Week 4 Cause and Effect

When Cause and effect happens, it often shows a premise then a conclusion because of the premise. For example, I slept in too late so I missed my class. While sometimes the cause and effect may not be as clear as other situations, they will always be able to be pointed out. In the text book Dr. Novello has the problem that more teenagers are starting to smoke. Now there could be many possibilities of the cause in this situation but from the text it looks like that the ads that are being used to target teenagers and make smoking look like “the cool” thing to do. To fix this problem Dr. Novello pushed for the banning of advertising cigarettes to the youth and for schools to start educating students of the harms of smoking. I believe that these changes are helping because being educated about the harms of smoking and knowing what it does to your body makes it hard to smoke without thinking of what your doing to your body.

-mike ross

Week 4 Question 1

Inductive reasoning is used daily to make decisions that would otherwise be difficult to make but you use aspects of a person or situation that you know from the past to help you make the decision for that moment. For example, As I have stated in my blog post before I am the treasurer of a fraternity, and we always have people that have troubles paying on time/ try to make deals to avoid late fees. Just the other day one of my brothers came to me with a situation. We had a payment due on September 5^th and everyone knew and if people have problems with paying they either get late fees or make plans with me a few weeks before the payment is due in order for me to make a plan that will work for the both of us. But just the other day on the 10^th this brother came to me and asked if the house could cover his payment for this time and he will pay us back when he gets his paycheck. I then started to use some inductive reasoning to help me figure out this situation. I have had troubles with this brother in the past with payments, and not only that he is consistently late, and often tells me he will pay “on his next paycheck” which most of the time does not happen. Using those as my premises I came out with the conclusion that I will probably not get the money back that he promises by the time I need it and therefore decided to not use the houses funds to help cover his payment. While, this  does make it more expensive for him in the long run, it is important for someone to learn how to take accountability and responsibility.

-Mike Ross

Week 3 Question 3

Within chapter 8 of the boss text book they discuss the different argument types and how you can determine if they are valid or invalid. First off a argument is valid if the conclusion must be true if the premises are true. With that being said, there are several types of argument forms. One of the easier argument forms to understand is the disjunctive syllogism. The disjunctive syllogism is an argument form that only lets two alternatives be the outcome. For example, it could be

Either Mike Ross is a lawyer or he is a Hobo.

Mike Ross is not a Hobo.

Therefore, he is a lawyer.

Another type of argument form is modus ponens, which is a hypothetical syllogism in which the antecedent premise is affirmed by the consequent premise. While this may sound confusing it is simple once you get a hold of it. I had a math class last semester that was based on modus ponens and modus tollens so I have a good understanding on the topic. So an example for this one could be,

If I pass this math class, I get credit for the course.

I passed the math class.

Therefore, I got credit for the course.

Now modus tollens is the opposite of what modus ponens is. Therefore, an example of modus tollens would be,

If I pass this math class, I get credit for the course.

I did not pass the math class

Therefore, I did not get credit for the course.

I hope this brief explanation is helpful.

-Mike Ross

Week 3 #2

In Chapter 8 of the Think text book, Sister Helen Prejean talks about her position on the death penalty and how it is an “immoral” act and against human rights. Sister Helen is fairly biased on this stance since she was raised and is a part of a religious group, which has a huge affect on her stance in this position.  She bases her argument off of the Jesus “who taught us to not to return hate for hate and evil for evil" and while this does make scenes it is hard to base a choice off purely religion. Growing up my dad was a very religious man while my mom was the total opposite. Living in two completely different house hold I have had both sides of the spectrum when it came to politics.  I personally believe the death penalty is necessary for our judicial system. For someone to take someone’s life and just deserve a prison sentence is a little lackluster. I believe in the saying an eye for an eye. If you take one humans life you deserve the same to you.

-Mike Ross

Week 3 Question 1

Hello all,

In the story of “Silver Blaze” Sherlock Holmes tells Watson that many people instead of reasoning and using critical thinking when it comes to figuring out a problem they use their own opinions and assumptions of people or situations. I agree with Holmes in this regard because I see this all the time. I feel that people find it easier to just use their opinions and assumptions over actually thinking about what the real situation could be. Being in the Greek system at San Jose State I see this a lot.  Many people within the Greek system will base some ones personality based on the house they are in or just the way the person dresses. Almost every sorority and fraternity have a stereotypes connected to their letters. I have seen many people go up to someone and treat them with disrespect just because the letters they are wearing on their shirt. It is a shame that this exists within the Greek system because a lot of the stories that are told that make these stereotypes are often rumors and not based off of true facts.

-Mike Ross

Ch6 Q3

While reading I found many different aspects of critical thinking interesting but the one that got my attention the most was just the simple fact of how to Develop your critical thinking skills. This topic was presented in “The Essential Guide to Group Communication” by Dan O’hair and Mary O. Wiemann. In this section it noted some simple strategies that help develop your skills in critical thinking. The first strategy that the authors write about is considering multiple perspectives. While this may seem easy when you are reading about it, this often is one of the hardest aspects of critical thinking in my eyes. It is hard for someone to think that “hey, maybe I am wrong in this situation” because they have a certain stance on the issue or subject. Many of the other strategies were focused on being able to clarify the issue and making sure that your judgment is valid. These strategies also focused on being able to fully understand the issue that is at hand, someone cannot put their judgment in if they fully do not understand what is going on.  For example, if I was asked about the presidential candidates this year and my feelings on what they stand for to help someone make their decision on who to elect. I could not fully answer because I am not educated about the topics and I am skewed in one direction because how I was raised. Overall, the ideas at hand in this section of the reading were focused on a person being able to make a good decision by using their critical thinking skills, and giving some helpful tips that will assist in that.

-Mike Ross

Ch6 Q2

I have never been one to fall under peer pressure. I have a very strong feeling of who I am as a person and I know what is right and what is wrong. When I was in middle school I hung out with what some people would consider to be the wrong crowd. I never really took part in some of the acts they did such as egging, drinking, and just vandalizing basically anything that would get us to laugh. One day they told me to throw eggs at this lady that was walking with a stroller, this decision just randomly came up because they knew I didn’t like taking part in these type of acts and I wasn’t sure what to do because I knew if I didn’t do it they would just make fun of me for weeks. That is when my critical thinking skills came into play; I knew that if I did this there might be some consequences. I wanted to be a leader and show these guys that we don’t have to do these types of acts to have fun and when I stood up for myself they decided that I was not the type of person they wanted to hang out with and I lost a group of my friends. But I realized that I didn’t want to be hanging out with those type of people anyway so it wasn’t a huge loss for me.

-Mike Ross