Cause and Effect in Populations

A concept that I found interesting was cause and effect in populations. According to the Epstein text, "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." If you have no specifics on the normal conditions then you go to statistical conclusions. Just like the example they used in the book about smoking, there are some people who smoke who don't get lung cancer and there are some people who smoke who do get lung cancer and when you're using an argument like "smoking causes lung cancer," we have no normal conditions for this, so we use statistics to better the argument. What I also found interesting about cause and effect in populations were the different experiments like the controlled experiment, uncontrolled experiment, and uncontrolled experiment from effect-to-cause. In an uncontrolled experiment we start with the suspected cause and see if the effect follows, but it's uncontrolled so people in the experiment may be doing something or make their own decisions that changes the outcome, there are more factors to consider. In a controlled experiment, people follow what they're supposed to do and don't do anything that they're not told to do.

Mission Critical Website

What I found useful about the Mission Critical website were all the links to describe everything about arguments. I found it useful because it helps to see the basics of how to form an argument, how to analyze arguments, and their fallacies. It described each in detail and described it in a way that I can understand. I also found it easier to navigate than a book because it divides everything into sub categories that are linked to different pages. You don't have to go through pages to find specific words or phrases because each key word has their own page.

Another thing I found useful were the exercises because instead of just reading things to understand, it helps to actually do them to understand. If you get an answer wrong in the exercise it tells you why it's wrong and if you get it correct then it explains why it's correct.

One concept I found useful on this website to read were about the other common fallacies because I read about them in the book, but it wasn't very clear to me. Reading about these fallacies on the website were more clear, not to mention, the exercises helped.

Cause and Effect

The Cause and Effect reading and exercises helped me to understand inductive arguments where there is only one significant difference or one significant commonality. It helped me to understand that cause and effect can be used in arguments with a mixture of difference or commonality reasoning. Reading about this confused me at first, but doing the exercises helped me to understand it better. The exercises were more clear to help me understand a most significant commonality and a most significant difference in an argument. This is how to argue causation. The reading talking about how lawyers argue a case by using similar arguments and causal arguments also helped me to understand it better. How one thing happened could be the cause of another thing, like if person A leaves the xbox on for a while, then person B comes to play the xbox and presses a button then it stops working. You could argue that it is person A's fault because they left the xbox on causing it to overheat, but you could also argue that Person B might have done something wrong to cause it to break or you could argue that Person B should have turned it off first.

Another example of cause and effect:
10 people in the class passed the test.
The most significant commonality could be that they all studied.
The most significant difference could be that no one else in the class besides those 10 people studied.

Call in your debts

Another concept I found interesting was appeal to spite because I hear it used all the time. According to the Epstein text call in your debt appeals to the opposite of spite: "You should believe or do something if you owe someone a favor." I hear this used a lot from my some of my friends, and it is especially annoying when they offer to do something and tell you that you don't owe them anything and then next thing you know they bring it up like you owe them.

For example:
Person 1: No, it's cool I'll pay for your food.
Person 2: Are you sure? I could pay you back next time.
Person 1: No really it's cool, I got you, you don't have to pay for me.
Next time...
Person 1: How about you pay for me this time since I paid for your food last time? or
Person 1: Since I paid last time you can pay this time.

Example 2:
Person 1: Do you need a ride home?
Person 2: Yea! Thanks!
Person 1: No problem.
Next time...
Person 1: Can you give me a ride home? C'mon, I always give you rides!

Example 3:
C'mon go out with us tonight! Don't flake like you did last week!

I think an argument that calls in your debts is so annoying! If you offer to do something and you say you don't expect anything in return then don't expect anything in return! Don't try to get someone to do something or agree with you by sending them on a guilt trip.

Appeal to Fear

3.) This advertisement uses appeal to fear because it's trying to tell women that if they want to drink like men(binge drink) then they're going to end up looking like that person in the picture. It's trying to tell women that binge drinking will destroy their good looks, therefore scaring women into not binge drinking if they want to keep looking good. It's not giving any evidence or statistics stating that if you drink like a man you really will start looking like one, and what about the people who binge drink and don't look any different at all? It's like saying that if you are a woman you should stop binge drinking...or else you will look like that. It is scary to think that if you binge drink you will look like that, (not saying that men are ugly), and so that's how they are trying to convince their audience, through fear. They know people want to look good and by trying to scare them into thinking that they will lose their looks by binge drinking then they are trying to convey their argument by appealing to fear.

Appeal to Emotion

Appeal to emotion is basically saying that you should believe something because of how you feel about it. It's a premise that is trying to convince someone to believe their argument by appealing to the person's emotion.

There are different aspects of appeals to emotion such as appeal to pity, appeal to fear, appeal to spite, and appeal to vanity.

Appeal to pity interested me the most because I see that a lot. Sometimes people try to convince someone of something by trying to get them to feel bad if they don't agree with what they say or if they don't agree with what they do. There are a lot of advertisements that do this. Just like in the last project we had to do for this class, my group did it on PETA and I found so many articles and ads that were trying to appeal to people's emotions by trying to get them to pity them. I read an article about the Ringling Brothers not taking proper care of their baby elephants that they use for their performances and they showed pictures and stated things to the degree of "if you don't do something now, these elephants will continue to be abused." They're trying to get people to support them by getting others to pity them. They use pictures and say things to get people to feel bad so that people could help them out, and this is implausible reasoning.