Assignment #2

For the assignment critical thinking and social organizations my group and I decided to write about the PETA organization. This assignment was very useful because it gets us working in a group to complete research, retrieve information, and decide what is the most important concepts or ideas to talk about. Our group got together and decided how to split everything up and then synthesized everything together. At first I was thinking that this was going to be a drag because I usually like doing things myself because I don't like to depend on others. Then I realized that my group was really efficient which made things real easy and simple. For example, once our whole group met up and decided to split things up and email your own part in a week, everyone did so. That meant we just had to put everything together and revise it and we were done. I learned that it is not always hard working in a group and it can usually be very useful.

Chapter 8 General Claims

When taking a glance at general claims they can be easily considered valid. This is because vague words are usually used which might make a claim actually false when you believe it is true. Some of the vague words that might be used are: all, some, a lot of, a few, very few, and almost all. When words such as all and some are used correctly they make general claims valid, well they obviously won't be valid if the claim if not true. According to Epstein all means" Every single one, no exception," and some means "At least one."

Example of a valid form, using all:
All SAT  exams are created by the SAT committee. They are created similarly with the same concepts. So all the exams test the same concepts. Valid
Example of an invalid form, using some:
Some birds can fly. Chickens are considered birds. So chickens can fly. Invalid because chickens can't fly

General claims also have contradictories. There are many different ways to use those words and also the opposite of them
Example:
Claim- All vegans eat vegetable.
Contradictory- Some vegans don't eat vegetables.

Chapter 6 Compund Claims

A compound claim is made up of other claims but has to interpreted as just one claim. There are many examples of compound claims and I will be going over the two: "or" claims and conditionals. But first of all I need to make clear that not every sentence that contains to claims is a compound claim. An example of that would be:
She is going to become a nurse because she is attending college.
That is actually an argument not a claim.

"Alternatives are the claims that are the parts of an 'or' claim." Arguments may be weak because the function of a compound claim is causing it to be weak. These kind of claims also help excluding possibilites.

A conditional claim is usually written as an "If... then..." claim and must have truth value. This is the way most people talk about how things could turn out in particular situations.

Criteria for Accepting or Rejecting Claims

We suspend the judgment about a claim when we need to investigate more the figure out if the claim is true. There are many was of accepting to rejecting these claims. Personal experience is a way because everyone has experienced many stuff in life that others have not but if you are sure that it has happened or is happening then you can accept the claim or vice versa. For this to be true we must not doubt our memory at all. We can accept a claim when it comes from a reliable source who has authority and their main point is not to mislead. W can also accept a claim from a reference source and media, like the news channel, that are usually reliable. As most people know we can reject an argument if other arguments contradict with it. It is hard to reject and accept claims especially when not much contradiction is occurring and it is all believable. These steps will just help to make everything easier.

Advertising and the Internet

I found a pretty funny political advertisement that was about George W. Bush but they are advertising mattresses. This is the link to it:
http://pzrservices.typepad.com/advertisingisgoodforyou/images/2008/05/31/skbedding1.jpg

The premises for the advertisement is the picture. It has to do with many evil things, in their opinion. Which include George W. Bush, the KKK, war, and fighting for oil. Under the picture there is a statement, "Who says there's no rest for the wicked?" This advertisement was created by Dreamland Mattresses. They are trying to put across that their mattresses are the best that evil people can sleep through the night if they us that mattress brand.

There is no good reason to believe the premises and the premises are not more plausible than the conclusion. So the argument is not good, mainly because this is more of a joke. I am not rejecting the claim nor accepting it. Just because I do not believe it does not make it false. Advertisers main point is to sell the product so they are not a reliable source.