April 25th - May 1st Questions

#1) I think the example in the reading on the website where they discussed the case of a bicyclist that caused an accident between two cars really helped me understand the concept of plausibility in causal arguments better. I like to watch a lot of courtroom drama shows like “Law & Order” so by picturing this example as something like you’d see on the show, it helped me understand it better. Most of the time, as they investigate the case, more evidence that shifts the guilt from one person to another is uncovered as the show goes on. This example kind of reminded me of that in that it makes you stop and reassess each claim on its own for credibility. However, since it is a tv show, I think they expect you to accept some pretty unlikely or unbelievable causal arguments sometimes in the name of entertainment, so it’s hard to be too much of a critical thinker and still enjoy the show.

Question #2

I thought the idea of wishful thinking was interesting, because I didn’t realize that it would fall into the category of an appeal to emotion. I guess I thought of it as a kind of self-justification. I think a lot of people use wishful thinking today to try to justify their actions to themselves or to others. With the election season coming up, I’m sure there will be a lot more ads that use wishful thinking as an appeal to emotion. For example, I heard one on the radio the other day that talked about how great California was, and how we can get it back that way if we elect a particular candidate. This struck me as a type of wishful thinking, as an appeal to the voter’s sense of nostalgia. Just because someone wants things to be a certain way, doesn’t mean that they will be. As a state, California is always changing and adapting, so it can’t go back to the way it was. It is possible to move things forward with good policies and government, but to want it to return to some unrealistic previous version just seemed ridiculous.

Week of April 11-17th Problem #1

I felt that the appeal to pity was the most interesting, probably because you see it so often in advertising now, especially with ads that are asking for money for natural disaster victims. They don’t show you that the money will be going to help rebuild schools and hospitals, or that it will provide food, water, and other supplies for those who lost everything they had. The commercials just bombard you with pictures of people bleeding, screaming, or crying. This seems especially exploitative when the pictures are of children, and strikes me as a perfect example of an appeal to pity. If these charities really are providing these types of services for those affected by disaster, then it should be easy to provide pictures as proof of this, instead of just using ones that appeal to pity. But when I see ads that just show disaster victims with sad music playing in the background, I know this is a blatant appeal to pity, instead of my reason, and it makes me less likely to want to give money.