Appeal to Fear

Appeal to fear was something discussed in chapter 10 that i felt was an important topic. Today's society uses this tactic whether it is from a commercial or a politicians campaign. This tactic can be very great for your argument because it will make the viewers want to agree with whatever you are saying.
As far as appealing to fear, commercials have the greatest impact on everyone i think. One commercial i remember vividly is the Life Alert one. This commercial is aimed towards scaring the elderly into getting this device because if they do not then there is the possibility that they will die. This is a strong approach and it is very effective i think. Playing off the emotions of your audience is a very succesful tactic. If you are able to master using this appeal to fear then you can bring a much stronger argument for your argument.

Appeal to emotion

Appealing to emotion i feel is a very strong tactic that one can use when in an argument. You can make people feel bad in order to agree with you but at the same time appeal to emotion can be a bad thing for your argument. The aspect of appealing to spite was interesting to me because it showed how it can make your argument worse. Appealing to spite is basically letting revenge cloud your judgement.
One example could be.
Me: I am going to vote for George for class president because he is the best qualified.
John: Why would you vote for him? He copied from your paper and made you fail your math class.
Me: your right, im not going to vote for him, i am going to vote for Steve.
This is a bad argument because all im doing is changing my vote in order to get even with George.

week 8 post 2

Chapter 8 in Epstein's book was all about general claims. Two important topics that were discussed in this chapter included both precise generalities and vague generalities. These two topics basically help you find a good/bad or a strong/weak argument hich is important in communication. Lets start with vague generalities. These generalities use words such as most,all, and most rather then using specific numbers or statistics when referring to a group of something.
Ex. Almost all wealthy people have a college degree. Bill Gates is wealthy. So Bill Gates has a collegr degree. This is false because he does not have a degree and thr term almost all could be misleading because it doesnt show the exact number which would be a lot more specific.
Precise generalities use precise numbers or statistics when referring to a group of something.
Ex. 96% give or take 1% of all gamblers get into some sort of trouble when they first start. I am a gambler. So i got into some sort of trouble when i started out gambling. This is a good strong argument because 96% is a huge number and most like i fall into that category. Using a precise generality is good because it can reinforce your argument and make it strong. Dont use vague generalitiea unless you have to. They can make things seem more or less important than they really are.

Week 9 post 1

The second major course assignment I felt provided much usefulness to us. This class is a communication class and we had to work together as a group during this assignment. This alone helps with our communication skills as a group. The better our communication the easier the project was going to be and if we needed to improve communication this assignment will help do so. Another useful aspect of this project was digging deep into an organization. The one my group chose for example was the ASPCA. While writing our paper and answering the questions it helps us really find out how the company thinks to an extent. How do they use certain tactics to appeal to the community. We learn how these companies use these tactics for their advantage. One example for the ASPCA was their appeal to emotion. They would play a sad song while they showed pictures of animals who were in need of help. This plays to anyones emotions because no one can just look at a starved puppy and be like,” haha so what?” No matter who you are this tactic they use gets to you in some way.

Post 3

In chapter six we learned about false dilemma and the slippery slope concept. i felt that both of these topics should be addressed because the slippery slope concept i thought was interesting and false dilemma was discussed on our test we took last week.A false dilemma normally comes up when you find yourself thinking "is this a versus claim?" False dilemmas occur when the"or" claim does not list all of the other possibilities. My parents tell me i have to give up gambling or i am going to be in debt. This or claim that my parents are making is not necessarily true because i could potentially make money and acquire no debt whatsoever.
Slippery slope argument sorta ties into false dilemma because it also talks about statements being false. i sort of got a little confused with the two subjects. A slippery slope argument is a bad argument that uses a chain of conditionals at least one is false or dubious. slippery slopes can be exaggerated in my opinion let us refer to my poker example above. If i gamble online then ill get addicted. then ill spend money i do not have and i will go into debt. This chain is all correct only if i become addicted. If i do not come addicted then the other statements most likely become false.

chapter 7. counterarguments

One topic discussed in chapter 7 was the concept of raising objection. Raising objection is basically when you question an argument whether it is your own or someone else's. This helps to show how bad the argument really is because these objections point out weaknesses in the argument. Your argument may seem strong with good premises and a conclusion that flows together, but if you can think of objections then your argument is not as good as you think.
Another concept discussed was refuting an argument. You can do this by either directly or indirectly and there's 3 things to look for when doing it directly.
show at least one of the premises is dubious.
show that the argument is not strong or valid.
show that the conclusion is false.
refuting indirectly is when you can't pin point a bad premise or anything but you can prove that the conclusion or end result is not wanted. This chapter focused on how you can use "argument" to improve your one argument and make them stronger.

Conditionals , Contrapositive, and contradictories

Chapter six was an interesting read for me. It let me hone in on specifics of a sentence which was a nice concept for me. One thing mentioned in chapter six was necessary and sufficient conditions. I thought this was interesting. I liked the example that they used in the book referring to taking an eye test and getting your drivers license.
A is necessary for B means If not A, then not B is true
A is sufficient for B means If a, then B is true.
A claim and its contrapositive is equivalent. It is sometimes easier to understand a conditional via its contrapositive. A claim is conditional if it can be rewritten as an “if . . .then . . .”claim that must have the same truth-value. This brings us to a contradictory of a conditional which establishes if A, then B has a contradictory A but not B. This contradictory is a but statement which proves B to not necessarily be a true statement.