More in Depth

Fallacies are a very important concept that we must understand in order to not only create a good argument, but to also not fall victim to the many fallacies we are presented daily.  Although fallacies are “bad” and shouldn’t be used, they work extremely well to persuade the audience.  The appeal to emotion is just one of the many different types of fallacies.  It is so common that we usually are unaware of it’s existence and just overlook it.  Any time someone uses the audience’s emotion to their advantage in an argument, they are committing a fallacy.  The advertisement business is one of the biggest users of this particular fallacy.  The ad companies understand that using people’s emotions to their advantage are a great way to change their opinion about something whether it is a social issue, a product, or a person.  If we open up our eyes to the world around us, it won’t be hard to find many examples of the appeal to emotion.

And boom goes the dynamite,

Melvin Banner

Favorite-Least Favorite

To be completely honest, I loved posting blogs.  Blogging is something I have never done before but was always interested in.  I am an extremely opinionated person so it is nice to be able to share them with others.  The part that I love the most is that it is anonymous.  I is not that I care what people think of me, it is that people’s judgments of others, interferes with their critical thinking of what the post is actually saying.  I like talking about controversial things and topics that are “inappropriate” to talk about.

The one thing that I did not like about this class was the fact that it was online.  I’ve never taken one before this and I can be honest and say this is probably going to be my last.  I just found it extremely difficult to stay on top of it since I don’t really go on the computer that much.  Not having a set time and day for this class really hurt me but in the end I learned form it and grew.
To improve this class I would suggest having the class meet as a whole at least one time in the beginning of the course.

And boom goes the dynamite,

Melvin Banner

What I Learned

Over the course of this class there were many different things I learned.  I found that I was able to apply a lot of these concepts and ideas to my everyday life.  He main thing I learned what how to build a strong and valid argument.  I believe that I will be able to use this for a lot for my future classes whenever I need to write a paper.  Way form the beginning of the class we learned about subjective and objective claims.  These are things that I have found being used in every day conversation with friends, family and at work.  Also, all the different fallacies that we read and wrote about will definitely come in handy in the future.  This was also my first online class so I obtained skill and characteristics that I didn’t really have before.  This class forced me to be responsible for taking care of my own stuff.  I needed to be on top of what was due and when it needed to be turned in by.  It is a lot different then having a teacher tell me the assignments in person.

And boom goes the dynamite,

Melvin Banner

Feedback on the Second Assignment

The third post for this week is supposed to help us get some feedback about our first or second assignment so I chose the second one.  I found this to be quite unsuccessful because the people I chose were either too afraid to hurt my feelings or honestly couldn’t find any flaws.  So I guess you could consider it to still be a successful exercise if no flaws were found but it still didn’t help much.  The people I picked to show my paper to were my roommate, her sister, my mother and one of my coworkers.  All have at least some college education, which was important to me because I didn’t want anyone who couldn’t understand what I was asking for.  When I asked them all what they thought, I received answers like, “Oh it’s good, you will probably get a good grade,” or “I can’t find anything wrong.”  The only person to give me any sort of constructive criticism was my mother…  big surprise.  Haha but even then, all she said to me was that it was boring.  Looks like only time will tell what my group receives on our paper.

And boom goes the dynamite,

Melvin banner

Mission Impossi- I mean Mission Critical =]

The second online website/exercise we had to do was the Mission Critical website.  The massive amounts of information provided by this website was almost overwhelming.  After the initial shock of the amount of information I started reading.  There were many different links that we could choose from.  As well as sufficient amounts of information elaborating on the specific concepts, there were short quizzes a lot like the previous online assignment; the casual argument website.  Looking at the different concepts this website provided I decided to click on a few and try them out.  One in particular that helped me was the straw man fallacy.  I was having trouble understanding the straw man fallacy before I clicked on the link, read more in depth on the topic, and participated in the question at the end of the page.  This website is perfect for people who just need a little extra help on specific things we have learned in class.

And boom goes the dynamite,

Melvin Banner

Cause and Effect

The casual argument website really helped to elaborate on the reading of chapter 15 which was also about cause and effect.  The reading gave me a strong base understanding of the topic and different concepts.  The chapter talks about different things like some of the mistakes people make when looking for cause, how to find the cause in reverse, and even a whole section on simply how to find the cause normally.  The website gave a more in depth look at specific concepts within the topic of cause and effect.  The exercise asked three short but in depth questions that really helped understand the reading of the website.  It asked a question on "commonality," "difference," and determining the likelihood of a cause.  The fact that the exercise was so short was really good.  The saying "less is more" can be used to explain this.  When online exercises include 20+ question, it’s harder to remember them all. But when only three questions are included, there is a much better chance to remember and truly understand the concepts.

And boom goes the dynamite,

Melvin Banner