Appeal to Emotion

The specific appeal to emotion that really caught my interest was the appeal to spite because I never considered it to be a type of fallacy or an appeal to emotion. Appeal to spite is when someone tries to win an argument by bring up a past event that cause them bitterness or spite. This causes a poor argument because more than likely the two situations are unrelated. I see this fallacy multiple times a day especially in today’s world where it seems like we always have to be even with each other. It goes back to an old saying two wrongs do not make a right. This is more a moral judgment than an argument. An example I see frequently is at my work when someone needs their shift covered. The reasoning is always Alex didn’t cover my shift on Friday night so I will not help him do the inventory count. This is something I am now aware of and am going to limit the appeal to spite in my reasoning.

Oct 17th-22nd Question 3

Another aspect of chapter eight I found interesting the general claims and their contradictions. A general claim is when something is asserted in a general way is stated about a collection. For example all sorority girls are blonde, Jen is a sorority girl so Jen must be blonde. This may seem valid but it is not. Girls in sororities have different hair color and are not all blonde. All means every single one with no exceptions and I think people need to use this word more carefully when stating a claim. When using the word “some” it means a least one but not all and is a really vague word to use in an argument because it is not a specific number. The word “no” means not a single one with no exceptions and needs to be sure when inserted into an argument that exceptions can not be made.

Oct 17th-22nd Question 2

One Aspect of chapter 8 that I found interesting was valid and invalid forms. I really liked the way the book showed it in the validity diagram because it made it easy to see why the arguments are strong or weak. The direct way of reasoning with all is a strong argument because If all squirrels eat nuts, Joey is a squirrel, so Joey eats nuts. If you do this backwards All squirrels eat nuts, Joey eats nuts, so Joey is a squirrel. This is arguing backwards with all. A personal example I have with this is at San Jose State University for my classes. My advisor said: You are a design major so you take art history classes so next semester you need to take art history classes next semester. This would not work with indirect reasoning with all because it would be I need to take art history classes so I am a design major so I need to take art history classes next semester. This could be true but with indirect reasoning there are many other reasons why I could be taking an art history class.

Oct 17th-22nd Question 1

The second assignment was very helpful to me because I made me understand the way businesses and organizations advertise themselves and how they get people to understand what they do. This helped me understand why we learned about fallacies and reasoning because it showed me how it is used in the real world versus a definition or example sentence in a book. It shows how using fallacies can really persuade someone a certain way or twist what is really going on. I also realized a lot of organizations use appeal to emotion to get their point across to people and make them feel sorry so therefore they donate or will pay more attention to the message. I also never noticed how much different types of claims are used until I did this assignment. In so many places around campus I see examples of proof substitutes, and innuendos. Such as in Clark it says come get help with your writing from a trained specialist, they give not proof of where this “specialist” is from or what credibility they have.

Chapter 7

One aspect of chapter 7 that I learned a lot from is the section on raising objectives. This got my attention because after giving an argument and agreeing with the statement it is irrational to say an argument is good and then deny its conclusion. This is a simple way to show an argument is bad. By showing an argument is bad we can either question a premise, show that an unstated premise is questionable or gives an example of why the argument is weak. This method also makes you have a stronger argument because after you write your argument and think of someone objecting to it, you can see where you can make improvements. The other aspect of chapter 7 that goes along with raising objectives is refuting arguments directly. You can refute an argument directly by showing one of the premises can be objected to, giving examples of how the argument is invalid or showing that the conclusion is false.

Chapter 6

One thing I learned in Chapter 6 that I found really interesting was how a false dilemma in an “or” situation was explained. This happens a lot in everyday conversation because a false dilemma is a bad use of excluding possibilities where the “or” claim is false or implausible. This is because in a statement such as “You can either go to collage or move out of the house.” This is an example of a false dilemma because there are many other options that are not explained in the argument, which makes for a bad and weak argument. The second idea that I found interesting in chapter 6 is conditional claims. This is a claim that can be written as an “if/then” claim and still have the same truth-value. It is still possible to have an “if/then” claim without having the actual words in it. This is when a statement is a conditional because you do not separate the if then statements and a premise and a answer but just as one statement.

Week 5 Question 3

What I found interesting in the reading this week was from Epsion's book in chapter 5 was common mistakes in evaluating the premise. Examples of this are arguing backwords when you state the conclusion and the premise must be true because the conclusion is true. Another example is bad appeals to authority which is when you believe something is true just because a person of higher power or authority stated it. The most common one however is mistaking the perosn for a claim or mistaking the argument for the claim which is when your reject the argument and/or the claim just because a certain person said it. I see this done in everyday conversation because we judge people by their past chocies and ideas, but that doesn't mean we should disregaurd what they say because even if we disagree with someone we can still get another view of an argument.