Interesting Concept

One interesting topic that caught my attention that we have not yet discussed would be reversing cause and effect. Reversing cause and effect is what people tend to do when they mix one for the other, or that they believe B caused A just because B happened right after A. For an example, a student runs into a black cat, who crosses her path during her walk to school in the morning. Being superstitious, the girl automatically reflects on what possibilities running into a black cat will cause her. Soon, her day is filled with bad news: failing a test, being late to a class, and forgetting to do a homework assignment that was worth as much as about a test for her math class. After each of these events, the girl would get more fustrated and blame the black cat from earlier on the day and think that all her misfortune throughout the day was caused by this creature. However, she got things mixed up. It's true that although while some superstitions may coincedently be true, this one needs a little more logic: forgetting her homework assignment had nothing to do with the cat-- she forgot to do it the night before, which took place even before she crossed paths with the cat. Failing her tests only means she did not take precaution and study for her exam the night(s) before it took place, a cat cannot be blamed for procrastination. Being late to her class may have resulted from several different things: some stuff came up, or she walked extra slow: therefore she did not make it to class on time. However, this is an example of reversing cause and effect because this girl would then go home and think that she failed her test, was late to class, and did not bring her assignment all because of the black cat bringing her bad luck, which we can all see that is not the case!

Mission Critical Website

This website was very useful to me considering the fact that it gives an overall summary of most of the things we've learned and gone over throughout the course. For an example, it reviewed each of these topics: emotional appeals, inductive and deductive arguments, and different parts of an argument such as validity, premises, conclusion, vagueness, and ambiguity, to name a few. The one subject that I found most interesting, however, would be found at the very bottom of the website: the link labeled as the post hoc fallacy. As I've explained in my previous post, post hoc means "after this, therefore because of this." I liked how the writer used several different examples of post hocs, and gave explanations for each. The one that stands out to me most would be the last two paragraphs of his summary: how bad luck was taken as an example of people believing that certain things happen because they happened to walk under a ladder, or stepped onto the sidewalk cracks. Like the author said, bad and good luck happen to people regularly, people just tend to believe there is a link between the two when there really isn't. In the last paragraph of his review, he mentioned an example the barometer dropping because the atmospheric pressure has dropped. Because of this, rain would fall. Since some people who have not thoroughly thought things through would believe in the path of a post hoc fallacy, they would argue that the barometer dropping caused the rain. But if you were to sit down and think things through, you could see that this argument would be invalid and unreasonable. How can a barometer cause a weather change?

Cause and Effect Reading Exercise

I found this reading exercise to be fairly informative. I like how the one example that the author chose to explain this concept lasted throughout the explanation. In other words, in the many directions that the author went to analyze, explain, and critically scrutinize the given example relates to every part of this one example to the core, and that the author didn't have to go and use another example as he's digging further into his analysis. As the author goes deeper and branches out from the topic, I think the one think that strikes me as interesting is how he showed that all the arguments from the lawyers result in a pattern: that indeed they're all blaming each other, pointing fingers at the causation that happened before the person they're defending. In fact, the author points out that although they're blaming different things/people/factors, it all comes down to one thing: that it was the TRUCK that caused this whole thing, not the many things that came after it, such as the bicyclist swerving, or that driver number one braking hard. In addition to that, I found it useful that the author connected this very example to the "post hoc" term, which is something I learned not too long ago, in my English 1A class last semester. Pos hoc, which in long terms is also known as Post hoc ergo propter hoc, means that "after this, therefore because of this." What this really means is that just because B comes after A, B caused A. This relates to the example because it reinforces what the author is trying to explain to us all: that the lawyers believed that this scenario is one that can be described by using this term, that since the accident that happened before their defendant is what caused everything. However, that is not the case. As the author is trying to prove, all of this happened simply because of the truck, not any of the factors that happened after it.

Not Discussed: Appeal to Vanity

One concept I found fairly interesting would be the appeal to vanity. This appeal targets a person's specific feelings of self esteem. Although this concept sounds confusing, it really isn't. In short, it's basically a strategy to make someone feel good about themselves, by either sugar coating what you say, or by flattering them. By doing this, a person's feelings towards that specific thing/person may change from negative to positive. For an example,

Yolanda: "I'm so mad at you, why did you take my car without asking me?"
Bunga: "I'm sorry, I just thought I'd take it out to run some errands."
Yolanda: "Yeah, well you could have asked me you know."
Bunga: "I was, but I also decided to do some fixing- up to your car along the way as a surprise."
Yolanda: "What fixing up?"
Bunga: "After my errands, I washed it and vacuumed the inside for you. Everything's spotless now!"
Yolanda: "Wow ! Thanks... I guess it was okay for you to take my car after all. I haven't even checked my car yet, but what a pleasant surprise."
Bunga: "Yeah, that's why I didn't want to say anything, I wanted you to see for yourself!"
Yolanda: "That's very sweet of you... just remember to ask first next time okay?"
Bunga: "Okay."

In this example, Yolanda was mad at Bunga for taking out her car without asking for her permission first. However, after Bunga brought up the fact that he took her car out to get washed/vacuumed, that anger and negativity she had towards him changed into something positive. In this very example, Bunga got himself out of the dog house by "Brown-nosing" Yolanda, flattering her in a way by pointing out what good things he did for her car even though he took it without asking first. What he did was an appeal to vanity, turning her negative attitude towards that subject into something neutral, or even positive in the end. This strategy is a good one to be used when you want to get out of trouble, or if you simply need an easy way out of a hard time. It works!

Objective 3

The objective that I'm choosing to talk about would be objective 3. This objective, similar to the post before this, has to do with the appeal to fear. In this objective, the exercise is to find an advertisement that appeals to fear. Then, it asks whether or not that advertisement uses a good argument. So for my case, the advertisement I found would be : http://www.stanford.edu/class/linguist34/advertisements/fear%20ads/pages/rogaine_jpg.htm . In this advertisement, fear is used to strike the hearts of men who have a fear of losing hair, or have genetics where hair is loss as they grow older. As you can see, this advertisement provides why Rogaine is the solution to hair loss. The picture shown is a younger male with a head full of hair, versus an older male in the background who is bald. On the side, there is a paragraph that strikes the emotion fear in men, talking about how the older males in their families may be bald, and how they don't have to go down that path. Along with that, that fear is reinforced with other emotions: with their self esteem and how better looking they can be with hair versus without. Because of this, the advertisement has a good argument. They provided fear in men using two strategies: observations of those around them who have the same blood line / genes, and persuasion of how their looks may improve. Therefore, I think Rogaine did a great job with this advertisement.

Appeal to Emotion: Fear

In this chapter, there are three types of appeal that are related to emotion: fear, spite, and pity. The main appeal that strikes me would be the appeal to fear. The reason why this appeal sticks out to me most is because I believe fear makes people do irrational things beyond belief. For an example: the series of SAW movies. The mastermind behind the life or death games strikes the emotion of fear in people, thus making them go out of their way to win the game and survive. Others, on the other hand, get too scared and end up killing themselves in the process. In these movies, you can clearly see that fear is the main emotion that everything wraps around. It is what causes people to do things they normally would never do in order to survive or move onto the next challenge.

In my personal experiences, fear would be the most powerful appeal in the three given ones above. If I were placed in a situation where my worst fears came true, I would most likely do anything and everything to get rid of that fear, even if it means the irrational: such as those "players" in SAW games. They go as far as killing people, injuring themselves, shedding blood, and going through painful challenges just to survive: all because of fear. Therefore, fear is what strikes me most in the three. Pity may be another strong emotion, but I think fear would push people further than pity would.