Generalizing

According to the book, generalizing basically means concluding a claim about a group from a claim about some part of it. I found this interesting because they way the book describes it, generalizing is something we do everyday and is how we "make sense of our world". In short, generalization are arguments, so they follow the same rules of whether or not an argument is strong, which is if it has a plausible premise. I liked the example the book used which was "28% of all smokers get cancer." This is a generalization based off findings by poll takers or scientists, and shows that it is something we always see in everyday life. Any time you watch the news, numbers and percentages are always used. These are generalizations! We use them pretty much everyday to help us make decisions. For example you could say: "It's raining really hard today, I should slow down when driving or I could lose control like last time or like many others who have sped in the rain!"

What was your favorite thing about this class? What was your least favorite thing about this class? How can this class be improved?

My absolute favorite thing about this class was how I was able to work on the classwork at my own pace. This was really helpful because I work graveyard shift, so its nice to have some flexibility in one of my classes. I also liked that every week, all the information was pretty much laid out in a neat and organized manner. That definitely helped me stay on task! Good job professor Perez!

My least favorite thing would be the 12 hour post restriction! I know it is set in place to prevent procrasination, but it is definitely a pain, especially when you wait till the last minute. I found that some weeks I would have to carefully lay out my posts in order to meet the time limit on my final post.

Overall, this class has been great. All the assignments, tests, and group projects are fair, so I honestly can't think of anything to improve on!

What I learned over the semester.

Over the course of the semester, I have learned a ton of things, ranging from whether or not an argument is good or not to all the different type of fallacies. As a whole though, I think this class has definitely allowed me to become a much better critical thinker, in the sense that I can much better break down arguments or points out flaws in them. Not only can I now more efficiently point out weak points in arguments, I can also in turn make repairs by adding more or removing something to make it stronger. One thing I learned in particular that I found really useful was the different types of appeal to emotion. When reading about it, it was amazing to see how it was so commonly used in everyday life by pretty much everyone. In some way, shape, or form, you have probably appealed to someone's emotion before, so its great to be able to identify this when it arises!

Chapter 15

Reading through chapter 15, I found the section on "Two mistakes in evaluating cause and effect" to be the most interesting and useful because it was something that if I understood fully, would help me identify and break down cause and effect relationships later on. The two mistakes are reversing cause and effect and looking to hard for a cause.

The text gave a really great example for reversing cause and effect. Tom believed members joined an ecology group first, which then made them begin to rant and rave about a project to log on the forest. This is wrong because people don't join and then have those thoughts put into them. They are actually concerned with those kinds of issues even before they join.

The next mistake is looking to hard for a cause. The book uses quite a humorous example of Zoe belching loudly in the shower, which she believes made spot, their dog, run away. Its these instances where it seems like they aren't really thinking through the other possibilities, but rather trying too hard to find one!

Mission Critical Website

I really liked the Mission Critical site. All of the info is laid out in a way that it is extremely easy to find what you are looking for. Also browsing through the links gave me a ton of information about the different topics such as parts of an argument and all the different kinds of fallacies. Each section is also provided with an exercise that you can do to help you understand the topic better, which I thought was really useful because it is something you can practice on for the final. One thing that popped up in the previous exercise that I have never heard of before was "post hoc reasoning". Lucky for me, the Mission Critical website had a link explaining all about it. It is basically a falacy that states that "A preceeds B, therefore A caused B". Having it laid out in a simple manner like that really helped me to understand it, which is why I will definitely be reffering back to this site when it comes time to study for the final!

Cause and Effect

The cause and effect website was very useful in my opinion because of the example it used. The example of  how the bike swerved to avoid an illegally parked truck, but then caused an accident made it a lot easier to understand, because this is something that we can easily relate to. The example also went on to give more premises, which could actually change the cause of the accident, which was really interesting to me because of how one little thing could completely change the cause.

The site was also useful because it gave us a clear cut way to see the strength of a causal argument, which were:
1. How acceptable or demonstrable the implied comparison is.
2. How likely the case for causation seems to be.
3. How credible the "only significant difference" or "only significant commonality" claim is.

Using these three factors, one is able to judge the strength of a causal argument. Once the strength is measured, one will be able to easier make a decision on the cause, which is helpful in cases such as the one the example laid out.

Analogies in the Law

Reading through chapter 12, I came upon the section "Analogies in the Law". It caught my attention because the law is something I encounter on a day to day basis, and has the potential to affect my life tremendously if I were to make a wrong decision, so I continued reading on to see how analogies could be applied with the law. According to the book, most analogies are not detailed enough to be used as good arguments, but in the law's case, they are very detailed arguments, with similiarities and general principles being clear cut. Judges must know the similiarities in analogies in order to make the correct decision based on what past judges have ruled. When a judge feels the need to make a completely different decision that goes against past rulings, then he must find the differences between that case and the other. Once he finds those differences, he can make his new decision.