Week 12: D2

For me I think that sign reasoning was hard to understand when I first encountered it from the previous post. As I read about it a little more, I understood the reasoning a bit more and it was pretty interesting concept.

Sign reasoning means that there are two or more things that are relatable with each other. It also means that one thing indicates something else as well because of their relationship. For example, she has a closet in her room, which means she has clothes in her room. It is sign reasoning because closet and clothes have a relationship with each other. The sign can also be status symbol, economic indicators, or other indices. It can also be an effect-to-cause reasoning. Sign reasoning is common in business, advertising, medicine, religion, law and tabloids.

There are many good examples in the website that I found. A lot the examples are explain pretty well and it gives a more relatable reference. I also learn that there are test of sign reasoning, which an also be found in the PowerPoint on the website.

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/24456511/Sign-Reasoning-PPT

Week 12: D1

Reasoning by Analogy: The reasoning is being compared.
People who do not exercise get fat. Therefore, people who do not want to get fat must exercise.

Sign Reasoning: It is reasoning with two or more things in which they are closely related that the presence or absence of one indicates the presence or absence of the other.
Where there’s restaurant, there’s food.

Causal Reasoning: It is a reasoning that establishes the presences of relationship with event The alarm clock rang but I did not get up. I slept in. When I finally woke up it was two in the afternoon. I did not go to class that day

Reasoning by Criteria: The outcome of the decisions is being judged, and then the best will be identified
I am very tired so I cannot concentrate on homework right now. I will do homework after I am done with my nap.

Reasoning by Example: The reasoning uses example.
The teacher gives hard exams and asks crazy questions. I had him before and I notice that I got better grades when I took notes from the book and studied them.

Inductive: The reasoning is constructed by observations.
The Biore pore strips can effectively pull out all my blackheads. I tried it for many years and it continues to work. I have faith that the next time I put it on it will work.

Deductive: The conclusion is true when the premises us true, making the argument valid.
All students need to read. She is a student. She needs to read.

Week 11: D3

The concept I want to talk about is apple-polishing. Apple-polishing is an appeal to vanity, trying to make something look better than what it actually might be. This happens in a lot of advertisements. They use it because they want their products to look better and be more useful than all the other products out in the market. Of course sometimes what the advertisement says is true, but most of the time it’s false. For example a lot of beauty brands has a lot of claims over what their products can do. They claim that their products give softer looking skin, longer lashes, and even reduce wrinkles. I admit some of these products do work, but most of the products do not do what it is advertising. Most of the time the claim they are making is not a good argument because the claims that they make are subjective. It can work on one person but it might not work for another person. Apple polishing is an interesting concept in arguments.

Week 11: D2

The question I choose to do is number 3. Find an advertisement that sues an appeal to fear. Is it a good argument?

This is an advertisement that talks about how drinking under the influence is bad. It prompts people not to drink and drive because it causes accidents. It shows a handicap sign and it says that “every 48 seconds, a drunk drive makes another person eligible to park here” The point of this advertisement is manipulate people to be scare of hurting other people if they chose to drink and then drive. It is scary how you can ruin someone’s life because you want to drive home even though you do not know what you are doing.

I do not think that this is a good argument because there might people that do not care if they hurt someone else. If I look at it I know I will think twice before I drive intoxicated, but not everyone is like me. . Not everyone is going to fear that they might hurt someone else. The argument can be stronger if it said something like, “every 48 seconds, a drunk driver makes him/her self eligible to park here. It will be more personal so more people will be scare that they will be the next one parking in the handicap spot.

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.