Mission Critical website

The Mission Critical website is actually very helpful and I wish I had discovered it earlier. This website offers very good explanations and examples for so many things from how to form an argument to the analysis of one. This website is a very good tool that helped increase my knowledge on the different types of reasoning by providing good examples that were easy to understand. Sometimes when working with the Epstein book I have to go back and read the example three times before I can grasp the concept. If I fail to grasp the ideas they are trying to portray doing the exercises is not very helpful because it is unable to explain where I made my mistake. In this website almost all sections have exercises that will give you information on why an answer you selected is incorrect in comparison to the others. I feel like this tool really helped me learn the material better. This website offers very casual realistic examples and explanations and think it a useful pair to the Epstein manual.

Cause and Effect

The cause and effect reading from the website had a lot of helpful tips. The example about the car accident was simple and made it easy to understand their reasoning. I never realized how a cause and effect relationship could be a form of inductive reasoning until after reading the given information. However unlike in inductive reasoning where the assumption is that there is otherwise no significant difference between the premises in cause and effect reasoning the implication is that there is only one significant difference. There are two rules to remember when deciding if you’re dealing with causation. The first is that the cause must precede the event in time. The second rule is that even if there is a strong correlation, it is insufficient to prove causation. In the exercises that went along with the examples I learned even more about this type of reasoning because if I clicked on the wrong answer rather than just telling me it’s incorrect it provides a brief description of why my answer is incorrect.

Inductive vs. deductive

I often forget and get confused on the difference between inductive and deductive reasoning, so I decided to do more research to help me remember. Deductive reasoning involves moving from the general to the specifics. While inductive reasoning takes specific statements and tries to generalize them.  An example of deductive reasoning would be:

·      Premise 1: All college students go to school.

·      Premise 2:I go to school.

·      Conclusion: I am a college student.

An example of inductive reasoning would be:

·      Premise: All cows I have seen have spots.

·      Conclusion: All cows must have spots.

Just because someone uses inductive or deductive reasoning does make their argument true. In my last example just because all cows I have seen have spots does not mean the all cows must have spots. In fact there are lots of cows without spots. An in my deductive reasoning example just because I go to school does not always mean I am in college.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-inductive-and-deductive-reasoning.htm

Judging Analogies

In chapter 12 of the Epstein reading it discusses how to judge analogies. Sometimes people jump from one thing to another and try to compare them with a weak analogy. It is important that we learn how to judge these analogies so we can decipher when someone is making a valid point and when they are not. It is important that on top of just realizing the similarities and differences between the things we compare that we look at the general principle. At first glance some reasons people give to support their argument can seem like it doesn’t apply but once we spot the general principle we can find underlying similarities that bring the argument together and help us to make a more rational conclusion. Another way that we can judge analogies is by using an analogy of one argument to another which creates a powerful way to refute. If we simply accept analogies people give us without analyzing them we could miss important details that could sway our decision.

Types of Reasoning

1.       Reasoning by analogy is when you reason from one particular to another. An example of this would be:

Premise 1: Paco is a dog and eats dog food.

Premise 2: Sam is a dog.

Conclusion: Sam eats dog food.

2.       Argument by sign occurs when you have two things that are often closely related, we can assume that the presence or lack of one indicates the presence or lack of the other. For example people often associate smoke with fire or a person’s SAT score with how smart that person is.

3.       Casual reasoning allows people to find meaningful order in events that might otherwise appear random. For example, there is a knock on the door and the cat runs into the other room. A lady sitting on the couch gets up to answer it and a vase falls off a nearby table and breaks. Casual reasoning allows us to analyze the causation of events that lead to the broken vase and give us reason to what happened. In this situation we would reason that the jumpy cat knocked the table and it ran out of the room.

4.       Criteria reasoning is useful when trying to reason with others because it offers criteria from the start that helps make your argument more likely to be accepted. Establishing criteria provides legitimacy for any future argument

5.       Reasoning by example involves using examples as evidence to why someone should do something or something should occur. For example, “You shouldn’t buy that shirt. My Sister bought that shirt and the buttons fell off the first time she wore it.”

6.       In inductive reasoning the conclusion contains more information than is already contained in the premises. For example:

7.       Premise: Christmas has been on December 25^th for each year up until now.

Conclusion: Christmas will be on December 25^th of this year as well.

8.       In deductive reasoning there is no way for the premises to be true and the conclusion false, the conclusion contains no more information than in the premises.

Premise 1: If we get tickets, I will go to the concert

Premise 2: I am going to the concert.

Conclusion: We got the tickets.

Appeal to Fear

  Allstate insurance has launched a new campaign of commercials in which a man acts as careless driver or windstorm that knocks down a tree branch and wrecks a car. The point of these commercials is to scare viewers into buying insurance from them because without it you and your car will be susceptible to all the uncontrollable danger in the world. This tactic i better known as an appeal to fear. This appeal is utilized to convince people do something because they are afraid of the consequences if they dont. I personally don’t think it is a good argument because there is no way to control what happens when your out there driving and most people like myself are already insured with quality insurance that can support them if a problem arises. However I do think this commercial is very effective in convincing people without insurance or people with a low insurance plan to upgrade to Allstate insurance that has this new concept of accident forgiveness. I also think whether or not a person decides to change insurance companies the fear presented in this commercial makes drivers overall more conscious of other cars when driving.

Apple polishing

3.New Maybelline Falsies mascara commercials are on all the time and a lot of people I know have actually been interested in this new mascara and after watching several commercials were convinced enough to buy it. In the commercial the narrator states that, “this new multi-patented spoon brush load every lash with keratin fiber formula for 300% more visible lashes, corner to corner with no gaps from any angle.” This commercial suggests that people should buy this mascara in order to enhance their short lashes without the struggle of dealing with fake eyelashes. This is a good example of apple-polishing because it attempts to convince viewers to buy their mascara but it uses an unstated premise that you want to have long eyelashes that have the same effect as being false. Another unstated premise is that this is the best way to increase your lashes giving you a glamorous look every day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRz4bss2nHo&feature=related

Appeal to Emotion

A lot of advertisements or arguments I have with friends usually involve someone trying appeal to the other emotions. According to Epstein, an appeal to emotion is a premise that says you should believe or do something because you feel a certain way. There are many different types of this appeal and the one that struck my interests the most was appealing to fear. I think this is one of the best ways to persuade someone to take your side or understand your point of view. People will often do whatever it takes when they are afraid something will occur. A lot of advertisements use fear to convince viewers to buy their product. Before an election you often see lots of commercials that talk about the harm a politician will cause if elected. They focus on issues that seem scary to most people such as less funding for schools, open borders or less severe punishment for criminals. This often persuades people too vote for a specific candidate come election day.