Appeals to Emotion

Appeal to emotion is a powerful way to make an audience believe what one is trying to argue. Using appeal to emotion is a different way of approaching an argument though making an individual feel an emotion like sadness. According to Epstein, “An appeal to emotion in an argument is just a premise that says, roughly, you should believe or do something because you feel a certain way.” It is sometimes more influential to appeal to ones emotion over logic. An example of appeal to emotion would be the following:

“I just saw a commercial about abused cats and dogs. I had to turn my head away because it was so sad; I even almost started crying! I think I’m going to call and donate money to them.”

This person felt if he or she were to call the company and donate, they would be helping the animals, which they felt sad for.

Ch 8: Diagrams

In Chapter eight, we are introduced to a concept where diagrams are used to show how certain types of arguments work. These diagrams express valid and invalid forms. This was of viewing certain arguments opens up a whole other way of looking at things. This way of working out claims makes a lot more sense to me, being able to see what goes where creates more clarity in my mind.

Examples:

Strong: Football players are male. Danny is male. Therefore, Danny is a football player.

Weak: Football players are male. Danny is a football player. Therefore, Danny is male.

A diagram that expressed what the strong argument would be as follows:

Largest Circle: Male

Middle Circle: Football Players

Smallest (inside middle circle): Danny

It can be seen that all Football players are male, and Danny fits into the categories of both being male and being a football player. This visual scenario can help one see an argument in a different light!

Question 2 - major course assignment

Both of the first major assignments taught me a lot, but I definitely favored one over the other. I felt that the second course assignment was more helpful than the first course assignment. The first assignment; "Critical Thinking in News and Politics," wasn't very helpful for me. I didn't find to be all that interesting, and I wasn't very familiar with what an editorial was to begin with. The second assignment called, "Critical Thinking and Social Organizations" has been a lot more interesting. By knowing how my group operates, I've been able to judge the paper better. I also enjoyed learning more about the social organization my group chose, which was PETA. Learning about more than just the surface points that the organization is making, and actually seeing what PETA does really opened my eyes even as a vegetarian myself. Writing about news and politics doesn’t really interest me, so the flow of writing was a little more difficult for me.

Vague Generalities

Chapter eight introduces a concept that is used quite often in day-to-day life. The concept is called general claims. General claim are claims that involve words like "all" or "some." When a person used the word "all" there is a strong meaning behind it, "all" means every single one. For example if a student were to say to a teacher, "All of the people in this class hate your teaching style." This is too general, even if this student asked around and everyone said they hated his methods, regardless there may be one student who wasn't telling the truth. In this case, this claim would be false. By using the word "some" in a claim, there can be some misunderstanding of what “some” really is. For example if I were to say, some of the people I work with are getting a raise in January and only one person gets a raise, does that constitute some? Generalizing can lead to a weak and invalid argument, it’s better to use real numbers, statistics, or other solid facts when trying to make a good argument.

Ch. Six: Contrapositive

While reading chapter six under necessary and sufficient conditions, I found the concept called contrapositives interesting because it is one way to understand conditional statements a little better. Conditional claims are “if, then…” statements which ties in with contrapositive claims. The definition of a contrapositive is where a claim and its contrapositive are equal. It’s a little hard to explain, but by giving an example it’s easier to understand! As I read in the book, showing a conditional with the contrapositive is better way of understanding the concept as well. An example of a contrapositive would be the following statements:

If you failed your math exam, then you didn’t study prior.

Contrapositive: If you studied for your math exam, you passed your test.

This shows the formula If A, then B & If not A, then not B. Contrapositive statements can be a little tough to understand, but when comparing them with conditional statements one can have a better perspective.

Ch. Seven: Raising Objections

In most cases, if an argument is worded in a way that one agrees with, automatically we believe that argument is valid. This is not always the case. When raising an objection in an argument one must show that an argument is defined as bad. For instance let's say I'm trying to get you to buy a dog rather a cat.

Everyone should own a dog. 1

Dog’s are man’s best friend. 2

Dog’s can do tricks, whereas cats cannot. 3

Dogs are cuter than cats. 4

For this example none of these reasons are valid to argue that dogs are better than cats, if you are a dog owner already, you may agree with these statements. To show that this argument is dubious, one would point out that saying, “Dog’s are man’s best friend,” is just a biased statement and hold no truth. Subjective and opinionated statements do not make for a valid argument.

Ch. Six: 3. Valid and weak forms of arguments using conditionals

In chapter six, one concept stood out to me to be very commonly used in day-to-day life. This concept is called valid and weak forms of arguments using conditionals. The way this concept works as follows: If A, then B. A, therefore B. I can use an example of this concept for an incident that took place just this past weekend at my house. My roommates and I live in a townhouse that is surrounded by other town homes, in a gated community, and with a Home Owners Association. Some of the ruled the ROA pointed out to us was that if we were loud, they would file a noise complaint with our landlord. On Saturday my roommates and I invited some friends over to our house, there were several of us and we were being pretty noisy, to the point where I know the neighbors would be able to hear us. The next day one of the women on the ROA board came to our house and said she was going to file a noise complaint with our landlord. This situation follows the formula If A, then B. A, therefore B. If we were loud, the landlord would receive a noise complaint, we were loud, and therefore a noise complaint was filed.