Further discussion

A concept which I feel needs further discussion are fallacies. Our book talks about many kinds of different fallacies. I however feel that it does not go into enough depth and can even be a little confusing. What I mean by confusing is that some of the examples used in the book are not clear enough. i therefore wanted to use this assignment to make more research on what the different fallacies all are and how they can come in handy.
I found this website: http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~kak7409/fallacies.html
The website provides a definition for every kind of fallacies and uses examples for each one which were i thought, cleared than the ones in our book. The website goes over Ad Hominem fallacies, fallacies of false cause, straw man fallacies, appeal to ignorance, appeal to emotion, etc.
Overall I feel that the website really helped me understand what the different fallacies are and how to use them. The book also goes over the different kinds of fallacies but does it in a very unorganized way. The different fallacies are all over the place which makes it harder to fully understand what their differences and meanings are.

Assignments

The main thing I learned from both the assignments we have been assigned in this class is how to communicate and work well with group members. I learned that it can be very hard to schedule a meeting according to everyone's schedules. However, my group members were all very understanding which made it very easy to communicate and organize ourselves. It has also been a good experience to get to know people online and then meet in person. These assignments also taught me how to be more responsible as other people depend on my work as well. It also taught me how to be organized and make sure my work was turned in on time.
The second assignment was also really interesting. My group decided to work on the Red Cross which I thought was one of the most interesting organizations out there. The assignment was really interesting and enriching.
Overall, I felt that the assignments were very helpful because not only were they about interesting topics, they also taught me a lot about organization and communication.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8 talks about general claims using words such as: all, some, no, and only.
One thing I learned about chapter 8 is what a direct way of reasoning is. An example of a direct way of reasoning with "all" for example would be: "All cats eat cat food. Ginger is a cat. So Ginger eats cat food." Now arguing backwards with "all" would turn the argument into: "All cats eat cat food. Ginger eats cat food. So Ginger is a cat." The argument is then weak. An argument with "no" for example would be: "All cats eat cat food. No dog is a cat. So no dog eats cat food."
Chapter 8 also explains how to reason with an argument by using diagrams. I felt that the diagrams were really helpful and made it clearer to understand the argument.
Chapter 8 was I thought pretty easy to understand and the examples used were very clear and helpful.

Conditional Claim

One of the topics I found interesting in our reading this week was the topic of conditional claims. As the book states, "a claim is a conditional if it can be rewritten as an "if... then..." claim that must have the same truth-value."
An example of a conditional claim would be: "If you clean your room before noon today then you will get to go to the party tonight." In this specific claim, there is no promise that the person will get to go to the party. It is a conditional promise; meaning that IF the person cleans their room before noon, they will therefore get to go to the party.
I found this specific topic to be really interesting because it was pretty easy to understand and most of us tend to use conditional claims a lot. My older brother for example used to use this kind of claims with me all the time. He would for example tell me "if you do not tell mom and dad that I went out tonight then I will give you a ride to your friend's house tomorrow."

2 things I learned from chapter 7

One of the things I learned from chapter 7 is how to raise objections and why it is important to do so. Raising an objection is used to demonstrate that an argument is either weak or dubious. For example yesterday, my ice skating partner made this argument: "We should skate to this kind of music, because everyone likes rap these days." My coach however raised an objection by saying "I actually do not like rap. Moreover, your choreography will not work to rap rhythm." My coach raised an objection to show that my partner's argument was weak.
Another thing I learned from chapter 7 is how to refute an argument. In our book, it gives us three ways of refuting an argument. First, "show that at least one of the premises is dubious," second, "show that the argument isn't valid or strong," and third, "show that the conclusion is false." Here is an example of how to refute an argument; "I really want good french fries. But the ones my mom makes are not good. Therefore I am going to go to the only good place that makes good french fries; mcdonalds." As I am sure most of you guys would agree, it is very easy to refute this argument. One could first argue with the premises and say that first of, the french fries made by my mom are in fact really good. One could also argue with the conclusion and say that mcdonalds does not make the best french fries. This argument is very easy to refute because not only is the conclusion false, but the premises are also not valid.

2 things I learned from chapter 6

Chapter 6 talks about compound claims; what they are, how to use them, etc.
The first thing I learned from this chapter is what a compound claim actually is. The book's definition of a compound claim is, "A compound claim is one composed of other claims, but which has to be viewed as just one claim." An example of a compound claim would be "I'll call you by 2'o'clock today or I'll come over to your house." We therefore have one claim, and not two. In this specific kind of claims, the one word that links the two claims and turns them into one claim is the word "or."
The second thing I learned from chapter 6 is what false dilemmas are. The book's definition of false dilemmas is "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."" What this means is that sometimes, people make bad arguments because one or both of their claims are invalid. For example, "You're either getting rid of this couch, or we are getting rid of your cat!" This is a false dilemma and therefore, the argument is not good.

"Eh, who is he to make this argument?!"

All day I was thinking of a concept from the readings that I found interesting and wanted to blog about and could not figure one out until I got done with my ice skating practice. In our reading, the author talked about a concept in which an argument is not taken seriously because of the person who made it. During my practice, one of the assistant coach told me that i needed to put more weight on my right leg while making a move or I would eventually end up hurting myself or my partner. I was in a bad mood and and did not give him a response. I instead gave him a head nod and skated away. My partner then skated over to me and said "who cares, he's just the assistant coach. His comments don't matter." Now had it been my coach who had made this specific argument, my partner would not have doubted his argument and would not have commented on it. I then automatically thought about the reading and remembered it. Sometimes people, like my partner, tend to overlook an argument because of the person who made it. In this specific case, my partner did not think of the argument to be important because of the person who made it. It is therefore important to make a clear distinction between who makes the argument and what it is about.