Week 11: D1

Appeal to emotion in an argument is used to manipulation of how someone feels to win the argument. There are different types of emotions that one can appeal to; pity, fear, and spite. I think the appeal to pity is interesting because it is very relatable for me. A lot of charity does this in their campaigns. I see many ads on television where they play animals that are sick, dying and alone and they tell the viewers that they can help these animals by paying money towards their organization. This appeal makes someone feel bad or sorry and that there are ways for that someone to help out. I have to admit that there are countless times when I did want to donate to these organizations because I felt bad. It was also appealing because it did not cost me too much money to help out. Also I feel like because I am a girl, emotions are easy to manipulate, especially with having pity for other things and people. I believe that out of all the emotions, the appeal to pity is the most successful in a lot of arguments.

Week 9: D3

Again in Chapter 8, I find that Vague Generalities is pretty interesting. It kind of goes in line with what I talked about earlier this week with General Claims and their Contradictories. A lot of times people do argue with vague words. Words like all, almost, most, few and some come up. These words are considered as numbers, but without exactly giving out a real number. Since these words do not give us a precise number in the argument, the argument will be invalid because it is too vague to be used in a claim. By not having a precise number it does not give a lot of credibility to the argument. It is hard to prove that a claim with “all” and “some” to be true. “Almost all” is another version of “all” which has a very weak reasoning. It might be easier to put words like “all”, “some” and “few” in an argument to make a point, but it would not be strong. So next time you argue with someone make sure your argument is precise to its last detail and you will have a good, strong, and valid claim.

Week 9: D2

The first major course assignment was rather interesting and was helpful to me. It gave be a better understanding at what we were learning because we were applying it to our daily lives. We read news articles almost everyday and most of the articles are very opinionated. I was able to see what the claim was and how the author supported the main claim of the article. This assignment was useful because I can now clearly read articles and break down what the author is trying to point out and I can critique if he has a strong or weak argument. It makes me think about if I really believe in what they are trying to convince me of thinking. For example from my assignment, in which the claim was that “we need to remember what happen on September 11 because the moments spent with our children are what get us through the memory of bad days”, there were a lot of supports that the author gave for this claim. His claims were good and it almost made me believe that his claim was strong. When I broke down this article for the assignment I saw that there were a lot of holes in his argument, which made it weak. From this assignment, it encouraged me to look at a claim and break down what the author is trying to say before I agree or think that the claim is strong.

Week 9: D1

I find that in Chapter 8 general claims and their contradictories is pretty useful. A lot of arguments seem valid but it really is not when you break it down. Sometimes it happens because of the wording that is being use in the argument. The words “some” and “all” in a claim can be ambiguous. “All” means that it is “every single one, no exceptions” but sometimes all can mean “every single one, and there is at least one.” The word “some” means “at least one” but it sometimes also means “at least one, but not all.
I attended a private high school, which also meant that I had to wear uniform. My school was picky as we can only wear a certain brand of uniform. If we did not wear that certain brand we were given referrals because it was not considered uniform. At times this sentence is thrown into conversations, all the students in my high school were uniform. The contradictory of will be, some students do not wear uniform. This is because a lot of students like me wore “fake uniform”, which means that our uniform was from another brand.

WEEK 7: D3

I thought the conditionals and their contradictories in chapter 6 was an interesting topic to talk about. I hear examples of this in everyday conversations with my friends and co-workers. A conditional claim is a claim that that can be rewritten as a “if…then…” claim holds the same truth-value. It is basically “If antecedent, then consequent”. An example of the concept would be “ If I work out then I will be in shape”. The conditional was “I work out” and the consequent was “ I will be in shape”.
The contradictory of the conditional is when if A then B, has contradictory A but not B. For example, I ran but I did not get in shape”. One important thing about this is which the contradictory of a condition is not another conditional. Also something to remember, “even if” does not make it conditional.
I thought this part of the lesson was not too hard to understand but it was hard to explain.

Week 7: D2

Chapter 7 talks about counter arguments and the concept that I pick to talk about is raising objections. Raising objection can show how an argument is bad. It can question the premises, show the unstated premise is dubious and can illustrate how the argument is weak. This happens because people like to challenge to sustain the argument. A lot of people raise objections in the argument. In order to have a good argument, you must think about the counter arguments that the audience might have. This will help you find better support to your premises and be able to convince your audience to agree with you.

This is a common conversation that I hear every now and then amongst my friends.

1: I need to go shopping.
2: You just went shopping last week
1: But that was a long time ago and I need new clothes this week.
2: You already brought a lot of clothes last week. Do you even have money to buy new clothes?
1: not really.
2: then you do not need new clothes cause you don’t have money for it anyways.
1: I guess I won’t go then.

In this conversation 2 people are discussing whether speaker 1 will go shopping. Speaker 2 questions the premises of speaker 1 needing to go shopping. Speaker 1 doesn’t have much of a good support to the premises, therefore loses in the argument and shopping is no longer an option.

Week 7: D1

The concept that I will be talking about is compound claims. A compound claim consists of two or more claims that can be view as just one claim. The claims are and can be attached by words like “or”. I also believe that compound claims can confuse people, making people think there are more than one claims in the argument, when there really is only one.

These types of claims are seen in everyday life and argumentation. An everyday example would be this “Either I will do my homework today or I will do my homework tomorrow ”. I normally hear this around my friends during the school year. The speaker did not exactly say when they would do the homework, only the thought of when the homework should be done. Even though the speaker states a compound claim, it only has one claim in the statement. The claim is to when the homework is going to get done, just one idea thrown out for the audience.