Meow Meow Meow Meow

Description: In this advertisement, its obvious that it shows a brown and black cat standing and mimicking the general stance of human discomfort indicating that the cat wants to go to the bathroom. In the bottom the text states, "Cats everywhere are having a hard time smelling their litter boxes." This statement is shown as being sponsored by the Fresh Step company, a company that deals with cat litter.

Analysis: Being an advertising major it's actually pretty exciting to have so many topics relating to advertising. Here in this advertising, the company creates a claim that cats "everywhere" are having a hard time smelling their litter boxes, thus the expected conclusion would be to get fresher cat litter, or more specifically Fresh Step cat litter. This claim is faulty tho because there is no authority to the claim, thus anyone could have simply stated it without us knowing if it's an actual fact. Also, although the advertisement is generally humorous, I have no past experience with Fresh Step as a brand, and thus have no reason to believe that cats will be able to smell it better than other competing brands besides a picture of a cat who's actions are personified to show that he/she really needs to pee.

Repair my SLEEP ZzZzZzz

Repairing/ Fixing Arguments

Broken Argument: 
Errol has a ton of homework and midterms due this week. So Errol does not sleep well.

Analysis/Breakdown:

• In this argument, the author is creating the stretch by concluding that Errol does not sleep well because Errol has a ton homework and midterms due this week.
• Because there is no connecting premise between the claim and the conclusion, there is no "glue" that ties these two together. 
• From this argument, how is the reader or audience supposed to know that Errol could've not slept well due to several other reasons?
• Errol's lack of sleep could be attributed to too much partying, working several jobs, learning dance routines, or maybe he just doesn't like sleeping. 

Necessary sentence: 
To make this sentence valid, the writer should input "Errol doesn't get to sleep because he is avidly researching, studying and writing papers and blogs for his classes." By having this sentence, the options of other scenarios as to why Errol is currently lacking sleep is out ruled as the inputted sentence would clearly focus the reason for Errol's lack of sleep due to large number of midterms he had in the week.

Valid Argument: Errol has a ton of homework and midterms this week. Errol doesn't get to sleep because he is avidly researching, studying and writing papers and blogs for his classes. So Errol does not sleep well.

Oooh you just said a __________

One subject that I found particularly interesting in these readings were the content fallacies from Chapter 11 of the Epstein text. I found this interesting because it listed a bunch of common mistakes or points of arguments that people make that are easily identifiable. Most of these I've seen used in personal arguments or in television, and some unfortunately I've even used. But because of the chapter's ability to easily refer to real-life situations, I found the concepts much easier than the current argument analyzing we've been doing in our reading and thus much more fun to read. An example of fallacies I enjoyed learning more about was things like Drawing the line, Phony refutation, False Dilemma, Slippery Slope, and etc. Now if I'm ever in an argument, I know that I'll be better equipped with knowing how to label the other person's content fallacy and I'll be able to professionally state them instead of generalizing and saying "nope. your wrong".

Your either WITH us or AGAINST us!...or not....or maybe both....or neither.

A content fallacy that I have seen in countless arguments is the False Dilemma fallacy. In numerous political debates, television broadcasts, movie plot lines, protests, and personal arguments, false dilemma is usually used as a dramatic resolution to a heated multi-sided argument. False Dilemma describes the fallacy where one claims the false use of "or" in an argument to make it seem as if their are no additional options than the ones given, when in fact there might be many.

For example: Either Errol is smart and gets an A or is stupid and gets an F in blogging.

Although, Errol being smart would help towards getting an A and being less of an intellectual might draw him closer to an F, one cannot assume that the subject is black and white. Errol can be smart, but after forgetting to submit his blogs on time could fail the course or could be stupid but still get an A because his "stupidity" could actually just be hidden creativity. Other than that, there are other grades he can get like a B, C, or D and his rate of intelligence doesn't entirely decide which of those he could get. Some factors could be how responsible he is, time management, and internet accessibility. Thus, it would be a fallacy to input "or" between this sentence because it would create a meaningless close-minded argument. It's like if friends fight with each other and yells "Your either with us or against us". But what if your not even friends? Then you can just yell back "Don't give me a false dilemma, I don't even know you" and walk away. At least that argument would be correct.

I wrote this post on time, so therefore I should get an A. Yes?

1 I’m on my way to school. 2 I left five minutes late. 3 Traffic is heavy. 4 Therefore, I’ll be late for class. 4 So I might as well stop and get breakfast.

Argument: Yes
Conclusion: I’ll be late to class, so I should stop and get breakfast.
Additional premises needed? If I left five minutes late to school and the traffic is heavy, then I’ll be late for class miss most of my class today. Therefore, If I’m going to miss most of my class I might as well stop and get breakfast.
Identify any sub argument: (1,2,3 support 4.) ( 2.3.4 supports 5.) 
Good argument? No, because the argument has content fallacies (Confusing subjective claim) and violates a principle of rational discussion (Relevance). Being late to class doesn’t mean that one should entirely skip it to go eat breakfast. What if there was a pop quiz at the end? Or homework/ group assignments that were worked on or given in the duration of the class? Therefore, just because this person was late and might possibly miss most of their class, it doesn’t mean that they should stop and get breakfast, thus completely missing the entire class.

Like every one of these assignments, these exercises have been useful to understanding the complexities of arguments and the different fallacies and structural mistakes they can possibly have. Now when creating arguments, I’ll make sure to implement these in order to create a much better persuasive argument. Also, I could use these skills learned from the assignment to analyze future political debates so I could see which politician is well versed.

Leadership

Share one concept not discussed in detail:

One concept that I definitely found interesting was the chapter on Leadership in the Group Communication text. Being involved in various organizations and holding various leadership positions in the past and currently, I feel that this chapter was extremely personal and allowed me to reflect on my years of experience. Starting off, I liked how the text categorized a person's personal method of implementing leadership into four different styles (authoritarian, consultative, participative, and laissez-faire). Reading this, I kinda referred them to different systems of governing (i.e authoritarian = communism, consultative = democracy. and laissez faire = anarchy) which I found interesting. Amusingly enough, I've actually implemented all these different types of leadership in different moments of my life. Thus, reading the detail of each category brought up some funny memories as well as other personal recollections. Through reading this, I've learned to reflect on what type of leader I am today and what I could do in the future to do even better, and essentially be better.

Lost Opportunity

Although both factors are in an argument, there is a difference between Strong and Valid arguments. 

Weak/Valid Argument Example :
Errol got offered a job today at 10-2
Errol had class 10-2
So Errol did not take the job because he had class. -__-

Strong/Valid Argument Example:
Errol didn't take a job today. 
So Errol didn't get paid for that job.
 
There are both examples of valid arguments but they differ in strength. The first one, although it's valid, the argument is bad because Errol could've not taken the job because he overslept or didn't check his schedule properly but it doesn't entirely mean he didn't he take it solely because he had class at the same time. The second example is similar but actually stronger because the conclusion is an actual direct result of the initial premise. there is no way that the conclusion can be true without the premise being plausible.

Born This Way

Invalid/ Valid  & Strong/ Weak Arguements.

Turns out that evaluating an argument's validity and strength is more complex than just simple analysis. In the Epstein text, the author states how there are three tests to measuring an argument's persuasiveness.

1. The premises are plausible - reasoning could be true.
2. The premises are more plausible than the conclusion- check if the conclusion is an appropriate result from the reasons being given.
3. The argument is valid or strong - Overall reasoning of argument is true. 

 An example of this would be:

Filipinos like to sing kareoke, dance, and study nursing.
Errol is Filipino 
So Errol is musically gifted and generally awesome.

Analysis: The argument is valid because the premise of Errol being Filipino is a fact and therefore true, also the conclusion is known to be true as well. The argument is weak though because the premise of Filipinos liking to sing, dance, and nurse isn't generalized to ALL Filipinos so therefore Errol being musically gifted and awesome doesn't have to be because he is Filipino but could be because of other reasons. Maybe it's because he's been trained on several instruments, active in various clubs and orgs, or maybe he was born this way? Nonetheless, even if the premises are true and conclusion correct, the argument is weak and therefore bad.

Objective VS. Subjective

Going through a normal day, one unconsciously comes across a variety of objective and subjective claims made by anyone you might interact with. Whether your parents, friends, teachers, and even yourself, everyone essentially creates persuasive claims that can be categorized as either objective or subjective. One of the claims, subjective, is related to one's personal standards. For example, I personally like this Filipino delicacy named "balut", which is basically a hard boiled duck egg with a developed duck inside. Well ironically, I was watching a reality show named "Fear Factor" one day only to see contestants fearing to eat this "disgusting" food. Now although I think it tastes great, other people from different cultures and preferences might find it "gross" thus my personal favor makes my claim subjective. In contrast, an objective claim is usually factual information but generally could be any statement that is impersonal from the speaker making the claim. A random example could be when I lost my wallet and had to state the last time I had it. Because I'm simply giving away a location, I'm not putting any personal input into my response, thus it becomes objective.