One Concept

One concept I feel that I can use in a discussion was the chapter about "Valid vs. Strong arguments". A valid argument is always completley true.  With valid arguments there is never a false conclusion about the subject.  On the other hand, a strong argument can be proven false with clear evidence.  An example of a valid argument would be "In the game of Basketball, there should always 5 players on the court for each team"  This is a valid argument because there are always 5 players on the court for each team.  This cannot be argued because it is a valid fact.  An example of a strong argument would be saying "All students who graduate high school, should go to college"  Although this is a strong argument, not all students go to college.  There may be a financial issue or they just might not feel like pursuing the next level of education.  Basically, a valid argument is always 100% true, and a strong argument may be true, but it can be proven false.  

Post 2: What I liked/disliked

There were a lot of things that I liked about this class.  One of the things that I liked was responding to my classmates post.  It was cool to see what other people thought about the subject.  It was also good that I got feedback from my other classmates.  I think this is good for us so we can see what other students think about our response.  It was also a good expierience to do this online class.  Rather than going to class everyday, we got to see what it was like turning things in by a certain time rather than the teacher telling you what to do everyday.  It is a good way to learn to be responsible.  One thing I didnt like about the class was how we had to do the essays.  It was pretty hard because our group didn’t see each other everyday, like we would have if the class was in person, so it was a little bit harder.

Post 1: What I Learned

During these two summer sessions, I have learned a lot in this comm 41 class.  The goal in this class was to learn about critical thinking. Some of the things that I learned were, claims, types of arguments, and many more.  I believe that Epstein's book "Critical Thinking" is was very informative.  One thing that I noticed was it was focusing more on claims and arguments.  For example, he talked about strong vs. valid arguments.  This was good information to know because we use this in everyday life.  We always find ourselves in an argument, but you usually never win the argument unless it is a strong one.  We also use claims in everyday life, because someone is also trying to persuade you.  For instance certain companies try to convince their audience to buy their product.  Overall, I learned alot from this class, and I will use what I learned in real life situations.  

Mission Critical Website

When I clicked on the Mission Critical website, I really sure what to read.  I clicked on the "About Mission Critical" page and read about that.  From this website I found out what he website is all about and what its goal was.  The website said is to create a "virtual lab," capable of familiarizing users with the basic concepts of critical thinking in a self-paced, interactive environment.  After reading the "About" page, I decided to go through all the concepts that were listed below.  For example there were, The Basics, Analysis of Arguments, Fallacies/Non-Rational Persuasion, and other common fallacies.  I have already previously learned about these subjects but it was good, refreshing my memory.  I didn't know what the website was all about at first, but now I have a pretty good idea, and the information is pretty useful and the exercises were as well.  

Cause and Effect Exercise

I think that the exercise for casual arguments was pretty effective.  The page where it explained all about cause and effect was very helpful.  I pretty much already knew about what cause and effect meant because I did a response about it last week.  I think that cause and effect is basically common sense.  The introduction on casual arguments had a lot of good information that was useful.  It is basically pointing out different ways that cause and effect can come into play in real life situations.  For example in the example they used talks about how the bicyclist's lawyer will probably claim that the illegally parked truck caused her client to swerve into the lane of traffic.  I think that almost every situation in life has a cause and effect and that is why I believe it is important to learn about the different types.  Overall the website was effective and I really got to go deeper into the definition of cause and effect.

Cause and Effect

After a re-read Chapter 15,  I like this chapter because it was pretty short.  I found many concepts that were pretty interesting.  The one that I was most interested in was the section about I causes and effects.  Epstein starts off talking defining exactly what a cause was and what an effect was.   He also states “Whatever causes and effects are, we can describe them with claims.” I believe this concept is simple because I learned about this when I was in elementary school or middle school.  Basically a cause leads to an effect.  For example, I wake up to an alarm everyday.  So if the alarm rings, it causes me to wake up.  The cause is the alarm, and the affect is that it wakes me up.  We use cause and effect in everyday life and I feel that it is a pretty easy concept. 

Course Assignment: Critical Thinking in News and Politics

The course assignment “Critical Thinking in News and Politics”  seemed like an overall good assignment.  Basically we had to find an editorial or letter, and analyze it using critical thinking.  We had to figure out the major claim of the editorial and we also had to mention premises/claims that support the main claim.  My groups editorial was about NFL and concussions.  It was basically saying that the NFL needs to be more aware of those kinds of injuries and how they can affect players in the long run.  I think that the assignment wasn’t easy.  It took alot of work because we had to find the right editorial or letter to choose from and there were hundreds of them.  I believe that this assignment was good for me because I had a chance to analyze the editorial deeper so I understood what the author of the editorial was trying to say.