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.