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.

Reasoning by Analogy

Out of all the different types of reasoning given to us this week, I thought reasoning by analogy was a little difficult to get a grasp on. To solve this problem, I typed in "reasoning by analogy" into google, and found a great website that explained it fairly well. They define reasoning by analogy as "A is like B" or "X is similiar to Y". Seeing how reasoning by analogy can be broken into such simple parts really helped me to understand the concept. The site also stated that reasoning by analogy was simply another form of inductive reasoning, which also made it easier to grasp the concept because all I had to do was look at some inductive reasoning examples to really understand it better. I was glad this discussion question pushed us to do a little more research because now I feel I have a much better understanding of reasoning by analogy. All I have to do is fill in the blanks, like in the "A is like B" example!

Different Types of Reasoning (Real world examples)

Reasoning by analogy- You have to pay a toll to cross the bridge in a car. Bob is planning on driving across the bridge. He will have to pay a toll.

Sign Reasoning- Green means go, red means stop!

Casual Reasoning- I was late for my interview. This made me look like an irresponsible worker. Therefore I was not hired.

Reasoning by Criteria- Bob wants a new, flashy sports car. Will this BMW do?

Reasoning by Example- You want a well balance and quick sports car that still offers some levels of class and comfort? You should try a BMW M3! Alan has one and said that its the best car he's ever driven!

Inductive- Wow that liquor store is great! It's open 24/7 every day, even holidays! Anytime I stop by to buy something, I know it'll be open!

Deductive Reasoning- These finger prints belong to Bob. Bob's finger prints were found on the murder weapon. Bob is the killer!

3. Number 4 on Chapter 10 Exercises

4. Make an appeal to emotion for the next time a traffic officer stops you.

This really caught my eye as I was reading through the section because of how funny and true the fact is that many people will try to appeal to a police officer's emotion in order to get out of a ticket. I know if I got pulled over I would say pretty much anything to possibly make him more lenient, and hopefully out of a ticket. For example, If I got pulled over for speeding, and I knew I was definitely at fault, then I would probably say something along the lines of: "Sorry officer! I had to rush home because of a family emergency!" My hope in saying this is that the officer probably was in the same situation before and would understand my need to drive slightly faster. Either this or he would feel sorry for me and let me be on my way home to attend to my "emergency."

Appeal to Emotion

An appeal to emotion is basically an argument that affects you emotionally, meaning that it tries to influence you to think a certain way based on what they think you should feel. These kinds of arguments can be bad sometimes, but appealing to your emotion really makes you think its for a good cause.

Appeal to pity is a type of appeal to emotion and is the one that strikes me the most in my opinion. This applies when it is a situation in which you feel bad or sorry for someone. A common example I always see is TV commercials in which an organization or foundation shows that hardships of little kids in poverty. They usually ask for help or donations, which they say will all go to helping the kids. This kind of appeal to emotion actually affect me a lot because every time I see one of those commercials, I'll feel like donating some money, which I have in a few occasions.