Thursday, SEPT 30. NO CLASS TONIGHT! VIRTUAL CLASS: LOGICAL FALLACIES

Before you get to the virtual homework, please take time to familiarize yourself with some precepts regarding argumentation here and some common fallacies here.

When reading the second hyperlink, you probably came across the most common logic mistakes that people make, and we will practice understanding two of them.


1. Slippery Slope:

The slippery slope fallacy occurs when a writer says that when one thing happens other things will happen because of that first thing, although they may not necessarily be related.

EX: Once women begin working alongside of men, they will want all other rights too like voting, and pretty soon, women will be running the world.

2. Red Herring:

The red herring fallacy occurs when a writer tries to distract the reader from the facts by including irrelevant ideas. We’ll see it occur here in the form of “two wrongs don’t make a right.”

EX: Our household can’t recycle, but that is to be expected. The city doesn’t provide recycling bins, no recycling truck stops by the house, and there is no government effort at all to encourage society to care about recycling.

ASSIGNMENT:

Please read the following fallacious arguments and then use the comment section below this post to explain why the argument is an example of faulty logic. Your 5 answers might look like this:

(FOR THE 1st EXAMPLE ABOVE)

1. The first argument is an example of the Red Herring fallacy. It is a red herring fallacy since the writer says that once women get to vote, they might then get to run the world. The fact that you get to vote doesn’t mean you will run the world.


Below are the assigned arguments.

1.

…[T]he acceptance of abortion does not end with the killing of unborn human life. It continues on to affect our attitude toward all aspects of human life. This is most obvious in how quickly, following the acceptance of abortion, comes the acceptance of infanticide―the killing of babies who after birth do not come up to someone's standard of life worthy to be lived―and then on to euthanasia of the aged. If human life can be taken before birth, there is no logical reason why human life cannot be taken after birth.

Source: Francis A. Schaeffer, "It is Your Life that is Involved", Who is For Life? (1984) ,


2.

We hated the war, but we loved it too. Vietnam made us special, a generation with a mission. Vietnam gave the semblance of moral shape to what was actually a formless hatred of "the system." The war justified every excess, every violent thought and deed. Heaving a rock at some corporation's window, we banished guilt by the thought: This is for the Vietnamese. Trying to set fire to a university library, we said to ourselves: This is for the Vietnamese. If the war gave us license, it also gave us an addictive sense of moral superiority: we were better than the circumstances in which we were forced to live. If we committed small misdemeanors of indecency, they were in the long run justified by the much larger and more obscene crime in
Southeast Asia.

Source: Peter Collier, "Something Happened to Me Yesterday", in Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties, with David Horowitz (Summit Books, 1989), p. 264


3.

At the time that they condemn any Muslim who calls for his right, they receive the highest top official of the Irish Republican Army at the White House as a political leader, while woe, all woe is the Muslims if they cry out for their rights. Wherever we look, we find the US as the leader of terrorism and crime in the world. The US does not consider it a terrorist act to throw atomic bombs at nations thousands of miles away, when it would not be possible for those bombs to hit military troops only. These bombs were rather thrown at entire nations, including women, children and elderly people and up to this day the traces of those bombs remain in Japan. The US does not consider it terrorism when hundreds of thousands of our sons and brothers in Iraq died for lack of food or medicine. So, there is no base for what the US says and this saying does not affect us.…

Source: "CNN March 1997 Interview with Osama bin Laden" (PDF)


4.


[The Mayor] said the biggest problem for the city administration has been fighting people who have protested such things as industrial development.
"We've had people fight highways, the school corporation and county zoning," he said. "I didn't notice any of these people coming up here on horses and donkeys. They all drove cars up here, spewing hydrocarbons all over the place."

Source: Terre Haute Tribune-Star


5.

…[I]f once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.

Source: Thomas De Quincey, "Second Paper on Murder"

C/C peer review.

1st, a journal, here .

2nd, groups.

3rd, peer review

4th Virtual Class Thursday.

C/C OUTLINING!

1. Journal: Please outline/plan your c/c essay using one of the proposed outlines in class.

2. WPA Guidelines...

3. WPA guidelines section one, notes.

Comparing and Contrasting, Cont.

First, a Journal:


Compare your values now with your values 5 years ago. How have you changed?


Second, some transitional practice, here, and here.

For the second one, please pick one culture you are familiar with and one you are not. Contrast.

After you have finished contrasting, you should have a pretty solid list. Please turn in when finished.


Third, your outline for your compare contrast essay. Please show me before you leave...

NOTE: ROUGH DRAFT OF ESSAY DUE in CLASS THURSDAY!

Contrastitive Essay

Welcome! Tonight we will collect descriptive essays, discuss our next essay, and see some examples of how we compare and contrast.


Class Overview... Touch Base...

Journal:

Choose two restaurants that both serve the same meal. How are those meals similar? How are they different?


Compare/Contrast methods, notes...here , here , here , here .

Compare and Contrast examples here... Note Transitional Phrases.

Description Continued

The art of Description involves selecting details carefully.

In tonight's class, I will ask you to read a selected passage and note the details that tell the story, and then we will discuss our descriptive drafts and share our purposes before letting another member in class read our work.

1. Journal:

Do you own something that you treasure? What is it? What does it look like? Why do you treasure it?

2. Reading Selection: CLICK HERE

3. Reading Discussion (focus on detail that tells a story)

4. Reading groups. Descriptive Essay Drafts.

Description Continued

Tonight's class will focus on the individual aspect of description...Each of us brings to bear our own prejudices and histories as we attempt to describe the world around us. The unique words you choose and the way you marshal them is what makes your description unique.

1. Journal: Please click on the links here and here and describe the pictures....

2. Methods of description, Organization....

3. Poem Groups... Killing Time.

Group Questions:

1. Identify 2 sentences that you find most descriptive.
2. What is happening in this poem?
3. What is the poem literally about?
4. What is this poem really about?

4. Narrative Due!
5. Success Center
6. Paper Guidelines Review

Descriptive Essay

1. Journal: Describe a time when you felt or were lost....

2. Descriptive and sentence practice: Reminder Concrete vs. Abstract.

3. Drafts?

4. Descriptive Groups.

5. Next Essay Assigned. Descriptive Student Example: see here