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.

Evaluating an Analogy

In chapter 12, Epstein goes into further details on evaluating if an analogy is good. Not just any reasoning by analogy is considered as a good argument. There are 7 rules to the evaluation. 1. Is this an argument? What is the conclusion? 2. What is the comparison? 3. What are the premises? (one or both sides of comparison) 4. What are the similarities? 5. Can we state the similarities as premises and find a general principle that covers the two sides? 6. Does the general principle really apply to both sides? Do the differences matter? 7. Is the argument strong or valid? Is it good? A good analogy that Epstein made that I find really interesting. “We don’t blame firemen for fires. Firemen and fires are like soldiers and wars. Therefore, we should not blame soldiers for war.” At first glance, I would say it is a very strong argument, but Epstein analyzed it into further detail and the big difference is, “Without firemen there would still be fires. Without soldiers there wouldn’t be any wars.” That is to say without soldiers at all for any country then there wouldn’t be any organized aggression from one country to another country and there wouldn’t be any war.

Causal Reasoning

One concept that I was not really clear is Causal Reasoning. In my opinion, causal reasoning is trying to find a relationship among two events and comparing their cause and effect to prove that one event was causing the other event’s occurrence. For example, a whole forest fire started from an unknown fire source. If investigation were found that the source was from a smaller fire started from a camping site started from a small explosion from a small gas tank. In-depth investigation was that it was started from the negligence of some campers who did not care about putting out their camping fire and their unsafe usage of the fire pit by leaving it on with the gas tank near it with branches and dry leaves near the fire place. Causal reasoning is pointing out that the cause of the whole forest fire was due to the negligence of those campers who started the smaller fire which causes the smaller explosion and started the whole forest fire.

Reasoning by Analogy

Reasoning by Analogy is using information from a particular subject and transferring it to another subject with similar attributes to generalize the second subject with the first subject. An example of this would be: My sister and her friend, Kim likes to jog every Sunday morning. Today is Sunday and my sister said she is going out for a jog. Kim should be jogging with her.

Sign Reasoning: If all dogs like to chase cats. Spot is a dog; Spot must like to chase cats.

Causation Reasoning: Cause and effect reasoning of one event correlating to another event. Studying or doing homework would help get higher score on quizzes and test. Kim studied for her midterm so it is no wonder she got high grade on your midterm.

Reasoning by Criteria: Who do you think is the best candidate for the position? Let’s discuss what we want in the candidate.

Reasoning by Example: You should be careful not to that. I just got burned touching that earlier.

Deductive Reasoning: All humans want to be happy. Tom is a human. Tom wants to be happy.

Inductive reasoning: Fish can’t survive without water. That fish just jumped out of the pond and onto the ground. It won’t survive very long now.

More on Appeals to Emotion

In addition to the appeals I mentioned in my last discussion, there are appeal to loyalty, appeal to prejudice, appeal to spite, appeal to authority, appeal to common belief, appeal to common practice, appeal to indirect consequences, and appeal to wishful thinking. All of these have several other names to them but its general definition is still the same. When using these appeals in your argument, you should be careful not to misdirect the appeal to the wrong audience. For instance, you don’t want to appeal to someone who has always been a rebel to take up your appeal to common belief do you? Nor do you want to appeal a case about home decoration to someone who is the authority of science, right? This is why it is important of knowing where to apply your emotional appeals to the right recipients in order for it to be more emotional.

Appeal to Emotion

Being able to use appeal to emotion in one’s argument would certainly help in one’s endeavor into convincing others to one’s reasoning. “An appeal to emotion can be an argument with a prescriptive conclusion can be good or can be bad.” There are several types of appeals to emotion, and being an emotional person myself, I find appeal to fear, appeal to pity, and appeal to spite are the ones that strike me to most. I often find myself being persuaded into doing things or not doing things out of fearing the consequences of my actions or inactions. As for appeal to pity, I have a hard time saying no to someone who is in need of help even if it is from a person who has wronged me more than one occasion before. As for appeal to vanity, I’m more vulnerable to be persuaded by an attractive individual of the opposite sex, and jealous of the individual of the same sex. This chapter was certainly interesting to learn. My appeal to authority of this course, Professor Perez: I hope there would be a couple of questions on example of the types of emotional appeal. :0)

Appeals to Fear

I wanted to use this week’s assignment and the advertisements I found concerning climate change to not only compel reader’s interest out of fear but to really get them piqued by the seriousness of it becoming more apparent all around the world. We may be blessed with our great weather in the United States, especially California, but there are places that are on the opposite end of the luck meter that are experiencing serious effects of climate change like: flood, drought, and extreme cold and heat weather that can be fatal to people. All of these may seem like dreadful catastrophic weather, but it is actually just a preliminary to how much worse it can really be when climate change is in its no-return phase. Just like the advertisement said, we could have prevented it but we didn’t. Please don’t let this become a reality for your future or the future of our later generations. Conserve, recycle, and find out more information of what you can do to make a difference. It doesn’t need to be in monetary value, I find the best way is to convey the seriousness of it to those around to spread the words so we can make an impact in the ways we consume and dispose the resources that we take for granted.