Usefulness of Second Group Project

I think the usefulness of the second assignment is that it has actually helped me build up my communication skills by communicating the things learned from the textbook to the assigned paper. For the assignment, our assigned group were supposed to choose a social organization and then write a cohesive paper about it by using ideas and skills we have learned from the textbook. As a group, we came up with the American Red Cross organization. To make things fair, we split the sections up with everyone in charge of at least two sections. Then we have to use what we learned from the textbook and apply those concepts to the paper. I thought the frustrating part about group work is that sometimes people like to procrastinate, which lets the group down. This was what actually happened to our group because everyone kind of waited until the last minute to get things done, making everything rushed at the end. Because of this problem, I prefer to work alone but at times there are actually benefits in working in a group as “two heads are better than one”.

Ch 13: Mean, Median and Mode

A few things I found interesting when reading Chapter 13 is mean, median, and mode.
I will start off by talking about the average or mean. An average isn’t the maximum; in fact, it is a measure of the expected value of a collection of numbers. The definition from the textbook is, “the average or mean of a collection of numbers is obtained by adding the numbers and then dividing by the number of items.” (Epstein, 2006) Here is how we would calculate the average of a set of numbers. By the way, this is also obtained from the textbook:
7, 9, 37, 22, 109
We will firstly add up all of the numbers and the sum will total 184
7+9+37+22+109 = 184
Then we will divide the sum of 184 by 5 to get 36.8 which is the average.
184/5 = 36.8
The median is the midway mark of a set of numbers listed in order:
10 20 30 40 50 -------à Here, 30 is the median since it is in the middle
The mode is the number that appears a bunch of times:
10 10 10 30 40 40 50-------à Here, 10 is the mode since it appeared three times
These 3 concepts are very simple. I remember learning about them when I was in middle school so it’s still fresh in my mind.

Ch 13: Numbers

Numbers are tools that are used for measuring and are essential to use in our reasoning; however, they may mislead us so we have to be cautious when using numbers. There are various kinds of misleading claims with numbers: apples and oranges, two times zero is still zero, percentage of what?, there’s no way they could know the numbers. I’m going to first talk about apples and oranges which is “a numerical comparison where it doesn’t make sense to compare the items.” (Epstein, 2006) Here is an example from the textbook:
There were twice as many rapes as murders in our town.
This claim is pretty vague because it seems like it’s trying to tell us something important but we are not able to figure out what it is.
We can also make comparisons using increases and decreases. That is known as two times zero is zero. It’s a numerical comparison that “makes something look impressive but the base of the comparison is unstated:
Enrollment at SJSU is up 50% this year
We don’t know what the enrollment was last year so this claim is misleading.

Example of An Appeal to Fear

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

I found an advertisement on a men’s hair loss product called “Rogaine” that uses an appeal to fear. The appeal to fear can seen from the following statement they used on the ad: “Hair loss runs in the family”. This statement is trying to manipulate their male audiences into buying their product by making them worry or afraid of losing their hair. The unstated conclusion is “You should buy Rogaine if you are afraid of losing your hair.” A personal example is when my cousin wanted to buy Rogaine because he was afraid that he will end up going bald like his father. He thinks that hair loss runs in his family as his grandfather and his father both went bald and he thinks he will be next in line. I think appealing to fear is a very good way for advertisers to sell their products. They make people fear that something bad might happen to them someday and in order to prevent that from happening, they should buy their product.

Ch 12: Reasoning by Analogy

An important concept that was introduced in Chapter 12 was reasoning by analogy. Reasoning by analogy begins with a comparison of two things. According to the text, “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.” For example, there was a situation regarding the legalization of marijuana in the textbook. Since alcohol and tobacco is already legalized, then why shouldn’t marijuana be the same? That’s reasoning by analogy. Alcohol and tobacco is similar to marijuana so all of them should be legal. On one side, we have already drawn the conclusion that alcohol and tobacco is legal, so on the other side we should conclude the same for marijuana. Analogies are used in our daily lives everyday. Sometimes we would make comparisons from the past and apply them to the present.

Ch. 10: Appeal to Emotions

According to Chapter 10 in the textbook, an appeal to emotion is a “premise that you should believe or do something because you feel a certain way.“ This concept is very important when you are trying to reason in an argument. For example, if you saw an advertisement on T.V. regarding poor African kids suffering from malnutrition, then you will become swayed by your own emotions to help them out. There are actually three different aspects of appeal to emotion. The first one is “appeal to pity” in which you feel really sorry for someone and you wish to help them out. In the previous example, I mentioned an ad about poor African kids suffering from malnutrition. If you feel sad for them, then you would want to donate money to aid them. Then you can make the following argument:
“If you feel sorry for the African kids, and you have enough money to help, then you should send them money.”
This type of argument is an “appeal to pity”.
Another type of appeal of emotion is known as the “appealing to fear” which is a “way politicians and advertisers manipulate people”. This type of concept gives people the feeling of fear. For example, if you see an ad featuring a car running over someone due to speeding, then you would feel very cautious about driving. From that, the following argument can be made:
“You should drive at the correct speed limit if you are afraid of running into someone.”
Lastly, an appeal to spite is based on the principle that “two wrongs make a right” which means that you should only help the people who had helped you out in the past. Otherwise, you shouldn’t help them. Basically, you are returning the favor to someone only if you owe them and not to the ones you never owed. Here is an example:
“You shouldn’t help John pay for his debts, because he wouldn’t help you pay for your debts last year.”
Out of the three concepts of appeal to emotion, I think the one that strikes me the most is the appeal to pity because it helps me make better decisions.

Interesting Concept: Aristotelian Logic - Categorical Claims

An interesting concept I found in the textbook are about categorical claims. They are claims that are developed from Aristotle’s method which was known as the Aristotelian logic. It had become a very important method used to analyze reasoning. According to Epstein, categorical claims are claims that can be “rewritten as an equivalent claim with one of the following standard forms”:

All S are P
Some S is P
No S is P
Some S is not P

Here are a few examples for each of them. These claims can be rewritten as an equivalent claim to make them become categorical:

All dogs bark. = All dogs are things that bark
Some dogs eat human= Some dog is a thing that eats human
No dogs climb trees = No dog is a thing that climbs trees
Some apples are not red = Some apple is a thing that is not red

We don’t want to have to always use the phrase “thing that” so we can also write these claims another way:

All dogs are barkers
Some dog is a human eater
No dog is a tree climber

Truth Tables

According to the text, compound claims can be used to analyze arguments. The four phrases “and, or, not, if..then…” are used to create compound claims. Special symbols are used to represent each word. Sometimes we may not be sure whether a compound claim is true or false so for us to be able to check for its validity, we need to use special symbols and truth tables. Take for example a claim that involves the use of the word, “and”:

Michael is a doctor and Nancy is a nurse.

Symbol: Michael is a doctor ^ Nancy is a nurse

How do we determine the validity of this claim? When will it be true? The only way for this statement to be true is for both parts “Michael is a doctor” and “Nancy is a nurse” to be true. This is known as a conjunction claim in which both parts need to be true in order for the claim to be true. Otherwise it would be false. For example, if either one of the parts “Michael is a doctor” and “Nancy is a nurse” is false, then the claim will end up being a false statement. Truth tables that can be seen in the textbook are used to illustrate this example.

Ch 8: General Claims

What I found very interesting and helpful in Chapter 8 was how to reason with general claims. According to Epstein, “general claims are how we assert something about all or part of a collection.” Epstein talks about the different ways on how to use the words, “all, some, no, and only” when making an argument. Sometimes there are arguments in which they may seem valid to us but they’re actually not. The premises could be true but the conclusion may be false. Here is an example:

All guys who go to the gym want to build a six pack. John goes to the gym. So John wants to build a six pack.

The example above may seem valid but it’s actually invalid. If John goes to the gym, it does not mean that he wants to build a six pack; he may want to lose some pounds or even go check out some girls. There are many other possibilities so the conclusion may not be true. To prevent ourselves from getting lured into believing in these kind of arguments, we need to understand the difference between “all” and “some”.
According to the text, “all” means “Every single one, no exceptions” and “some” means “at least one”.
There are actually many equivalent ways to say “all” and “some“. For example,:

All witches are evil = Witches are evil
Some guys are strong = At least one guy is strong

Interesting concept

An interesting concept I found in Chapter 6 are compound claims. A compound claim is a claim that contains one or more claims, but seen as only one claim. A word such as "or" is used to connect two or claims together to form one compound claim. Here is an example:

Either Mary will win the class election or Michael will win

In this example, there are obviously two different claims but seen only just one claim. Either mary or michael is going to win the election, but not both.

1.) Mary will win the class presidential election
2.) Michael will win the class presidential election.

Another important concept in Ch. 6 is the contradictory of a claim. Basically, the contradictory of a claim is the opposite of a compound claim. It's also known as the negation of a claim. It's used to make a compound claim false. Assume that the compound claim is "michael is a genius" and the contradictory of that claim would be "Michael is not a genius".

Ch 7: Raising Objections

Whenever we make an argument, there’s bound to be some objections against it. This is what most of us experience in our lives everyday. We make arguments but then someone else disagrees with it by putting forward a claim that is strong enough to make our argument false and dubious. The people who disagree with our argument are the ones who are likely to raise objections, giving a good reason for us to doubt whether our conclusion is really true or not. Take for example an argument that you wanted to make about abortion:

Every women should have the right to an abortion.

The people who are against abortion or is a pro-life can make objections against our argument by saying:

Abortion is wrong.
Abortion is the same thing as murder.
Therefore, abortion should be illegal.

The objections stated above are strong enough to make our argument false/dubious. If we make arguments, they need to be strong enough for someone to be unable to debate against it. Otherwise, we will lose to the other side.

Chapter 6: Conditional Claims

In Chapter 6, Epstein introduces an important concept known as the conditional claim. A conditional claim is a claim stating that if you had or did something , then your actions will result in a consequence. Basically, it’s the if and then rule that you may have used in your everyday life before. : If A, then B. As you can see, a conditional claim contains both an antecedent and a consequent. In the if-then rule, the A is the antecedent and the B is the consequent resulting from the antecedent. A very good example of this would be:

“If she had quitted smoking a while ago, then she would still be alive today.”

In the example above, the antecedent is “If she had quitted smoking a while ago” and the consequent is “then she would still be alive today.” The statement is very true because if she had quitted smoking earlier, then she wouldn’t have died from cancer and would still be living a longer life.