Mission Critical

The Mission Critical website was extremely helpful and useful.  It provided a lot of information on inductive and deductive reasoning, casual arguments, conditional arguments, and a lot more.  It was set up as a table of contents and it broke down the readings and exercises by subject.  It begins with the parts of an argument, to basic relations, analysis, fallacies, and other common fallacies.  All the information provided is similar to what we have read in our Critical Thinking textbook.   It also has all the emotional appeals, which also helped me, understand the emotions better.  They had appeal to fear, pity, spite, prejudice, vanity, and loyalty.  What is helpful on this website is all the exercises and reviews that were provided.  I liked how they provided free exercises to help understand the concepts better, and when you pick your answer and it get it right or wrong, the website takes you to the answer and explains why that was the answer.  So, when I would get an answer wrong I was able to comprehend why it wasn’t the answer I picked.

Inductive Reasoning

The one reasoning that was difficult to understand first was inductive reasoning.   When I first read about it was a difficult subject to grasp.  It took me several times to read it over again, and I was able to comprehend it just a bit more.  Inductive reasoning is when you propose a proposition based off previous observations that were made.  What helped me understand the concept was the example that was given.   The example was made by David Hume:

 Premise: The sun has risen east every morning up until now.

  Conclusion: The sun will also rise in the east tomorrow.

After reading the example I was able to understand inductive reasoning a lot more.  It actually clarified it for me and I was able to comprehend what inductive reasoning was.  I also learned that inductive and deductive reasoning contrast with each other.  Inductive reasoning conclusions contain more information than the premise does.

Chapter 12: Interesting Concept

An interesting concept that I found in chapter twelve is section C: Judging Analogies.  The section breaks it down to the reader on how to determine the differences in an analogy and to see if there is a reason that might not apply to the general principle.  In the section it presented different examples to help determine the analysis of the presented example.  The section also has a box that gives seven questions on evaluation an analogy.  The first question when evaluating an analogy; is this an argument? What is the conclusion?, second question: what is the comparison?, third: what are the premises?, fourth: what are the similarities?, fifth: can we state the similarities as premises?, sixth: does the general principle really apply to both sides?, and finally: is the argument strong or valid?  These are just some of the questions that are listed and more can be found in our textbook on page 257.

Appeal to Fear

The advertisement I chose was the above the influence campaign for the appeal to fear.   The advertisement has two mice sitting on a bed taking rat poison, which is their drug to get high off of.  It represents humans taking drugs that are harmful to their body, examples are people who inhale glue, people who misuse prescription medications, etc.   On the bottom of the advertisement it says in small print, “What’s the worst that could happen?”  The advertisement is trying to influence fear on people who are considering or using drugs.  I believe that the advertisement uses a good argument, since they used mice and rat poison to represent what drugs are too mice.  Drugs in a way are like rat poison, but its “human poison” to our bodies.  Also it shows the two mice hanging out in their room with the box of poison on the floor and one of the mice is offering the other one some rat poison to get high off of.  The question “What’s the worst that could happen?” also helps influence fear because the worst that can happen is death when using drugs.

Appeals of Emotion

In our textbook appeal to emotion is defined as, “a premise that says, roughly, you should believe or do something because you feel a certain way.”   Our book lists different types of emotions of appeal; appeal to pity, appeal to fear, appeal to spite, and appeal to vanity.  Each different type of emotional appeal has a different definition.  Appeal to pity means in simple terms to do something if you feel sorry for someone.  Appeal to fear means to do something if you feel fearful and it’s not good if it “substitutes one legitimate concern for all others.  Appeal to spite means to do something out of revenge, the book also states that it, “invokes the ‘principle’ that two wrongs make a right.”  There is also an appeal opposite of spite, which is “call in your debts” appeal.  The book says that it means, “you should believe or do something if you owe someone a favor.”  The last appeal that I found in the book was appeal to vanity, which is defined as a feel good argument.  The one appeal that caught my attention was the appeal to spite.  It was interesting to read that in some cultures that appeal to spite is actually acceptable, but then again in a way it is kind of saving face which can be both good and bad depending on the situation.