Chapter 7 Question 3

Of course as with all of the other chapters in the book we have read so far there are many concepts that were interesting to me. One that I have chosen to go more in depth with would be about casual arguments. In the book it says that "A cause is an event that brings about a change or effect"(220). That means that if there is a cause then there will be an effect or change. That brings us to casual arguments. An example would be if you do not get enough sleep at night then you will not have enough energy for the day. The cause will be the not getting enough sleep part. The effect would be that because you do not get enough sleep then you will not have energy the next day. What makes this an inductive argument is that the effect is not necessarily true. You can drink an energy drink the next day or your body happens to be strong enough where you do not need lots of sleep to have energy the next day. Some people are used to having little sleep and some need a lot of it.

Chapter 7 Question 2

Dr. Novello is a really great person. When things were tough for her she did not do what other people did, but she embraced the most of life and followed her dream to become a doctor. In seeking a solution to finding the problem of smoking among children and teens the cause that she found was that the Joe Camel ads in 1988 for the camel cigarettes pretty much started it all. That inevitably caused many children and teens to want to smoke cigarettes more. So as an effect she strived for there to be more education in schools. Also to ban cigarette and alcohol ads that were targeted toward the youth. In using inductive reasoning she is hoping that the ban on cigarettes and alcohol ads targeted toward the youth and for more education in schools would have an effect on the number of teens and children to decrease.

Chapter 7 Question 1

An inductive argument that I believed I have used this week was when I was driving home from school. I was going to exit the highway onto normal street roads when a car was entering a freeway. I knew that usually if you enter a freeway then you change lanes so you don't automatically exit the freeway. So in my head I was thinking if that if the person was entering the freeway, then they should change lanes so they do not exit the freeway. Sadly I was wrong though since the person who just entered the freeway stayed in the exit lane and exited the freeway. I guess they wanted a faster way to go somewhere that did not require many street lights. That's my story though. It is an inductive argument because when you use the premises like usually people who enter the highway change lanes to stay in the highway is not always true. Then when we go to the conclusion we can use the indicator “we can expect that” the person who is entering the freeway will change lanes, but it is not always necessarily true.

Chapter 8 Question 3

I liked all the different types of concepts that chapter eight has offered. I never really thought about the different ways of arguing. One concept that caught my eye would be arguments by elimination. It caught my eye because how they mentioned Sherlock Holmes and I knew he was a really good detective so I wanted to know more about this type of argumentation. So I learned that you have to rule out any possibility when doing your argument and when you have the last possibility then it must be the answer. We use this everyday too like when we want to find something like lets say your keys. If you retrace your steps and check each place you were until you have your last place it could be then that is when you find your keys. Another way of elimination would be a disjunctive syllogism. Which is when you only use two different possibilities. Such as my keys are either in my jeans or on the table because those were the only places you would put your keys. If you checked your table then it must be in your jeans. I like this type of argumentation because whatever is last is always the answer.  

Chapter 8 Question 2

All people are different. So all people have different perspectives. It just depends on how you look at things like how sister Helen Prejean interprets the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, “who taught us to not to return hate for hate and evil for evil”. She see's Jesus' teachings in a way that she thinks the death penalty contradicts it. In my perspective I believe that the scriptural passage does not prohibit the usage of the death penalty. I think that is so because in the justice system when a person has done a heinous crime that everyone hears about then the doer of the crime is usually sent to another county or part of the state. That is so there is no feelings of anything from the jury so everything is neutral. It is not like someone did a crime and the whole family of the victim is the jury and they decide the death penalty because they hate the person and want to be evil to them. Hate is when you strongly dislike someone or something. Courts use the death penalty not because they hate someone, but because they deserve it. Therefore, the scriptural passage does not prohibit the usage of the death penalty because courts do not use the death penalty because of hate, but because they deserve it.

Chapter 8 Question 1

Everybody knows how much of a good reasoner Sherlock Holmes was. He knew that to be a good reasoner you would have to take away all opinions and assumptions out of reasoning and base everything on fact. Which is in fact what most people do not do. When he said that, “when it comes to the art of reasoning, many people rely on opinion and unsupported assumptions” he meant what I said earlier that you cannot bring in opinions and assumptions when you are trying to reason with someone. Take in all the facts and distinguish them from the opinions. One example in my life that I have had was when I was at my work with a coworker working together on a project. While I was working hard on the project my worker disappeared and left me. I did not know that my coworker left and I assumed that he had left me for me to do the project on my own. I tried to reason with myself, but could only think of how mad I was that my coworker left me and I thought he was lazy for doing that. Little did I know though that my coworker left to bring support and had actually helped me do the project without my knowledge. So I learned that until I get my facts straight I need not to use opinions or assumptions when reasoning.  

Chapter 6 Question 3

There was a lot of information given in chapter six. I learned a lot about premises, conclusions, deductive arguments, inductive arguments and so much more. I think the most interesting piece of information that I have learned though would be about breaking down and diagramming arguments. I have never really thought about diagramming an argument and didn't know how technical it could get. I like how there were three steps to breaking the argument. Like the first step would be to bracket the propositions, identify the conclusion, and identify the premises. Then to diagram the argument you would put the premises in circles with numbers in them on the top whether they are independent or dependent premises and then put the conclusion in the bottom. After that it would even get more technical with subconclusions, unstated conclusions and the usage of lines to connect premises. All of this information intrigued me.   

Chapter 6 Question 2

There is not much that comes to mind with me when I think of any situation where I had to stand my ground because I am the type that does not like to argue. If I had to choose one particular event though I would have to choose the time where my friends wanted to go out to eat with me before they went out to move down south near San Diego, but I had to be with my mom because she was really sick. My mom also had my sister and brother to take care of her too, but I wanted to be with my mom. My friends got mad because it could be the last time they could see me probably and they told me that my sister and brother could just take care of my mom, but in my head I knew that back then when I was younger that whenever my mom wanted to have fun she couldn’t sometimes because she had to take care of me. I had to explain to my friends the situation and eventually they sympathized with me. My critical thinking skills led me to decide who to go with and it led me to not just think of what I wanted, but what was best. I had to think on a higher level to decide who to go with. 

Chapter 6 Question 1

I believe that Obama's position on same-sex marriage is not on par with his beliefs in equal rights and opportunities for all people. Obama knows that if same-sex marriage was legalized on a federal level then the homosexual married couples would get the same benefits as the heterosexual married couples. So that means if he does not support the legalization of same-sex marriage on a federal basis then he does not believe in the support of equal rights and opportunities for all people since the same-sex marriage couples would not be getting the same benefits as the heterosexual ones. I do not know how Obama thinks, but I think that his way of responding to Nava and Dawidoff's argument would be that he is trying to keep the system in balance as in if homosexual couples got the same rights as heterosexual ones then many companies like insurance companies who give discounts to married couples would have to change their policies. So he would probably be looking at the situation on a higher level.