During this semester, I found that fallacies are really useful. A fallacy is “a bad argument of one of the types that have been agreed to be typically repaired” (Epstein). There are three types and most of them are bad. I think that the content fallacies are important such as false dilemma, appeal to emotion, drawing the line and etc. Also, in chapter 14, I found that generalization is interesting. We generalize every day with a claim or an argument. To better generalize, we have to have examples; that’s just how the world works. Everyone generalizes from regular people to scientists. Generalizing is “when we are generalizing, if we could conclude a claim about a group, the population, from a claim about some part of it, the sample. To generalize is to make an argument” (EPSTEIN). I think everyone makes an argument everyday, they just do not know yet because they haven’t learned these critical thinking concepts.
Great blog Aria on fallacies and generalization. I agree that the concepts of fallacies and generalization were very useful concepts that we have learned in the Epstein book. Fallacies totally help use see dubious claims and arguments that we can find and analyze as a weak argument. Also with generalization, I also found that it was interesting to see that we do tend to use generalization in our everyday lives. I also like how you conclude that everyone makes an argument everyday. It is great to connect what we have learned with this class to our everyday lives. It makes the concepts so much easier to understand and connect to.
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