An important Concept

One important concept that I believe should be discussed a little bit more is the concept of "bad appealing to authority". An appeal to authority is when we accept a claim because of who said it. Bad appealing to authority is important in arguments because when people believe in bad appeal to authority they are believing in false information. Bad appeal of authority can sometimes be a claim made by someone who does not know much about the claim they are making. People usually fall for bad appeals to authority because other people believe the claim is true. The example I used in my previous blog post about bad appeal to authority was the product Airborne. Airborne is a product that is advertised to cure the common cold. This is a bad appeal to authority because everyone believes this product simply because Airborne says it works. There has been no real clinical testing to prove the claims that Airborne has made.


http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/itl/graphics/adhom/author.html

General Claims and Valid / Invalid Form of General Claim

One thing I found important in chapter 8 was that when using general claims is any argument sometimes people will use contradictory words such as “all” and “some.” These words can be used to generalize or specify an argument. An example of these contradictory words is “All students in college do their homework.” This is a weak argument because “all” means everyone without any exceptions. Not everyone in college does their homework, there must be at least one student who doesn’t do their homework. “Some students in college do their homework,” is a better argument because that would mean at least one student in college does their homework.

Another thing that I found useful in chapter 8 was the diagrams used to help explain valid and invalid forms of general claim. When creating these diagrams there are only subcategories of larger topics which can be placed in a smaller circle within the bigger circle. An example that I found helpful that was given in the book was that “all dogs are mammals.” This was shown by “dogs” was placed into a circle and around that circle was another circle which was titled “things that bark.” The “things that bark” circle was placed into an even bigger circle titled “mammals.” The “dog” circle ends up within the “mammal” circles proving that dogs are mammals.

The Usefullness of Assignment #2

For assignment #2, my group and I chose to write our paper on the American Red Cross. At first, I really knew nothing about the Red Cross except that it holds blood drives every so often and that it helps people whenever help is needed such as during Hurricane Katrina. After writing the paper and researching more about the American Red Cross, I have found out that it is so much more then just a group that holds blood drive. The American Red Cross is provides so much then what I thought. For 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, The American Red Cross provides a helping hand in the form of food, shelter, and blood. The American Red Cross is also ran mostly by volunteers who are not getting paid and are helping out of the good will of their hearts. For over a century the American Red Cross has been helping countries all over the world whenever their is a natural disaster or even a domestic disaster.

Compound Claims

A compound claim is when there is a sentence that contains two claims that are combined into one single claim. An example of a two single claims that can be combined into a compound claim are: "Joining a self defense gym teach you how to fight." and "Joining a self defense gym will help you control your anger." These two claims can be combined to make a compound claim such as "Joining a self defense gym will help you control your anger or it will teach you how to fight." Notice the word "or" in the compound claim. The two sentence from before have turned into a compound claim because joining a self defense will either do one or the other. Such as teaching someone to control their anger or helping their aggression by teaching someone how to fight. Not every sentence with two or more claims can be a compound claim though.

Chapter 7

For chapter 7, it discusses raising objections and refuting an argument. Raising objectives against an argument is a way to show that the argument is weak. An example of this is "B.J Penn is the best lightweight champion in the world." The objection to this sentence is "Both times when Frankie Edgar fought B.J Penn, Frankie was the underdog. Not only did he win both times but he also won the lightweight belt too." The objection to the argument shows that B.J Penn might not be the best lightweight fighter in the world if he lost to the same guy twice. In the text Epstein gives us 3 ways to refute an argument, "show that at least one of the premises is dubious, to show that the argument isn't valid or strong, and show that the conclusion is false." Someone can refute someone else's argument by attack the weak point in their sentences.

Chapter 6

Necessary and Sufficient Conditions
In Epstein's book it states that two claims are equivalent if both claims are true exactly when the other one is. This can be seen in a contrapositive sentence. A contrapositive sentence is if A is true then so is B, if B is not true then A is not true either. A claim and its contrapositive are alway the same. An example of this is the contrapositive of "if it is raining the the ground will be wet" is "if the ground is not wet then it is not raining." In the example the contrapositive of any true proposition is also true.

The Contradictory of A Claim
In the book it states that any compound claims are claims that are made up from other types of claims but can only be seen as one claim instead of many claims. It can get confusing to see if these type of claims are false, so a contradictory of a claim is the opposite of the original claim. An example of this type of claim is that "Tony went to the dining commons" while the contradictory or the opposite would be "Tony did not go to the dining commons."

Appeals to Authority

One concept that I found interesting from this week assignment is 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. An example of a bad appeal to authority is the product "Airborne." Airborne is a product which is advertised to cure colds and many consumers buy this product every where believing that it will treat their cold. This is a bad appeal to authority because the product Airborne is nothing more then a pseudoscience. People who took Airborne claim to have the product cure their cold, but what if they were never getting sick in the first place? The product Airborne is a bad appeal to authority because there has been no clinical testing proving that Airborne does in fact cure colds. 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.

Repairing Arguments

One major problem with any argument is that the sentence does not have the proper premises to support it's conclusion. With the Principle of Rational Discussion, we can find out how to evaluate and interpret any arguments. The three rules of the Principle of Rational Discussion are "Know about the subject under discussion, is it able and willing to reason well, and if it's not lying." (Epstein. pg 60) An example of an argument that does not have a premises that supports the conclusion is, "My sister does not have a job, so because of that she should not buy a car." This argument is weak because it needs more details to support the conclusion. To make the argument better we should add "Buying any type of car requires a job to pay for the monthly payments." For anyone to buy a car requires that person to have money, if the person does not have a job then the idea of buying a car would only be a dream if the person had no source of income. By adding in that part to the original sentence the argument becomes stronger because it is now clear why someone with no job should not buy a car.