not even one,” “every single one is not.” And Only  “Only S and P” means “All P are S.” An example of “no” would be: no grass is green. An example of “only” would be: only flowers and trees smell. 

Week 6 Post 1: Assignment 2

I think that Assignment #2 was the most useful from the two assignments we had to do. For our group, we chose to use PETA as our social organization group. I think that PETA is a great organization to look at because of how passionate they are about help and saving animals. Looking into their website, I was able to find a lot of topics that were discussed in the text, which made it clear on which side they stand on. An example of that would be concealed claims, how PETA would use dysphemism, meaning that they would use words and exaggerate the issue. I understand that there is no way of making killing animals sound good, but PETA really shows how animals are brutally treated. I like choosing social organizations then the editorial letters because we are able to analyze the website ourselves without having to either agree or disagree with the argument. I think that it’s more difficult to look for fallacies in PETA because they make it clear whose for and against wearing fur and eating meat. I like how they use celebrities to attract people to the organization.  

Week 5 Post 3: False dilemmas

A topic that I found interesting in Chapter 6 is False Dilemmas. In the Epstein text, it says that false dilemma means, “a bad use of excluding possibilities where the “or” claim is false or implausible. Sometimes just the dubious “or” claim itself is called a “false dilemma.” This can also be described to be a valid argument, but it isn’t a very good one which causes a false dilemma. This reminds me of the times when my mom had to wake me up in the mornings when I was in middle school. She would use false dilemmas to try to wake me up. She would start from little things like, “Wake up now or I won’t make you pancakes for breakfast.” I would just ignore it until she said, “You better wake up or I won’t drive you to school!” After I heard that I would get up real fast because I lived 40 minutes driving to school and if I were to take the bus, it would take a hour and a half. False dilemmas work, but there just the things that people say in order for you to change your bad habits.

Week 5 Post 2: Chapter 7

In Chapter 7, the main topic is about Counterarguments. The two things that interested me are refuting directly and reducing to the absurd. For refuting directly, the text shows three points that we should follow in order to do so.  1.) Show that at least one of the premises is dubious. 2.) Show that the argument isn’t valid or strong. 3.) Show that the conclusion is false. As an example, I can say that it is useless for people to have tattoos. It’s permanent and painful. Its expensive to remove if you decide it isn’t right for you. To refute this argument I can say that tattoos are something beautiful and everyone should consider. It’s like a piece of artwork that expresses who you are. We can also say that when deciding on your tattoo make sure that its what you want when your 50 years old so you won’t have to remove it.

The second thing I want to talk about is reducing to the absurd, which in the book means, “To show that at least one of several claims is false or dubious, or collectively they are unacceptable, by drawing a false or unwanted conclusion from them.” This causes a people to come against the argument and start from a small point like my tattoo claim and use it for other things too such as art, museums, statues and not having artists. 

Week 5 Post 1: Chapter 6

In chapter 6, there were a lot of small details to follow and learn about. The first thing that I learned about is the compound claims. In the Epstein text, it says that it means, “A compound claim is one composed of other claims, but which has to be viewed as just one claim.” An example of that would be, “I will buy you lunch or I’ll just cook you something to eat.” This shows that I’m not sure what I am going to be doing, but it still one claim. 

The second this I learned in Chapter 6, is about contradictory of a claim. In the text the definition of it says, “One that has the opposite truth-value in all possible circumstances.” The claim would be, John is not a football player. The contradictory would be, John is a football player. This shows a claim that can be true but in contrary, the claim is turning in the opposite direction. 

Week 4 Post 3: Advertisements

The Old Spice Body Wash is a great example of how advertisement can alter a person’s judgment and cause people to buy their product. This is a body wash that is directed towards women to help their boyfriend/husband look like him. The Old Spice commercial has been seen on television with a great dialogue to attract its customers. “Hello ladies, look at your man then back at me, now back at your man, now back at me. Sadly he isn’t me. But if he stopped using lady scented body washes, and switch to Old Spice he could smell like its me.” This is how he starts his commercial, as it goes on, he can change his location from being in a shower, then on a boat with an oyster that can change into diamonds, and ends up on a horse! I don’t believe you can look like him if you use the product, but maybe smell like him. In reality, I’m not even sure if he even uses that product on himself. 

Week 4 Post 2: Personal Experience

I am interested in the topic of Personal Experience. In the textbook it states, “Our most reliable source of information about the world is our own experience.” I believe that this is the most valid reason of how we can show others the truth. We need to trust in ourselves because that the only legit thing that we have to prove. The only person that you can trust is from your own eyes. I remember this one time where I saw a fox in one of the parks in San Francisco. I told my friend and he did not believe me at all. He completely ignored me and said a lot of things to disprove me. I saw what I saw and it was real. A week later when I was going through Golden Gate Park, I was telling him about my story again. And as I was turning the block guess what we saw? It was the FOX! I was so happy and my friend didn’t say anything to me after that. I was able to prove him wrong and it felt so good because he thought he was right the entire time. J

Week 4 Post 1: Repairing Arguments

Repairing arguments are really simple if you follow these three steps:

1. The argument becomes stronger or valid. 2. The premise is plausible and would seem plausible to the other person. 3. The premise is more plausible than the conclusion. You can delete the premise only if it doesn’t make the argument worse when you do it.

            “Ivana is a vegetarian. She should plant her own vegetable garden.”

This can be a good argument if we have to add why this make more sense. I could also include that growing her own garden can help her save money instead of buying it from grocery stores. But this can also change due to that fact that the conclusion can be changed. It is because maybe Ivana may change her mind from being a vegetarian to eating meat again. Or it may be because he doesn’t have a yard or an area to grow a vegetable garden. Another reason may be that she doesn’t have the time to grow vegetables and she wants to save time. 

Week 3 Post 3: Something Interesting

One interesting topic that I went over from this week’s topic is from Essential Guide for Group Communication Chapter 4. It talks about how when your arguments that compromising is something that you need in order for things to work out in everything especially with negotiating with people. Other than negotiating, there are different ways to share ideas in a way where its fair for everyone and it’s not all about yourself.  An example of how compromising works is when my friends and I would talk about how we were going to decorate our apartment.  We both had different ideas of how we wanted the room to look like. But in the end we talked it out and compromised in having a mix of the two. We would decorate our bed and desk the way we wanted then the walls and other decorations would be a mixture of our designs. By agreeing with each other, we skipped all the fighting and arguments. In the end we both loved the room and how it turned out.

Week 3 Post 2: Content Fallacies

Fallacies are different ways of showing how an argument is a bad and hard to support.  As for the fallacy that I chose to talk about is Phony Refutation. This is when a person says or does something, but in the end, they are doing the opposite of it. This type of fallacy is always happening in the world. It is funny how parents sometimes use this technique to teach their kids. An example of this is when I heard my Nutrition teacher talk about how she’s teaching her daughter to eat her fruits and vegetables. On the inside she hates bananas. She doesn’t like the texture, smell and taste of it, but she has to deal with it so her daughter will learn that its an important fruit to eat. For her to teach her daughter to like something that she hates is a bad argument. Especially once her daughter gets older and learns that her mom hates bananas. I see that her intensions are good, but in the end its still a Phony Refutation. 

Week 3 Post 1: Exercise #2 pg.225

Exercise on page 225 in the text, “Critical Thinking”:

2. I’m on my to school. I left five minutes late. Traffic is Heavy. Therefore, I’ll be late for class. So I might as well stop and get breakfast.

Argument- Yes she is arguing with her self because if she wasn’t late she would of not have second thoughts of getting breakfast, but since she’s late she has more choices.

Conclusion- Since she is already late might as well satisfy her hunger.

Additional premises need? - The person did not mention any reasons why she’s late or if anything got into her way to keep her from being on time.

Identify any sub-argument - The person thought it would be okay to be late because she’s already late anyways.

Good argument? - I don’t believe this is a good argument because the person did not mention any valid reasons to be late or why he/she is late. It just made it seems like he/she didn’t care

Week 2 Post 3: Definitions

A concept that I found interesting is understanding the meaning of a definition. People get misunderstood when words are not used in the appropriate way. From the text, “Critical Thinking” I have learned how to make a definition useful and correctly. A good definition consists of having the words define the meaning of by clearly stating the word that is being defined. An example of this would be a dumbbell. There are two meanings to this. The first definition from the Webster dictionary means, “a gymnastic apparatus consisting of two wooden or metal balls connected by a short bar serving as a handle, used as a weight for exercising.” The second meaning that Webster dictionary gave me was “a stupid person.” As you can see with one word there are two meanings to it. And one is understandable meaning but the other one is a definition that would cause arguments if you called someone that. Its funny how this word “dumbbell” comes as a good example of how a single can have several definitions, a good one and a bad one. So it’s important when using a word that we make it clear to the other person what we are trying to say.

Week 2 Post 2: Valid Vs. Strong Arguments

What is a valid argument and what is a strong argument? It may sound the same but if you get into a deeper meaning of those words it has different a definition to it. Let’s start with a valid argument; in the text “Critical Thinking”, Epstein states that, “Valid argument is a valid if there is no possible way for premises to be true and its conclusion false (at the same time)”. So in other words, a valid argument is an argument where the problem or issue is false and the conclusion is true as well.  An example of it would be: “Every employee at Safeway has gotten their pay check. Erick is an employee at Safeway. So Erick has been given his tuition.” This is a valid argument because it is not possible for one to be true and the other false. It is based upon the premises being true and the conclusion being wrong. It’s a valid argument but a bad argument.

A strong argument has a true conclusion that goes with the premises being true as well. An example of a strong argument would be when my cousin sat on a long car ride to Los Angles. She said, ”Every time I sit in long car rides I get sick. I ate a good breakfast and was not sick prior to this trip. I must get motion sickness when I ride in car rides.” This is a strong argument because it brings in a significant amount of support and proof that this premises is true and linking the conclusion to be true too.

Week 2 Post 1: The Tests for an Argument

How do we know if an argument is good or not? According to the text “Critical Reading”, it shows us how to determine if an argument is good. It is based off the premises, which is the problem and the plausible, how realistic is the issue. He lists out three rules to follow. You must show that 1.) “The premises are plausible”, 2.) “The premises are more plausible than the conclusion”, and 3.) “If the argument is valid or strong” (Epstein, 42).  We need to evaluate the argument before determining is the argument is a good one. In my own opinion, I feel that you need to also have common sense when you are trying to develop an argument with someone. You can’t just say something is true when its just not valid is real life. An example would be “The sun is blue colored.” Everyone knows that that is just not real. We need a common knowledge and can’t just make up a story and claim it is correct. 

Example:

Ryan has been the lead singer in church for 10 years. Ryan has a karaoke machine at home. Therefore, Ryan must love to sing.

This argument may be true, but the conclusion may be wrong. It gives a lot of details that can define him as a good singer such as the karaoke machine or because he has been singing for such a long time. We must go through each rule to see if this is a good argument or not. 1.) The premises are plausible. True 2.) The premises are more plausible than the conclusion. False, because he might have been forced by his parents to sing at church when he was a little kid and just stuck with it because he had to. As for the karaoke machine, it might have been his parents’ machine. All these things allow us to change how was see Ryan. 3.) This is a valid or strong. True. This is a valid argument, but a bad argument because it did not pass all three rules to be considered as a good argument. 

Week 1 Post 3: Descriptive and Prescriptive Claims

Descriptive claims are vague statements. In other words, descriptive claims can also be explained as a statement of observation with no judgment of right or wrong. An example of a descriptive claim is, “Eating vegetables will keep you healthy.” This is a descriptive claim because it is a fact.

Prescriptive claims are when you are stating the obvious. In other words, prescriptive claims are when you say something “should be”. For an example, “You should eat vegetables if you want to be healthy.” This is prescriptive because we used the word “should”, which indicates the statement is a suggestion from another person.

Prescriptive claims are more often in everyday conversations because we suggest what they should do in a commanding voice. Whereas, descriptive claims are used less often because they are more of a fact. It’s more common in advertisements than in everyday conversations. Usually we use prescriptive claims without noticing because it’s in more of a demanding tone. We notice when we are using a descriptive claim because people are trying to persuade you into doing something without a commanding voice.

Week 1 Post 2: Vague Sentences

A vague sentence is like a description or a response that doesn’t have enough details to answer a question. A vague sentence is also known as an unclear sentence. Usually vague sentences cannot create a vivid picture, giving the reader no imagery of what they are trying to say.

An example of a vague sentence is when my friend told me she moved into her an apartment with her roommate and I asked, “ How did you decorate your new room?” She answered, “It’s pretty, I just added a lot of stuff on the walls.” This is a great way of showing a vague sentence because she didn’t give a good image on what her room looks like. I asked how she decorated her new room and she replied with an unclear sentence giving me a vivid picture. This causes a vague sentence because she described her room with “stuff” instead of details that create imagery. This happens in a casual conversation because when we respond to a simple question, we don’t think about the details thoroughly. Therefore, we end up giving a vague answer.

Week 1 Post 1: Subjective and Objective Claims

Richard L. Epstein and Carolyn Kernberger state that there are two different types of claim, a subjective and objective claim. A subjective claim is a type of claim that expresses truth base on someone’s belief and on his/her personal preference. It cannot be proven right or wrong. A objective claim is a claim that is factual and not based of personal beliefs. Therefore, objective claims can be proven right or wrong.

I would have to say I use subjective claims everyday. We will always choose want we prefer. For example, my hobby is to scrapbook. I find it fun and relaxing than blankly inserting them into an album. Not everyone will have patience to put scraps together or even take the time to arrange pictures. Epstein and Kernberger will call this a subjective claim because it is my own personal standard.

Objective claims are more used for impersonal standards, like what we don’t have control of, such as the law and market prices. For example, I recently rented a textbook for $60.  It wasn’t my choice to pay $60, it was the company’s choice to set the price. We are able to prove if it's right or wrong by going to the bookstore and check the price.

Hi!
I am a third year at SJSU and I'm majoring in pre-nursing. I took Comm20 my first year and that was quite an experience with public speaking. With this class, I hope to learn how to blog creatively and improve on my communication skills. This is my second online class beside my nutrition class. From my experience with online class, I really like it. I get to do everything at the comfort of my own time and home. On my free time, I like hanging out with family and friends, because they make me who I am and I love them. I also like to listen to music, watch movies and go shopping!