Further Discussion

The concept that needs further discussion, in my opinion, is chapter 9 of the Epstein text. This chapter talks about concealed claims.

One of the concepts is the Euphemism and Dysphemism. Euphemism is when a word or phrase that makes something sound better than a neutral description and Dysphemism is when a word or phrase that makes something sound worse than a neutral description.

The text shows a few examples about this concept but doesn't really explain it like when are they good to use it, where should people use them, how they should be used or why such terms should be used. They should show some examples where a good word is used as dysphemism.

I'm pretty sure these terms, Euphemism and Dysphemism, are used by people in their daily lives without even noticing it. People use these concepts in their advertisements to make their products sound nice and fancy or make their competition's products sound ugly and bad so that they can persuade their viewers to buy their products instead of their competion's.

Like/Dislike

In this class, Comm 41, what I liked about it is that it is an online class because I didn't have to get up early in the morning to go to class like my other classes. I also liked the program/system, blogger website, that is used for this class because it is very easy to access and very straightforward. I liked the most that this class required as to work in a group for 3 projects because I got to interact with some of my classmates and put the lessons I learned in test.

What I didn't like about the class is the fact that students had to wait 12 hours of timespan between each of the 3 posts for the weekly participation assignment of the class. I personally didn't like it because I waned to finish the weekly participation assignment as soon as possible and I could have done all 3 questions in one seating and get it over with and be done for the week for the class but I could not because the 12 hour wait timespan prevented me from doing it since it was the instructor's instruction.

The only improvment I could suggest for this class is to take out the 12 hour wait timespan for the weekly partication assignment because I'm pretty sure that other students would also want to finish the assignment as soon as possible to get them over with and out of the way or at least reduce the waiting time span to 6 hours so that students don't have to wait for a long time to finish another participation question.

Other than that, to me, the class in overall is very helpful because the lessons for this class helped me learn a lot about critical thinking especially in how to determine if an argument is valid, invalid, good, bad, strong or weak. I definitely would suggest other students to take this class because not only they will learn a lot of things, they will also have fun working with other students for the group project and put the lessons they will learn in this class to test.

Argument

This semester, in Comm 41, I have learned how to determine if whether an argument is bad, good, invalid, valid, strong, or weak.

An argument is an attempt to convince someone that a particular claim, called the conclusion, is true. The rest of the argument is a collection of claims called premises, which are given as the reasons for believing the conclusion is true (Epstein, p.5).

A strong argument is if it is possible but unlikely for the premises to be true and the conclusion false (at the same time).

A weak argument is if it is possible and likely for the premises to be true and the conclusion false (at the same time).

A valid argument is in which it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion (at the same time).

An invalid argument would be the opposite of a valid argument. It is usually classified from strong to weak.

Example:

All fishes swim.

Therefore, salmons swim.

This would be a valid and strong argument because the true premise leads to a true conclusion. We all believe that all fishes have a true nature skill to swim and since salmon is a kind of fish, then salmons swim. Even though, some fishes like mud-fish stay in the mud at times, they still swim.

Another example:

All Honda cars, after 1996 have VTEC engines.

Therefore, the next Honda car model will have a VTEC engine.

This argument is valid because the premise is true that all Honda cars that are made after 1996 have VTEC engines. But, the conclusion could be possibly true or false because we do not know if Honda will be putting a VTEC engine or a new type of engine on the next Honda car model which makes it a weak argument.

Chapter 15

One concept from chapter 15 in the Epstein text is the Cause and Effect in Populations. The text says that a Cause in populations is usually explained as meaning that given the cause, there's a higher probability that the effect will follow than if there were not the cause. The text used the "Smoking causes lung cancer" example for this concept but doesn't really state how smoking can cause lung cancer so they used an activity to come up with an evidence.

1. Controlled experiment: cause-to-effect.
In this experiment, people are split into two groups - one group of smokers and one group of non-smokers which is called the control group. The point of using a control group is to show that, at least statistically, the cause makes a difference.

2. Uncontrolled experiment: cause-to-effect - starts with the suspected cause and see if the effect follows.
In this experiment, there are two randomly chosen, representatives sample of the general population for other possible causes of lung cancer such as working in coal mines and a group of people who say they have never smoke. This doesn't have a controlled group.

3. Uncontrolled experiment: effect-to-cause - starts with the effect in the population and try to account for how it got there.
In this experiment, it consists of many people who have lung cancer to see if there is some common thread that occurs in (almost all) their lives. They are factored into coal mine workers, lived in high pollution areas, drank a lot and smokers.

The experiment with the controlled group would have the best evidence because if the people who smoke turns out to have a lung cancer and nothing for the non-smokers after the experiment is done, then it is clearly shows that smoking causes lung cancer.

MIssion Critical

One of the concepts I found useful was is the vagueness and ambiguity. These two seems like have the same meaning but is totally different from each other because a word or phrase is said to be ambiguous if it has at least two specific meanings and a word or phrase is considered vague if the meaning is not clear.

An example for vague would be this:

My friends and I went to the mall and while we were walking around, we saw a group of females walking towards us and right when they passed us by , one of my friend said, "Damn, that girl is hot."
What my friend said is vague because my other friends and I didn't know which girl he was talkin about because there were five of them, until we asked him which girl was he talkin about. He didn't exactly point out which girl he was talking about.

As for ambiguity, the site gave few examples for it.

After Hubert Humphrey lost the election to Richard Nixon, he said, "I'd always wanted to run for president in the worst way, and now I have."

"In the worst way" is ambiguios because it could mean "very much" or "very poorly."

Cause and Effect website

In the Cause and Effect website, I find inductive reasoning useful because it helped me understand a little more on reasoning constructing or evaluating inductive arguments. Inductive reasoning is a kind of reasoning that constructs or evaluates inductive arguments. The premises for the inductive argument indicate some probability - based on observation or experience, for the conclusion but do not impose it; that is, they suggest truth but do not ensure it. The site also provided an example to help the reader understand what is going on and how inductive reasoning works. Also, the site states two rules to remember in dealing with causation which are:

1. The cause must precede the event in time. On one hand, arguments that have the effect before the cause are examples of the relatively rare fallacy of reserve casaution. One the other, arguments whose only proof of causation is that the effect followed the cause are examples of fallacious post hoc reasoning.
2. Even a strong correlation is insufficient to prove causation. Other possible explanations for such a strong correlation include coincidence, reversed causation, and missing something that is the cause of both the original "cause" and  its purported "effect."

Fallacy of Composition

Chapter 12 of the Epstein text shows different examples on judging analogies. One of them is "Fallacy of Composition." Fallacy of Compostion means that something is done when a conclusion is drawn about a whole based on the features of its constituents even thnet ough there really is no reason provided for the inference. An example for fallacy of composition which I found on the net is...

Human cells are invisible to the naked eye.

Humans are made up of human cells.

Therefore, humans are invisible to the naked eye.

Just by looking at the argument, it seems like it would be valid because the conclusion "Therefore, humans are invisible to the naked eye" would be true based on the first premise "Human cells are invisible to the naked eye" since humans are made up of human cells, but in reality this argument would be false because we all know that humans are not invisible to the naked eye which makes the argument as a fallacy of composition.