What I learned this Semester

I believe that I have learned a lot through this course throughout this semester. Throughout the course we were taught many different types of arguments and how each argument can be used successfully. I feel like all these different types of arguments will come in handy one day, I'm just waiting for the day to bust out my mad argument skills!!! I think something important I learned during this semester was the concept of "bad appeals to authority." Bad appeal to authority is when people believes in a claim made from someone else who doesn't have much knowledge on the subject. I think its really important to know about the concept of "bad appeals to authority" because by knowing what is real and what isn't we can see through all the bs in our lives. Another thing I think was important to learn was the fallacy of appealing to emotion. This fallacy can be used to manipulate peoples emotions to get them to either accept an argument.

Favorite Part / Least Favorite Part / Class Improvement

There were a lot of things that I liked about this class. This is my first online class, and I really liked how I was able to "attend class" in the comfort of my own home. I thought it was pretty cool that we were able to show how much we learned through our blog post. Another thing that I liked about blogging is that we didn't have to worry about grammar and punctuation as much as I would for other classes. Being able to read my classmates blogs was also a good thing about this class. If I needed something to supplement my learning, i would read my classmates blog to see if they knew what I didn't know.

My least favorite part was actually having to meet up with my group in person. The reason why I had to take an online class this semester was because I was to busy to go to school. This is the only real complaint of this class. I really didn't mind meeting up in person, but I felt like since this was an online class, all work should have been done over a computer / laptop.

Class Improvement - One thing that I think should be changed for next semester is the Comm 41 homepage. There are way to many blog post on the homepage which ends up lagging when trying to scroll down to see older post. There should be multiply sections on the home page instead of having all the post posted on the first page.

Chapter 14

One important concept that was discussed in Chapter 14 was the idea of "generalizing." People generalize things everyday and it is commonly used daily. Generalizing is how we use our experience to understand things that happen in our lives. What happened before will most likely happen again until we experience a change. The more we experience something, the better our generalization becomes because we have more examples to draw upon. General claims that is the conclusion is called the "generalization." Plausible premises about the sample are called the inductive reasoning. To see whether a generalization is good or not, we must look at the generalization as an argument. "Strong arguments with plausible premises will be the best since there will be the possibility that there is an exception to a generalization (Epstein pg.280)."

Example of generalizations

"La Vic's is alway busy on Friday and Saturday nights from all the college students who are trying to get a late night snack."

Generalization - Yes
Sample - Every time I have been to La Vic's at night, it is alway busy.
Population - Anyone who has gone to La Vic's on a Friday or Saturday night.

A useful concept

One concept that I found useful in chapter 15 was section 8 which is titled "criteria for cause and effect." There are necessary conditions for there to be cause and effect. In the book Epstein list six different criteria for cause and effect.

The six necessary criteria for cause and effect are;

• The cause happened (claim describing it is true).
• The effect happened (claim describing it is true).
• The cause precedes the effect.
• It is (nearly) impossible for the cause to happen (be true) and the effect not to happen (be false), given the normal condition.
• The cause makes a difference - if the cause had not happened (been true), the effect would not have happened (been true).
• There is no common cause

The reason why I found this section to be really useful was because even though the section was short, it had a lot of useful information. I think the most important criteria would be the first two because it defines any cause and effect problem.

What was useful about the Mission Critical website?

What was useful about the Mission Critical website?

There were many things that I found useful from the mission critical website that was provided. After reading through the information provided on the website, I was able to understand the subject a lot better because of all the information on the website. The website had many different parts such as "parts of an argument," "basic relations," "analysis of arguments," "fallacies and non rational persuasion," and "other common fallacies." On the mission critical website under the "parts of argument" tab, i found the information provided for statements to be very helpful. A statement or claim can be divided into a sentence that is either true or false, and a sentence that "cannot." Only a few sentences cannot be true or false. Sentences such as "just do it!" and "why not?" Statements or claims are sentences that fall under the "true or false" category. We can categorize statements by three qualities; "where they are verifiable, evaluative, or advocatory claims," "where they are specific or, if non-specific, whether the qualification strengthens or weakens the claim," and "whether they serve as conclusions, premises, or support in an argument."

What was useful about the Cause and Effect website?

What was useful about the Cause and Effect website?

There were many things that I found useful from the cause and effect website that was provided. After reading through the information provided on the cause and effect website, I was able to understand the subject a lot better. I was also able to get a better understanding of the two. The website had examples which supported and demonstrated what cause and effect were. In the website it states that there are three factors which casual argument relies on. Those three factors are; 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. Another thing I really liked from the website was the exercise that was provided. They exercise was a multiple choice exercise and they gave four different potential answers and wrote a small paragraph explaining why the wrong answers were wrong and why the right answer was right.

Criteria Reasoning

One concept that I found difficult to understand to understand want "criteria reasoning." The examples provided on my classmate blogs did help me understand the concept a lot because of all the different examples given. Criteria reasoning is when you place a criteria in a statement that will make it seem more valid and accurate. One should start be looking at the criteria by how the outcome of the decision by judged. I had the hardest time trying to find an example for criteria reasoning in my first post for this week because I did not understand criteria reasoning that well. The example that I used in my previous post was how employers look at certain criteria's on your resume when you apply for a job. They look for certain things such as your education level, your previous work experience, and other activities. Employers look at certain criteria to fill the position that they are currently hiring for.