Object and Subjective

I choose to go back and think about the difference between subjective and objective. I think this is an important differentiation because most people have a hard time distinguishing one from another when used in conversation. I found a site that had a great piece on this subject, and they open with the following statement:

“In stories, newspapers, and the spoken word, people all over the world are trying to convince you to think as they do. They are bombarding you with facts and figures, opinions and projections. It is up to you to create order within this chaos and find the patterns that will help you to understand what is true, what could be true, and what is outright false. In order to do all this, you need to have a firm grip on what is objective and what is subjective.”

The article continues by defining the differences, and moves on to explain when someone should be objective and when someone should be subjective. Basically objectivity should be used when we are discussing any sort of “rational decision,” and subjectivity when “nothing tangible is at stake.”


Read more: Difference Between Objective and Subjective | Difference Between | Objective vs Subjective http://www.differencebetween.net/language/difference-between-objective-and-subjective/#ixzz1309tmXTM

Assignment Review

I found that the main point of the projects was learning to coordinate our schedules. The reading and writing wasn’t profound for me, but the collaboration was seemingly the point. In the first assignment we picked an editorial and wrote our various opinions on the article. My contribution was organizing the group’s first few communications, dividing the workload, and writing the introduction. For the second assignment the group chose to write about PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. For this assignment I was tasked with looking at the fallacies of the groups message through eh website, and actual purpose of the group. Again with this assignment I found the most benefit in working as a team. The people I am grouped with are awesome. Everyone is understanding of the various scheduling issues, and each person pulls their weight and then some. I’m sure their was more to the assignment, but looking at real world examples seemed comparable to the text examples.

Chapter 8

When reading about general claims and their contradictories I think about all the sales pitches we hear on TV. The chapter explains that terms such as all, some, no and only are “purposely vague.” All can mean everything, but can be as few as one. Some can mean a percentage of the group, but can again be as few as one. On example that comes to mind as it refers to all statements is a car commercial my wife and I saw a few years back. We were looking for a new car, and we heard a commercial that said something to the effect of, All 2007 Honda Civics LXs are on sale at xx,xxx price and 0% financing. This is exactly what we had been looking for, so we went down to the lot that weekend. What we found was a used car that had a ton of miles on it. They didn’t have any other 2007s on the lot, so the advertisement wasn’t false but it was misleading.

Posting 3 Chapter 6

One of the concepts in chapter 6 that I found particularly interesting is the indirect way of reasoning with conditionals. The texts says, “Recognizing this form can be hard if ‘not’ occurs in the antecedent or consequent, or if their order is reversed.” (p. 128) An example of this type of reasoning is as follows:

My wife is going to take our son to the park today if she gets her work done before noon.
They didn’t go to the park today.
So my wife didn’t get her work done before noon.

The concept isn’t a hard one to grasp, but I like that things are simple to follow. Some might like things to be clearer, but I find that we aren’t always in a place that allows for that sort of direct conversation. This sort of reasoning also lends itself to deduction. We have to think about what might have happened that lead to the conclusion in front of us.

Chapter 7

Chapter 7 is all about “refuting an argument.” This is a helpful skill to have when it comes time to point out that we know an argument is weak, or flat out wrong. The text explains that there are three ways direct ways of refuting an argument. The first way is “Show that at least one of the premises is dubious.” (p. 149) The second way is to, “Show that the argument isn’t valid or string.” (p. 149) Te final way is, “Show that the conclusion is false.” (p. 149) These are all helpful suggestions, but I think the real key is to find a way to make the person presenting the argument hear your response without reverting to a defensive state. Often I find that if we are too direct with our rebuttal that the other person will stop listening, and our message is not received. However, we also must be careful not to sugar coat the response too much either. There’s a fine line when dealing with humans.

Chapter 6

One of the things I laugh at most is when my wife, friend or colleague tells me that we are going to have to make a choice between two things because we can’t do everything. I laugh because they tend to state the things I want to do only, and forget about everything else. This is called a false dilemma, and the book describes it as, “a bad use of excluding possibilities where the ‘or’ claim is false or implausible.” (p. 118)

Another topic that I enjoyed from chapter 6 is the slippery slope argument. The text says, “A slipper slope argument is a bad argument that uses a chain of conditionals, at least one of which is false or dubious.” (p. 133) We see this happen when people are trying to justify reasons not to do something, and stating long term implications that are based on a chain of events. A will cause b, and that will set of S which will eventually lead to Z.

Plausibility

I really like chapter five’s section D 2. In this section the book discussed the issue of, “confusing possibility with plausibility.” (p. 97)We read a great example that is an obvious cover up for the Tea Party. The basic understanding that the section tries to get across is that even though an argument is possible it isn’t always likely. I like this section because it reminds me about how most people prefer to just go along with arguments simply because they think it might have happened. The section says, “an interesting explanation is at most a good reason to investigate whether its claims are true.” (p. 97) We have a good friend who is a stanch Republican, but when pressed for reasons why he begins to spout out unproven gossip like it is the holy truth. What kills me is that he hears it from some person on the radio, or some editorial, and never looks into the facts.

Online Advertisment

Advertising online is a tricking business. I think that if we simply fall back to the first instruction from the text, “Out most reliable source of information about the world is our own experience,” (p. 84) we should be able to navigate most things we’ll come across online. The truth is that we have had companies trying to sell us things for years in print, on tv, and in person. Online advertising isn’t that different, but there are a few new tricks. The advertisement that I chose isn’t much different that something we might find in a magazine. I don’t know what this is even for, but what a deal. The big bold eye catching components are in the following order: 1. The sales pitch. 2. The brand. 3. Where to apply. 4. Slogan. The add tries to leverage off the name of Compass as a large bank, so in a sense they are asking us to, “accept a claim made by a reputable authority whom we can trust …”