last post! concept from any chapter

Something that I feel we should have gone over more in class was the idea of cause & effect. I think that this was one of the more difficult concepts to grasp in class, and I felt that the textbook or web supplements should have gone further into detail about explaining it. Many of us understand the idea of “Cause & effect”, but the book went into detail much more that what most people associate with that phrase. I feel that maybe visual diagrams would have helped out more. Actually, I felt that charts would have significantly improved the textbook. Many ideas seemed confusing at first and I had to physically draw them out in order to understand them. The Cause & effect portion of our class had so much material, not to mention web supplements, that it might have just seemed intimidating at first, but after reading some other blogs on here, it really seemed to make sense.

ch 14

I enjoyed the chapter on generalizing. I feel that this is something people around me do often, and I feel that it often leads to bad consequences. Generalization is very closely related with stereotyping, and such generalized has led to incidents like the holocaust various genocides. While they are obviously very rare cases, they happened as a result of generalization. The section of this that I appreciated the most if the section on sampling. I think often peoples people look at statistics and do not look at all the aspects that go into a statical graph. People need to know there is a major difference between “random sampling” and “Representative sampling”. Knowing these terms, and understanding ideas such as variation and risk, allow citizens to make informed decisions when reading statistics. Companies often try to deceive people by using misleading stats and charts, and there are very few (if any) laws in place to prohibit this business practice.

posting-lessons learned in class

Over the course of this semester I learned that arguments can be analyzed extremely in depth. Last semester, I took a SJSU argument and debate class last semester, and I thought that taught us how to analyze arguments. I had no idea that that was just barely the basis of it. We leaned various tools that help us examine each and every aspect of a statement in depth. I particularly liked the sections of fallacies, and I felt it was beneficial to get a clear explanation of each one along with various examples. I also felt another valuable aspect that I learned this semester is the idea of strong/valid arguments. I feel that knowing the difference between a strong , weak, valid, and invalid argument. I liked not only the extensive amount of examples they used to try to explain it to you, but also the charts they used to outline which is which. Overall, I was surprised how useful, comprehensive, and entertaining the textbook was.

Posting 3

The mission critical site is a great addition to our current textbook. When I saw the link, I assumed it related to cause/effect as that is what we are studying. I was surprised to see that it is rather an overview of many if not all topics we have learned in this class. I feel that it is a great addition to the textbook, but not a replacement for it. The textbook gives an in depth explanation as if it was someone's first time learning about communication studies, and this is an excellent review tool. I like how in depth this website gets about deconstructing every single part of the argument, but turns chapters and chapters of information into a few pages. I feel that many people in the class will sell their textbook, so this is something we all should bookmark and return to at a later date in case we need to review something from this class. I liked the quizzes, but it was not the questions that struck me as interesting, but rather the detailed answers as to what the answer is.

Post 2

While we were given a web site specifically adding more to our cause
and effect discussion, I particularly enjoyed the sections of our
book dealing speciifically with finding a cause. In many sitatiions,
pinpointing an exact reason for why something happens can be very
diffucult. There seems to be cause/effect chains that come into play
and the cause is not always clear. I liked how on page 318, the book
instructs us to use a scientific method to find the cause of
something. We are told to “conjecture possible causes, then by eliminate them until there is only one”. This is an idea
that I will try to use in my day to day life. I liked the examples they used in this chapter. I felt like this chapter really went in depth, and I am not sure if the rest of the class agress with me but I felt that there were certain topics that
the book briefly covered but left me confused. However, reading other
peoples posts on the the blogs helped me understand key topics.

posting

I enjoyed reading about the cause and effect situations on the web site. The scenario with the car made me think quite a bit about what the law would decide in that given scenario. It is certainly a chain reaction, and who would hold responsibility? I felt their explanation and analysis of why many more areas of reasoning come into effect when deciding who is at blame for this car accident. I liked how there were practice questions for us to complete. I found myself doing very well on them as a result of reading the page on cause and effect. I think these theories are very relevant to our lives because although not all of us will go into fields where this is heavily required (such as law or counseling), almost ever career that I can think of will use this method of deduction and logic at some point. I found the end of the page to be the most helpful, mainly because it gives you a list of the 3 factors the strength of causal argument relies on (how acceptable or demonstrable the implied comparison is,

how likely the case for causation seems to be, and how credible the "only significant difference" or "only significant commonality" claim is.)

book question # 3

Appeal to fear is a tactic that I described earlier in my blog post, and is something that is used quite a bit in todays society in order to get people to believe/buy something. While looking for ads to analyze for this prompt, I discovered that there were more ads that use this tactic than I could have imagined. The one that I ultimately decided to analyze for this assignment is a an ad for a medicine that that is supposed to increase health and lessen the risk of heart attacks. Instead of advertising themselves as such, they draw reads to the bold words on top reading “It was a year ago that I had a heart attack and died”. This statement is very misleading for many reasons. If you read the small print underneath it, the man in question did not really die, but rather his heart stopped for a small amount of time. This ad is very misleading in that sense. The ad draws readers in that the scary heading, and all of this is to convince the reader to buy the medicine. The medicine in no way prevents a heart attack, and through online research I learned it actually not not do a lot in terms of helping. The company knows that heart failure is something that affects many people and most of us have known family or friends who have suffered from it. The company is using this fear of it happening to us to sell their product, something that is unfair and unethical.

Prompt #3, something we have not discussed yet

Appeal to pity is an argument tactic that I see a lot in this day in age. Appeal to pity is the general idea of using someone's emotions to help influence an argument. Appeal to emotion works in a variety of way, but appeal to fear is much more specific. Appeal to fear uses someone or somethings current condition to make you feel a certain way. Usually, the person making the argument will try to connect your feeling of pity to an argument, and much of the time, a monetary donation. Although it is often a monetary donation, the arguing party may also be seeking non-monetary donations and votes. This is something that is especially relevant to our current situation. Over the past few months, we have had many disasters in places such as American Samoa, the Philippines, and Haiti. These areas have suffered intense, unthinkable damage and desperately need money and supplies to get them up and running again. I do, however, believe that many organizations collecting for these funds use appeal to pity. They make you feel that if you do not donate, you are heartless. They flaunt pictures of the rubble, starving children, and corpses in your face in order to appeal to your emotion. I personally feel that this is wrong, and although these organizations truly need the money and supplies they are requesting, they are going about it the wrong way. This style of unfairly connecting an issue with a desired action is often misused.

posting #1

Appealing to emotion is a very dangerous thing that many advertisers and politicians engage in. Not only is it used formally, like in ads and speeches, it is also used socially, in day to day conversations with others. Appealing to emotion trys to take a feeling that someone has, and get that person to make a decision or believe something as a result of that feeling. Sometimes, the belief is relevant to the feeling, but in cases we are analyzing in this class, it is being used unethically. The belief has very little to no connection with the emotion. For example a method of appealing to emotion is referred to as appeal to fear. Appeal to fear tries to get one to connect a fear with a belief/decision. It could be used as a sales lure, for example because there have been robberies in your neighborhood, you should buy our new ULTRA alarm system” or in social situations “If you do not walk me to my car, I will get lost and get hurt”. While these arguments are somewhat related to the fear, there are some that have almost no connection at all. In the textbook on page 192, there is a great political ad. It presents the reader with crime stats, but then adds a potential Senators name at the bottom. There is no given connection between the election and the neighborhood crime. The campaign team want be implying that the candidate will strive to reduce neighborhood crime, but this is a very sneaky way to do it. By doing this the potential candidate is making no promises and in no way even stating that he/she will even make it a priority. The very intimidating detains in the ad appeal to the readers fear, so that they will want to vote for the candidate.

posting

I found the section on valid and Invalid forms to be quite interesting. I think this is something that people easily get confused with and the book seemed to explain it in a way that students can easily understand.

I like the fact that they opened the section with a diagram to show what was going to be explained. I found this similar to a venn diagram commonly used in pre-college school, where one can clearly map out what falls into what category visually. The charts on page 165 that show How “Mammals, things that bark, and dogs” are all interconnected is very well done, as is the chart showing how “Kangaroos, tame, and new Zealand” are interconnected but to a lesser extent.

I like the section on page 164 where the author shows equations explaining arguments. This is important to arguments, because something in real life terms ma confuse us and seem odd but assigning letters to the various concepts then mapping it it out turns it into a simple algebra equation. By doing this we can see the logic involved in the argument and easily decide if their reasoning is valid or not.

Overall, I believe this is a very good concept to understand, but I felt it should have bee discussed earlier in the book.

Comm posting- Personal Life

I really enjoyed the opening of the chapter, where General claims and their contradictions are discussed. In arguments, there are many premise that come up that are used to defend a claim, and the beginning of this chapter really helps me sort out these various premise and find contradictions.

I found the section on 160 where they analyze words used in arguments to be beneficial. We all think we positively know what works like “All” and “Some” mean in arguments, but it was nice to have them defined for us. I like how it showed us to claims can be rearranged in while still keeping the exact meaning that is desired. It was nice to see to list of contradictions so we can know exactly how they are used. I thought I knew exactly how contradictions are used, but I was incorrect. The chart showing what kind of statements contradict other kinds of statements is very useful.

An example of this from my daily life occurred the other at the on campus radio station I dj for. Another DJ and I were arguing about how to operate a certain piece of equipment. They claimed that “Every listener wants to hear this”. When replying, I realized that I was actually using information from this class in my daily life. I replied, “that is not true, at least one listener does not want to hear that c.d.”. This was a direct contradiction to their claim, and I used logic in order to attack their claim.

Overall, I felt this chapter to be very helpful and useful in my daily life, but am I the only one that feels that this information should have been earlier in the book?

weekly post- Opinion on paper

I really enjoyed working on our group projects. When I first read the first prompt, the assignment was different than I had expected. For the duration of the class we had been working on mainly communication theory. While that is important, because after all it is the basis for quite a few larger concepts and issues we will deal with in life (especially for comm majors like me). It was a great to apply what we had learned to real world issues.

I like the fact that we working in groups. I think that working in groups without ever meeting in person was an interesting challenge. It was tough to put a face and personality on our group members, when all we are going on is a name. It was different, yet it was nice to be able to all meet in real time with our hectic schedules, and still produce a very professional and clearly written paper in a matter of days, edit it and discuss it, and turn it in without more than a computer. It is amazing what technology allows students our age to do, and I think we produced a great assignment.

It was neat to analyze things with new ideas and such that we have learned. I will definitely analyze things like news articles and advertisements with a new understanding after learning from our textbook. Sometimes we want to trust ad's and believe that because they are published somewhere major, that they credible. I have learned that this is simply not true. I have not found myself critiquing ad's in major magazines, and I find it fun trying to discover the fallacies.

3/6/10

Something that has always bother me about advertisements is the fact that they do not specifically cite their sources. In this ad, I have displayed, it claims that “3 out of 4 doctors would recommend” the product. At the bottom, they claim that according to their study, this is true. I believe that this relates back to on page 89, where reliable sources are discussed. People see the term “doctor”, but no further information is given about the study conducted. Simply saying “doctor” is often not enough. They do not state what kind of doctors, where the study was conducted, and these are vital pieces of information. Technically, they could have interview 150 veterinarians (technically considered doctors) in a third world country, and still not lie in the advertisement. I gave the company the benefit of the doubt, hoping that they had more information of this on their website they provided the link for. All I was able to find on the site was information on the products effectiveness, and nothing about the study in question.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Media/Pix/pictures/2007/10/30/FloraAd460d.jpg

3/6/2010

There are sometimes in communication where arguments that are weak and invalid can be repaired to be stronger. The book outlines that an argument can become stronger by adding a premise or conclusion so that the argument becomes stronger or valid, creating a plausible premise, and making sure that the premise is more plausible than the conclusion. As communications students, we have to learn how to analyze arguments and stay away from assumptions and jumping to conclusions. A personal example of a weak argument happened to me the other day. My friend stated that “Professor Z. is a socially conscious teacher because he marched in the rally yesterday”. This is similar to example four in the book. There is an unstated premise here that needs to be added, in that “almost any teacher that would march with students in the rally must be socially conscious”. While this argument is stronger, it is still not plausible, as there are dozens of reasons the professor might have been out there without a true concern for the students education (for example, to spy on the students or as a requirement). Adding additional and more specific premise help make the argument stronger because it is more specific. By considering all the ways in which the premise can be true and conclusion false, and adding more premise so those additional conclusions are not longer possible, we help strengthen the plausibility of the case.

comm 3/5/10

The concept from this week that I would like to examine more in depth it the idea of “Mistaking the Person for the Argument”. I believe that this happens too much in our society these days, especially where a person is seen as more or less credible based on their race, gender, ethnicity, job, ect. While some of these factors might be relevant to the argument, they are often taken into consideration when not relevant. Sometime, we as humans often mistake an entire group for an argument, and this is what leads to racism and sexism in our society. As the book emphasis, it is important to take the argument by it self into consideration in order to be better debates. For example, I can be arguing that sugar intake is bad for the body as it is hard to burn off and bad for our teeth. This might be a solid argument, but if I am eating sweets while stating this argument I can be seen as absolutely not credible to some. While that maybe true, it is very possible that I am correct in my argument, and the fact that I am eating sweets is irrelevant. Many would be quick to dismiss me as a hypocrite and ignore my statement, but in reality they should work on separating the agreement from the speaker and considering the argument by itself.

Anyway, I found this relevant because I see it everyday, and by putting the textbook suggestions into practice, we can improve our debate skills!

week 4 question 3

The part I found most interesting in this weeks reading was the discussion about how organizational communication works. I really enjoyed the hierarchy diagrams of company showing all the various “formal” channels of communication in companies. I found these diagrams to be very helpful when thinking about jobs, as it is not something that a company would give an employee. I also liked when they discussed “informal” channels of communication. This would be referring to rumors and “grapevine/water-cooler” talk about things going on in the system. I have been experiencing this at my workplace (government office) all week and this explanation helped me understand how this happens and how confidential information is “leaked” by higher ranking employees long before it I made official. I really liked that they discuss how to become more visible in the workplace and I felt these tips to be very personal and not “textbook-like”. The tips they give near the bottom of page 63 are excellent workplace networking tips that I will carry on to my future jobs.

week 4 question 2

The fallacy I chose to explain more in depth is the fallacy of “appealing to emotion”. Essentially this means that someone is trying to unfairly associate an action or belief with a certain feeling. I say unfair because these are typically decisions one must decide on their own. I believe that this is one of the most common types of fallacies, because although we do not think of it, it is implied on the commercials we see everyday. Buy “Product” because it will make you fell this way. Because that method of fallacy can be seen in tons of ads everyday, my “real world” example will a different use of “appeal to emotion”

The other day I was shopping in downtown San Francisco. I live in San Jose for school, but my family lives in the suburbs outside of San Francisco, so I spend time there occasionally. It was the day before valentines day, and I noticed something strange. While there are usually panhandlers there, there was at least 4 times more this day. While thinking about their methods from a communication standpoint, I noticed that they used this fallacy They try to associate certain emotions with the action of giving them money (or time when signing a petition). They use clever wording to either imply that you will feel good if you give them money, or make you feel like a greedy, heartless person if you do not and walk away. While the various premises may be different, the end conclusion is usually to give them money. While their situation is certainly sad, and it would be difficult to give money to every one people who panhandle use this (plus many more) communication method(s).

week 4, question 1

Here is example #3 from page 225 analyzed

1. Las Vegas has too many people.

2. There's not enough water in the desert to support more than a million people.

3. The Infrastructure of the city can't handle more than million.

4. The streets are crowded

5. Traffic is always congested

6. The schools are overcrowded, and new ones can't be built fast enough

7. We should stop migration by tough zoning laws in the city and county.

Argument: Yes, this is an argument.

Conclusion: The conclusion is statement #7, that we should stop migration (to Las Vegas) by tough zoning laws to the city and county.

Additional premise needed? I think no additional premise are needed. I think the writer should have added “therefore” to the beginning of the conclusion, and maybe added some statistics to claims #2,3,4,5, & 6 to add validity to them. Statement #1 sets up the argument Statements #2-6 are claims supporting that, and statement 7 is the conclusion.

Identify and sub-argument: Although it is not blatantly stated, I think statements 2-6 can all stand on their own as separate arguments under the main one. For example, I can see “There is not enough water in the city to support more than a million” being made into its own argument, with separate claims supporting that.

Good argument?: I do not think that this is a good argument, although it is decent. I think that the writer left out the fact that a lot of the traffic and street congestion has to due to tourism, and zoning laws would not help that. Statements #2 and #3 are excellent statements that can support their claim, but I feel that they all need statistics to back them up.

I feel like doing these kind of exercises help us learn. I think that dissecting something complex and hard to understand down into smaller parts can help us comprehend it. I feel that I have a better understanding of the exercise after doing this assignment than I did before.

week 2 question 3

I chose to write about the concert of shared leadership from the group communication textbook. I believe that this is a very important aspect of group communication. In classes, when we form groups usually one person comes out as the leader. That person is usually in charge of keeping everyone on task, communicating with the professor, and organizing the completed work, but certainly they cant do everything. What is special about shared leadership is that multiple people take control in the group, usually related to what they are good at. Leaders always have their strengths and weaknesses, but with shared leadership, people can take control over what they excel at, while others take over aspects that they themselves excel at. This is why companies have managers and supervisors. These people are sometimes qualified to lead the company/organization, ect as a whole, but instead they manage a smaller unit that they are more/most familiar with. In college groups, this is especially important. It gives everyone the opportunity to lead in a way that they are comfortable with. It takes away the traditional idea of “one person is a leader and everyone else is a follower” and replaces it with the idea that everyone should have some power and responsibly.

Week 2 question 2

There is a big difference between strong arguments and valid
arguments. It is possible for an argument to be valid but not strong

In a valid argument, there is no way for the premise to be true and
the conclusion false. If “X” is met, then “Y” is true, and most valid
statements follow that outline. An example from my daily live occurred
the other day happened at a dog park. My friend claimed that “all dogs
like treats. Your golden retriever is a dog. Therefore, she likes
treats”. While the argument is valid, it lacks strength. Valid, yet
weak arguments tend to overlook all exceptions to the scenario,
assuming that the premise is the reason for the conclusion. My dog
could eat them for medical reasons, or simply dislike them but still
eat them just because they are there. By coming up with reason after
reason that the conclusion of any argument does not relate to the
premise, we prove the arguments weakness.


Strength adds to an argument. My previous argument was valid, but
lacked strength due to the multiple possibilities leading to the
conclusion other than the premise. An example of a strong example
from daily life would be from a grocery store trip I took. I have
tried almost all varieties of Ketchup. I have never had a type of
Ketchup I did not enjoy. Therefore, I like all kinds of ketchup. This
argument is not valid, but it is strong. The premise is true, and the
fact about trying “almost all” varieties of Ketchup helps strengthen
it, but it is not perfect. While my claim is almost positively true,
there still can be an exception. The fewer exceptions that can be
found, the stronger it is.

Comm week 2 question 1

According to Epstien, there are 3 tests that an argument must go through to be good. An argument can pass certain tests but fail the others. They are independent of the others.

My argument for this assignment is that: I am enrolled in Math 123 at San Jose State University. Only students who receive a 90% or above on the math test receive an A. I received a 93% on the math test. Therefore, I received an A plus on my test.

First of all, my argument passes the first test. The premise for my arguments are certainly plausible. It is believable that I am a student at San Jose State University. It is also plausible that the teacher would have those grading guidelines.

Secondly, another requirement for the argument to be good is that the premise has to be more plausible than the conclusion. In this argument, the premise is certainly more plausible than the conclusion. It is not possible for the premise to be true and the conclusion false. There really could have been no other way to reach the conclusion without going through the premise.

Thirdly, the last test for an argument to be good is that the argument is valid and strong. My argument, in this case is certainly valid and strong. The premise is plausible, and the argument is strong because there is no plausible way that I could have achieved an A on the test without scoring a 90%. Assuming everything is say is true, it is a very strong argument.

week of 1/31 question #3

A concept from the group communication book that I found interesting is the idea “What makes a good group?”. As college students, most of us have been involved in dozens of groups in high school, and have been a part of good groups and bad groups. The book lists a few characteristics that make a good group. One of these is cohesion. Group cohesion is the ability to stay together “in the face of opposition”. I feel that this is important for groups to have. Groups always have a variety of tasks to complete, and they are rarely ever balanced in difficulty and time required to complete. For example, last semester I was in a group that had quite a few tasks to do. Most groups members took the easiest ones, while the tougher ones were ignored or were postponed to be discussed at a later meeting. After a couple weeks of this, we had all the tough tasks left, with a small amount of time to complete them. Group cohesion prevents this by having members step up to the challenge for the benefit of the group, and as a result the group will complete the entire assignment in a more organized and timely manner.

With that said, I can't wait for this new group paper! My group and I are starting tomorrow!

week of 1/31 Question 2

A vague sentence is one that has no clear meaning. A recent example in my life would be the other day, when I was asked to file “those papers” in the government office where I work. Because there are many papers to be filed in many different places, there is no clear meaning about what it is that I should do. Because of the lack of direct meaning in my boss's instructions, this statement is very vague.

A ambiguous statement, on the other hand is slightly different. Unlike a vague statement, where the lack of specificity leads to the possibility of multiple meanings, an ambiguous statement has no clear meaning usually do to the unusual placement of words. An example from my life occurred the other day, when my mother asked me, while putting away Christmas decorations, to “Put the ornament in the box in the garage. This could mean I am supposed to be putting away an ornament inside a box that happens to located in the garage, or it could mean that the ornament I am looking for is already in a box, and that box then goes into the garage.

Although both types are slightly different, both usually just need to be slightly rewritten to make more sense.

Week of 1/31 Question #1

Objective claims:

An objective claim is a statement that can be proven true or false. It may not be true, but it concerns a factual topic, and its authenticity can be proven through research. An example of a recent objective statement I have heard was made by a friend. Yesterday, I asked my roommate how many apples we had left in the refrigerator. She replied, “We currently have 9 apples in the refrigerator”. Her statement would be considered an objective statement, as I can look into the refrigerator and see if her statement is true or false. Although her statement was indeed true, had it been false, it still would be considered an objective statement.

Subjective Claims:

A subjective claim, on the other hand, is is more concerned with personal opinion than actual fact. Subjective statements cannot be proven true/false by research. An example of a recent subjective claim I have heard was when my friend and I were at a small diner when he proclaimed “Onion rings taste amazing Patrick!”. The claim might have true according to some, but according to me, it was not true. There was no way we could have came to a definitive conclusion about the validity of the statement, as the result differs from person to person, hence it is a subjective claim.

Hello,

My name is Patrick Griffin.

I am taking Comm41 online this semester.

I am excited for the class and hope to learn a lot.

have a great day,

Patrick Griffin