Week 13 Discussion: Post 3

3). Pick one concept from throughout the semester that you feel can use further discussion.

            I think that a lot of the concepts in the Small Groups Text were very helpful when trying to work with a group. I feel like the hardest part of this class was trying to work with a group and the concepts taught in this book were actually very helpful. One concept that I would like to further discuss is effective leadership. I think that effective leadership was very important when it came to group work within this class. I remember blogging about this in post earlier in the semester, I wrote “[effective leaders] themselves as leaders want to succeed, as well as want their group to succeed, so they motivate their group members to work harder. When the leader displays hard work that leads to success, the group members are influenced to achieve just as their leader. It is sort of like the phrase “lead by example””. I still think this is true. Working with our group we definitely played our roles and I feel like there was distinct leader in our group and without this group member we wouldn’t have gotten our assignment done in time. 

Week 13 Discussion: Post 2

2). What was your favorite thing about the class?  What was your least favorite thing about the class?  How can this class be improved?  Again, be specific.

            My favorite thing about this class was the freedom to choose when you wanted to do the work. At the beginning of the semester, I chose to take this class online since it did not fit my schedule at all. Being that the class was online I was able to do most of my assignments in between classes and sometimes during work which made it very convenient for me. I liked that I was able to work at my own pace. My least favorite thing about this class was all of the group projects. I found that these were very inconvenient especially with my busy schedule. I felt that it was really hard to get 5 people with 5 different schedules together. I found myself stressing over not being able to meet with my group instead of not being able to do the work. The reason why I didn’t take the class in person was because I couldn’t take the time out of my schedule to do the work and group projects sort of defeated the purpose of an online class. 

Week 13 Discussion: Post 1

1). What have you learned in this class over the course of the semester?  Be specific.

            To be honest, when I first enrolled into this class, I didn’t even know what I was going to be learning in this class. I had no idea what “Critical Thinking” entailed, but throughout the semester I was able to define some of the main concepts. The main concepts learned in this class to me were claims and arguments. After learning the general concepts of what claims and arguments were, I was able to decipher if the argument or claim was not strong, too vague or even to believe if their argument was a reliable source. I think my favorite thing that I learned in this class was learning about apple-polishing or any of the posts where we were able to describe the fallacies of advertisements. Being able to connect what we blog about to what we see in the everyday world actually made me feel that I really understood the concept. Instead of making up my own examples, I was able to look onto the web and find ads that would pop up and use what I learned about appeal to emotion or apple-polishing to judge the ad. Overall, I learned a lot more about what I felt that I already knew about critical thinking. 

Week 12 Discussion: Post 3

 Tracing the cause backwards

                   In chapter 15 of the Epstein book, I liked the section regarding “Tracing the cause backwards”. I found it easy to ready and very entertaining with the illustrations. As described in the book, you only trace back to the first step. If you go further back it “it becomes too hard to fill in the normal conditions”. If you go too far back it makes it unobvious to what actually caused something.

Example: Not studying cause Jane to fail her test.

                     Jane didn’t study since she was tired. Being tried caused Jane to fail her test.

                     Jane was tired because she worked all day. Work caused Jane to fail her test.

                     Jane worked all day because she needed to pay her bills. Bills caused Jane to fail her test.

Jane had to pay her bills since she is she has responsibilities. Responsibilities caused Jane to fail her test.

With this example we could go on forever. Each different cause created the same effect, so it is best to stop at the first step. 

Week 12 Discussion: Post 2

Mission Critical website

                  The Mission Critical website was really useful! I wish I knew about this website when we first started the class! I liked that it had an outline of links for different types of arguments and fallacies. It was easy to locate a subject and then read about it. I thought each link was very useful to reinforcing the subjects we already learned and helped me understand some of the subjects that I didn’t really comprehend. I also like that it was interactive. Most of the links had exercises that directly told you the answers to the questions. If the answer was correct it showed why it was correct. If it was incorrect it described why you were incorrect. I found that very useful because most of these concepts are not hard but tricky. The explanations of why they are wrong are really helpful especially since this an online class and there’s not someone else to refer to. 

Week 12 Discussion: Post 1

Cause and Effect Website

                  On the Cause and effect website, the main lesson taught was casual arguments. A casual argument is the relationship between events that cause another but only having “one significant difference”. I liked the example about a how lawyers would approach the situation, it really showed different perspectives and showed the significant differences of the cause of the accident and the the outcome of the accident. With this example it showed how lawyers reason to get a logical outcome. The website also outlines the strengths of a casual argument and what they rely on. They are “how acceptable or demonstrate able the implied comparison is”, “how likely the causation seems to be”, and how credible the claims are. The strengths listed helped me understand how to determine the actual cause and effect. What I liked most about this website was that they outlines things well. All the main points were pointed out in bold and were easy to follow. Though it was outlined well, I found it very unpleasant with the lengthy paragraphs; it felt intimidating reading this especially when you’re tired L. Overall it was a useful website. 

Week 11 Discussion: Post 3

Judging Analogies

In chapter 12, Epstein writes about judging analogies. To judge a vague analogy, you must study the similarities of the analogies then identify the important ones to conclude a general principle that applies to both sides.

Example: Michael Phelps is a competitive swimmer and swims for the US Swim team. In 2009, Michael Phelps was on off-season and was photographed using a bong to smoke what was reported tobacco or marijuana.  Due to the photograph, he was suspended from the US Swim team. Swimmers should be kicked off the team for their use of illegal drugs.

The general principle of the use of illegal drugs applies both sides of the analogies: the possession of drugs for an off-season swimmer and the possession of drugs on a swimmer on the US swim team. Since the possession of illegal drugs has the same consequence to people on a swim team and people off a swim