Ch 14 DQ #3

As with any class there are always concepts that are harder to understand than others, and for each person this is different. For me this semester the hardest thing to understand was how to map an argument. This is something that I still do not understand completely. When we went over mapping you sent us to a website that had tests for us to complete after doing the reading. I did the exercises and answered all the questions but the concept just never really clicked for me. I know that each argument is supposed to get its own bubble and each counterargument is as well but I feel that when you map out an argument it is very hard to understand. I feel that this is something that could use a little more class time on because I do not think that I am the only person who had trouble with this concept.

Ch 14 DQ #2

My favorite part about this class was the way that it was set up for an online class. I have taken online classes before where it has been very complicated to turn in homework and even talk to the teacher. The way this class was set up on the blogger was perfect and you were also always available and would reply to emails very quickly which made it easy to get questions answered. The one thing that I didn’t like about this class was how big the groups were fro the group projects. Because it was an online class it fits perfectly into everyone's schedule but when you have to find a time during the week for 6 people to all find time to meet it was very complicated. Everybody had work and school to deal with so it made it very hard to do group projects. I think one way this class could be improved was by finding a way for the first two projects to be done on their own and then for the final project make the groups smaller so that it is easier for people to find a time to meet.

ch 14 DQ #1

I have learned so much in this class this semester but the most useful thing that I learned was what makes a strong valid argument and what doesn’t. Throughout a person's daily life there are so many times when people argue with each other. The arguments may be work related or they may just be about personal things, but no matter what people always find something to argue about. Before this class I used to always argue back no matter how good or bad their argument was, but now I know that if an argument is not valid than there is no point in arguing about the matter. When a person starts an argument I now stop and think critically about their claims and their conclusions and see if they are making a valid argument. Then if the argument is valid I think about it logically and make my own argument back. If their argument is not valid then I do not even bother to argue with them.

ch15 dq3

The Chapter 15 reading and the causal argument reading that we did go, hand in hand with each other. They both explain how a causal argument works and gave step by step examples that went along with their explanations. The one thing that the book talks about a little more in detail about is the necessary criteria for cause and effect. There are six things that must happen/be true in order for a causal argument to be produced. The six things are the cause happened, the effect happened, the cause precedes the effect, it is nearly impossible for the cause to happen and the effect not to happen, the cause makes a difference, and lastly that there is no common cause. Although the other reading stated these as well I think that the book did a better job of explaining each of them and why you must have these things in order to have a causal argument.

ch 15 dq2

The Mission: Critical website was way less helpful to me than the Causal Argument website. The way that this website is set up is very hard for me to understand and it was very hard for me to peruse the website for explanations on how to have a good argument. After I looked at the website for a while and began to understand it the one thing that I did find extremely useful and helpful was how it broke an argument down into a bullet point list. It shows very well the process and steps of an argument but it was still hard for me because the explanations were not on the same page. Since you had to click on each one as you were going through, I did not retain as much information for some reason. This website has a lot of good information but I think that it needs to be designed in a different way.

ch15 dq 1

I found the cause and effect website really helpful because of the way they broke everything down. Not only did they explain what a causal argument is but they did it while going through an example of one step by step. And if there was ever a place where two or three different things could be argued then they would stop and explain how each of those situations would work before moving on in the causal argument example. I also really liked how they used a real life situation as their example and how you would have to argue the case with the one significant difference that was the actual cause of the accident. Bicyclists do not stay in the bike lane at all times and in many cases they are the cause of an accident but according to the law if you rear-end someone then it is your fault for being too close to that person.

Ch 12 DQ #2

Reasoning by analogy was the hardest type of reasoning for me to understand. At first I read all of the different types of reasoning, then I went back and wrote examples for each of them but I had a very hard time writing an example for reasoning by analogy because I didn’t understand it very well. I read up a little more on the subject and I now fully understand how to reason by analogy. Reasoning by analogy not only has to do with reasoning with similar things, like in arguing by sign, but it has to do with reasoning with two things that you are trying to compare to one another. One of the websites that I looked at to help define this type of reasoning used an example of how to argue what an orange is by saying that it is similar to an apple. it was this example that really helped me to understand how to reason by analogy, and not just reasoning by using random examples.