What is the most important concept you have learned about critical thinking?

1. This is a core concept of critical thinking. An argument is not a quarrel and requires three elements:
• An arguable issue. We can argue whether or not San Diego is a great place to live, but that San Diego is in Southern California is not something that is arguable. It is a verifiable fact.
• A claim (which is really your conclusion). An argument requires that you make a decision about the issue, you must have a claim that something is (or is not) true.
• Reasons for that claim (which in logic we call premises). Why do you believe the claim you are making about the issues. Here is an example of an argument:
San Diego California is a great place to live. The weather is comfortable year round. It doesn’t get too hot in the summer. The beaches are beautiful, and there are lots of opportunities for cultural events.
o Arguable Issue: Whether or not San Diego is a great place to live.
o Claim (conclusion): San Diego is a great place to live.
o Reasons (premises):
 The weather is comfortable year round.
 It doesn’t get too hot in the summer.
 The beaches are beautiful.
 There are lots of opportunities for cultural events.
At this point we are not concerned with how good (or bad) an argument is; you need to focus on understanding the elements of argument.

Using any topic you like, create an argument that contains the three necessary elements. Your response should be 150 – 200 words in length

2. This is another core concept. We all make errors in reasoning on occasion. Those of us with strong opinions and beliefs tend to fall into problems with this when we are creating arguments. When these errors follow into a common pattern they are called logical fallacies. A logical fallacy is a PATTERN OF ILLOGICAL REASONING. The same pattern can be created using any context. The topic of the argument is not what creates the fallacy; it is the pattern of reasoning.
There are numerous identified logical fallacies, and over time they have been given names. The names often are derived from the pattern; many are in Latin because of the roots of logic. For example, if I have a tendency to want to win the argument at any cost, when I get flustered I might start criticizing the person with whom I am arguing. One could say that I was guilty of Ad Hominem or attacking the person. The topic is not important; the pattern of moving from the topic of the argument to the character of the person on the other side constitutes the fallacy.
In this course, you will be introduced to various fallacies. We do not attempt to present all the identified fallacies that exist (there are hundreds), but we will look at some of the most common. Understanding the concept of fallacies and knowing some of the common fallacies will give the advantage of choice. When you understand a fallacy, it is difficult to commit that error of reasoning without realizing what you are doing. It will also give you power in arguments with those “smooth talkers” who commit fallacies but disguise them well.
This week you learned about two fallacies that stem from problems with ambiguity: Composition and Division. They both stem from errors in distinguishing the parts from the whole. Review the definitions and examples of these fallacies in Chapter 2. Then see if you can create an example of one of the fallacies. Your response should be 150 – 200 words in length

3. It is more important that you start to recognize bad logic. Appendix 2 of your text identifies the “Top Ten” and that is a good place to start. You should be starting to feel more comfortable with the concept of fallacies at this point. It takes practice, so in our discussion forum this week, we are going to practice!
Look at the following examples (all from the Top 10 list) and see how many you can identify. Don’t look at what your peers think until you try to figure them out for yourself. Your classmate may be wrong, after all! It doesn’t matter if you get them all right at first – what matters is that you are thinking them through. Your response should be 150 – 200 words in length
• John’s objections to capital punishment carry no weight since he is a convicted felon.
• All men are rats! Just look at the louse that I married.
• If the Republicans win the election, then we will lose our benefits and probably end up homeless in the streets!
• Of course Nixon was guilty in Watergate. Everybody knows that.
• Mary joined our class and the next week we all did poorly on the quiz. It must be her fault.
• I don’t know what colleges are teaching these days! I have just received a letter of application from a young man who graduated from the state university last June. It was a wretched letter – badly written, with elementary errors in spelling, punctuation, and grammar. The state university does not deserve the tax support that it is getting.
• He went to college and came back a pot-head; college corrupted him.
• Many people say that engineers need more practice in writing, but I would like to remind them how difficult it is to master all the math and drawing skills that an engineer requires.
• Those who favor gun-control legislation just want to take all guns away from responsible citizens and put them into the hands of the criminals.
• After a taste of the morning coffee that his wife had made, Paul asks, “Did you do something different with the coffee this morning? It tastes a little bit different.” “Look,” snaps his wife, “if you don’t like the taste of my coffee, you can just make it yourself!”

4. For this discussion, you will need to watch television or listen to the radio. The best place to find fallacies is in the media, especially in advertising and in the news. Listen carefully to commercials or news broadcasts, and identify at least three of the top 10 fallacies described in your text. There should be little, if any, duplication of material among students given the vast number of media fallacies available. Your response should be 150 – 200 words in length.

5. Review the Editorial or Opinion pages(s) of an online newspaper or magazine and select an article that interests you. Copy and paste the article into your original post and summarize the article. Determine if the argument (opinion/point) is developed using deductive or inductive reasoning, and analyze its strength and/or validity. Your response should be 150 – 200 words in length

6. Using a real life or a hypothetical scenario, construct a VALID deductive argument. Your response should be 150 – 200 words in length.

7. What is the distinction between deductive and inductive arguments? Give an example of each to make your explanation clearer. Your response should be 150 – 200 words in length.

8. In Chapter 11 of your text there are several questions in Exercise 11-9 (pages 401-405). Select one question from the choices below with asterisk (*) by them, and create a response for each of the investigations listed from a through f. Your response should be 150 – 200 words in length.
*Learning music can help children do better at math. Gordon Shaw of the University of California, Irvine, and Frances Rauscher at the University of Wisconsin compared three groups of second-graders: 26 received piano instruction plus practice with a math videogame, 29 received extra English lessons plus the game, and 28 got no special lessons. After four months the piano kids scored 15 to 41 percent higher on a test of ratios and fractions than the other participants.
-Adapted from Sharon Begley, Newsweek, July 24, 2000
*The Carolina Abecedarian Project [A-B-C-D, get it?] selected participants from families thought to be at risk for producing mildly retarded children. These families were all on welfare, and most were headed by a single mother, who had scored well below average on a standardized IQ test (obtaining IQ’s of 70 to 85). The project began when the participating children were 6 to 12 weeks old, and continued for the next 5 years. Half of the participants were randomly assigned to take part in a special day-care program designed to promote intellectual development. The program ran from 7:15 to 5:15 for 5 days a week for 50 weeks each year until the child entered school. The other children received the same dietary supplements, social services, and pediatric care, but did not attend day-care. Over the next 21 years, the two groups were given IQ tests and tests of academic achievement. The day-care program participants began to outperform their counterparts on IQ tests starting at 18 months and maintained this IQ advantage through age 21. They also outperformed the others in all areas of academic achievement from the third ear of school onward.
-Adapted from Developmental Psychology, 6th ed., David R. Schafferi
* You want to find out if the coffee grounds that remain suspended as sediment in French press, espresso, and Turkish and Greek coffee can cause headaches.
You divide fifty volunteers into two groups and feed both groups a pudding at the same time every day. However, one group mixes eight grams of finely pulverized used coffee grounds into the pudding before eating it (that’s equivalent to the sediment in about one and a half liters of Turkish coffee). Within three weeks, you find that 50 percent of the group that has eaten grounds have had headaches, only 27 percent of the other group have experience a headache. You conclude that coffee grounds may indeed cause headaches and try to get a grant for further studies. (This is a fictitious experiment.)
*”In the fifty-seven-month study, whose participants were all male physicians, 104 of those who took aspirin had heart attacks, as compared with 189 heart attacks in those who took only a sugar pill. This means ordinary aspirin reduced the hear attack risk for healthy men by 47 percent. At least seven long-term studies of more than 11,000 hear attack victims have shown that one-half or one aspirin per day can reduce the risk of a second attack by up to 20 percent.” -Adapted from the Los Angels Times

9. What is the most important concept you have learned about critical thinking? As you consider your personal biases and assumptions, what tools/insights has critical thinking given you to make positive change in your life? Your response should be 150 – 200 words in length.

10. On pages 425 through 430 of your text, there are definitions of five major perspectives on moral reasoning. Which one is most in line with your personal views and why? Include a brief summary of the perspective in your response: Relativism, Utilitarianism, Deontologism, Divine Command Theory, or Virtue Ethics. Your response should be 150 – 200 words in length.