Topic #3

There are several more topics I feel we need to discuss further. One of them is appeal to emotion. I feel if we learn more about this and do more practices on them we would all become so much better in persuading or conveying our feelings toward others. For example, if you trying to persuade a judge in an appeal then you should most definitely know how to appeal to pity or to his sense of justice if you felt you were wronged. Being able to know how to use these appeals to emotion not only helps you in persuading others but it can also be used to protect yourself from being targeted by them as well. For instance, a lot of advertisements campaign for politics use appeal to fear to getting you to do what they want. Being able to recognize it would help you to make the right choice in voting instead of being manipulated by them.

Topic #2

My most favorite part about the class is the blogging. In a way, it is good practice in improving your writing and your ability to express your understanding of the topic discussed in that week. Being able to explain it in writing would also improve your understanding of the topic. It is also fun to read others blogs and clarity might sometimes come from your classmates’ explanation rather than the book. The least favorite part about the class is the quizzes. The thing I don’t like about the quizzes is that they are kind of hard and I could not get to see what I got wrong so that I could study what I missed. From what I saw from the 1st exam and 2nd exam, there were some questions that I know I could have gotten right if I knew if I answered it right the first time, because I answered them the same the 2nd time around. If we could see what we got wrong after the quizzes ended it would help us improve our score on them a lot.

Topic #1

What I learned from Comm41 this semester is to be able to critically analyze and decide if the claims on the topic I’m reading about have validity to them. I learned to be able be less ambiguous and more ambiguous in my own statements depending on how I want my claims to be perceived by the audience. I learned how to use reasoning and its multiple forms such as causal reasoning, sign reasoning, reasoning by example, and inductive or deductive reasoning. Another thing I learned how to make my statement or claims to be stronger is appealing to the emotion of my readers. Appeal to fear is using the readers’ fear to compel them to take or not take action toward whatever you wanted with your claim. Appeal to vanity is a huge tool used by marketing towards their audience to manipulate the audience to buying their advertised products in order to look as good as the image they used in their advertisement.

More on Cause and Effect

The textbook goes into further detail on analysis on cause and effect. It talks about: how to look for the cause, cause and effect in populations – controlled experiment: cause-to-effect, uncontrolled experiment: cause-to-effect, and uncontrolled experiment: effect-to-cause. In looking for a cause and if there are conjecture possible causes then by experiment eliminate them until there is only one left. Check that one: Does it make a difference? If that cause is eliminated, is there still the effect? Could there be a common cause? Cause in populations is explained as given the cause, the effect would have a higher probability in happening. In a controlled experiment: cause-to-effect, we tested the same number at random for the cause and see what the effect would be. For uncontrolled experiment, we just take random testing to see the cause-to-effect would be like. For uncontrolled experiment: effect-to-cause, we start with the effect in the population and try to account what the cause was. It was interesting to learn how to isolate cause and effect and sometimes it turn out there are multiple causes that finding the cause would be too difficult to find the only cause for certain events.

Mission Critical Website

Wow, I have to say this website is awesome. Just reading the whole thing would probably cover half of the contents in the course and prepare you with a sound reasoning and critical thinking ability to improve your persuasive and analysis skill. The website was split into 3 sections. The first one is the Basics on Parts of an Argument and the Basic Relations of Conjunction and Disjunction of Arguments. For the Basic Parts of Statements or Claims, the author went into details on its general definition of qualified claims and specific claims. It also went into further details on knowing the difference between statements of verification, evaluation, and advocacy. Verifiable claims are those that can be confirmed either by observation or by reference to established sources, such as books. Evaluations are claims of taste and interpretation. Opinions can be expressed sometimes as statements of verification and sometimes as statements of evaluation. Advocatory claim describes what ought to have been or ought to be. Just going over this alone is already so helpful for prep with the course. The contents were fairly understandable and the exercises help with clearing any confusion with some of the definitions.

Cause and Effect Website

The cause and effect website was helpful in understanding the cause and effect argument until it got into detail about reverse causation and post hoc reasoning. For reverse causation, they are arguments that have the effect before the cause. For post hoc reasoning, they are arguments whose only proof of causation is that the effect followed the cause. I had to read it a third time and still I’m not certain if I grasp it completely. What I got was that these two are fallacious arguments? Apart from that little hurdle, the other parts and example were fairly easy to understand. I got the exercises correct and to be honest, I thought I understood cause and effect arguments until reading the website. The website actually made it a bit more confusing than the book. Although the book is longer than the website, the content was fairly easy to understand and the examples in them was fun to read, too.