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!