Reasoning by Analogy

There are seven different types of reasoning posted on the instructor’s blog. The forms of reasoning are:

1). Reasoning by Analogy
2). Sign Reasoning
3). Causal Reasoning
4). Reasoning by Criteria
5). Reasoning by Example
6). Inductive
7). Deductive

Reasoning by analogy is “is the cognitive process of looking for reasons, beliefs, conclusions, actions or feelings”( Kirwin 748). Epstein defines reasoning by analogy “a comparison becomes reasoning by analogy when it is part of an argument: on one side of the comparison we draw a conclusion, so on the other side we should conclude the same.

An example of reasoning by analogy is prop. 19, which is a proposal that wanted to make marijuana legal in California. Since alcohol is legal, why can marijuana be legal?

Sign of reasoning is “Argument by sign asserts that two or more things are so closely related that the presence or absence of one indicates the presence or absence of the other” (speaking.pitt.edu).

An example is, the sun is setting is a sign that it is night.

Causal relationship reasoning is “where the occurrence of one (the cause) is supposed to bring about or produce an occurrence of the other (the effect)” (philosophypages.com).

EX: Global warming is getting worse because icebergs are melting and sea levels are rising.

Reasoning by Criteria- Reasoning by Example- it is like a comparison

Example: My nails are purple like plums.  

Criteria reasoning

"Start by defining the criteria by which the outcome of a decision will be judged, and then identify the best decision, given these constraints." (changingminds.org)

Exemplar reasoning

Exemplar reasoning is the use of examples in argument. The example may be told as a story or may be a short comparator. It may be a duplicate of the situation or may be a relatively distant metaphor.(changingminds.org)

Inductive reasoning, “also known as induction or inductive logic, or educated guess in colloquial English, is a kind of reasoning that draws generalized conclusions from a finite collection of specific observations” (Wikipedia).

Ex: I stop at a red light because it is the law; therefore, everyone has to stop at a red light.

Deductive

Deductive reasoning, “also called deductive logic, is reasoning which constructs or evaluates deductive arguments” (Wikipedia).

All X are Y (premise)
All Y are Z (premise)
Hence, all X are Z (conclusion)

Ex: Everyone in my English class is failing the course. Jackie is failing the course. Therefore, Jackie is in my English class. 

Interesting 411

I thought that appeal to spite was an interesting emotion. An appeal to spite emotion is “a logical fallacy in which someone attempts to win favor for their argument by exploiting existing feelings of bitterness or spite in the opposing party” (fact-index.com). It means an emotion of revenge. Oh how I love this fallacy. There is nothing better than revenge. I can always forgive and forget, but there are some things that I cannot forgive and forget.  Not that I am a bad person or anything, but there are times when I feel like revenge is needed. If they do me wrong, I cannot just say its okay and move on; it is payback time.  A personal example of mines is that I have a friend who ditched me for her boyfriend. When her boyfriend broke up with her, she came running back to me. I did not like that, because she was always with her boyfriend and never had time for me, so when her boyfriend broke up with her, she came back to me and wanted to hang out. I am not a stuffed animal that you can come back to whenever you wanted. No way! So I told her I was busy, though I was not.  Another non-personal example is

Lailani- I cannot choose between Kailee or Emma. Um... Ok I am voting for Kailee for prom queen this year.

Victoria- I know I should not tell you this, but oh whatever Kailee and I are not friends anymore.

Lailani- What is it, tell me?

Victoria- Well… this is hard to say, but she called you a B***H at the library during winter break.

Lailani- Oh great! Scratch that, I am voting for Emma!

Objective number 3

I chose number 3 for the questions part. It says to find an advertisement that uses an appeal to fear. I went online and found a lot of advertisement that are appealing to fear but here are the a few that I liked.

http://www.stanford.edu/class/linguist34/advertisements/fear%20ads/pages/anti-drug_jpg.htm

This picture is an appeal to fear because for parents to not know where their children are at, is fear. It is the fear of the children out doing something bad as drugs. It says, “At 4:00, my kids will be at ______”. I think that this is a good appeal to fear because if a parent cannot fill in the blanks, then something is wrong.

Another one is a fear ad of babies.

http://www.stanford.edu/class/linguist34/advertisements/fear%20ads/pages/sids_jpg.htm

The fear is that you do not want to kill your baby, so put the baby to sleep on their back. I hope that this never happens to anyone’s child nor do I hope that a parent will do this to his or her child. If the parents cannot support the child anymore, give it up for adoption; do not kill the baby. The fear in this picture is that if you put the baby to sleep upside down, the baby will die, so put the baby in the right position when he or she sleeps. 

Appeal to Emotion

“Appeal to emotion in an argument is just a premise that says, roughly, you should believe or do something because you feel a certain way” (Epstein 191). There are many types of emotion: pity, consequences, flattery, ridicule, spite, wishful thinking, ignorance, and fear. Appealing to fear is a way for people to manipulate, convince, and trick you. Appeal to pity is “in which a person substitutes a claim intended to create pity for evidence in an argument” (http://www.nizkor.org). I think that appealing to fear emotion strikes me more. Appealing to fear strikes me more because I use it in my everyday life. For example, my brother in law was driving too fast on interstate highway 5 this summer when we went on a vacation to Los Angeles.

Me: You shouldn’t drive so fast at night.

Brother-in-Law- Why not?

Me: Because there are many cops.

This argument appeals to my brother in laws fears. The unstated appeal to emotion is, “you should drive too fast at night because the cops can pull you over and give you a ticket”.

Soon after I said that, just our luck, my brother in law got pulled over. He was going 103 MPH on the highway. I mean I did not see why we could not go so fast because no one else was on the road but that is the law and we cannot do anything about it.

Assignment 2

I think that assignment 2 is more useful than assignment 1. I felt that my group got more things accomplished. We all cooperated and things went really well. We met up and met up online. We actually used communication skills this time around. Everyone has been emailing back and forth to get the paper done. I feel proud of my group. We are doing the paper on PETA, which is an organization to help and save animals. No one or thing should hurt any type of animal; they have feelings too. I think this assignment is more useful than the first one because we have to find fallacies, concealed claims, and reasoning. This makes me understand the concepts a little better. Since we need it in the paper, we obviously have to know what it means, and now I know what it means. I felt that this paper is a bit easier because we do not really have to do much research. My group used one website to analyze the organization. I enjoyed writing assignment number 2 with my group.

Chapter 8

In chapter 8, I find that general claims and their contradictories are interesting. General claims are how we assert something about all or part of a collection. Claims usually starts with the words like: all, some, some are not, and no. With general claims, contradictory claims also tags along. Contradictory words are: some are not, not every, not even one, all are not and more. It’s easy to make general claims, but a bit hard to contradict. There are many ways to say a general claim and there are also many ways to contradict the claims. So today in my Asian American Studies class, we’ve talked about the role of women. Some say “all women are to stay home cook, clean, and watch the kids”. One student contradicted the claim and said, “Not every women are housewives”. Also, in this chapter, I find that drawing diagrams can help us decide if an argument is valid.

More discussion....

Since the semester started, I feel that I have learned quite a bit in this COMM 41 class. Though it is an online class, I still learned things. I think I need more information on repairing arguments. Like I get it, but then again I kind of don’t. The book says a repairing argument means “given an (implicit) argument that is apparently defective, we are justified in adding a premise or a conclusion if it satisfies all three of the following: 1. the argument becomes stronger or valid. 2. The premise is plausible and would seem plausible o the other person. 3. The premises are more plausible than the conclusion (Epstein 62).  I also think I need more discussion on strong and valid arguments. So I was doing some research on it and the site says “A valid argument is one in which it is not possible for the conclusion to be false if the premises are true”. A strong argument, then, is an “invalid argument in which is likely that the conclusion is true, given that the premises are true. Unlike validity, strength can come in degrees”. EX Premise: 99% of Americans are afraid of snakes. Premise: Jane is an American. Conclusion: Jane is afraid of snakes”

( http://www.hss.cmu.edu/philosophy/harrell/writingvocab.html)