COMM 3615: Argumentation (FA18)

In religion throughout history, argumenttion has been seen throughout each one for some time. In religion argumentation is key because to have faith in anything you must understand the key values in it and what is it about. So therefore, argumentation is the best way to answer those questions about a religion you want to put your faith in. The major questions you must ask yourself within religuon to get a better understanding is: What is the nature of God? What is the nature of human beings? What is moral behavior, the religious life? What are sin, evil, and the meaning of suffering? What is the human relationship to God? And what is the role of the church? These questions will get you to understand your religion better or seek information about another religion. In overall, argumentation in religion is more of you getting a understanding of the religion to put your faith into it. Argumentation helps that by allowing you to seek out research on the religion and get a better comprehensi

Chapter 12’s focus on argumentation as it is used in the legal sphere was especially interesting to me because I intend on going to law school and becoming a lawyer, and have taken law classes that cover many of the same concepts that are outlined in this chapter. What is especially interesting to me is the idea that argumentation in the legal sphere isn’t necessarily used to make decisions that are the most fair, but rather the decisions that will cause the least chaos. Courts in the United States follow the mantra of stare decisis , which is a latin phrase that means “let the decision stand”. Because there are little to no statutes in civil law, courts have to make decisions based on what they think to be the best decision due to the facts and circumstances. In order to speed up the process and avoid bogging down the court system with debates over issues that have been addressed before, courts follow stare decisis by making decisions in line with decisions made in previous similar

In the section on maintaining the story I found the global warming example interesting, but also telling. In the example, conservative strategist Frank Luntz is quoted saying "the scientific debate is closing but it is not yet closed, [t]here is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science" (Rieke et al., 272). This statement constitutes an admission, a defense, and a reveal of the strategy of some conservative politics. This quote is from 2003, so it is old, but it is interesting that he could say that there is any  scientific debate about climate change. There was no debate; the consensus existed then as it does now. The phrase "challenge the science" is one of the most backwards things I have ever read. A person with no experience can only pose a threat to science by maintaining their position in spite of facts. With no firm basis in facts, it seems that one can still maintain their argument by simply repeating themselves. Effectively, this tactic creat

The legal world sometimes seems like it's the ideal world. It's a sphere where the good and the bad fight it out and in the end (hopefully) justice, and the good, triumph. However the legal argumentation is not free from subjectivity and story-telling. Though we have discussed earlier in the semester how personal accounts are often seen as not substantial, the account a lawyer tells the jury and the courtroom is also in a way, personal. The defendant and the plaintiff bring their side of the facts. Meaning, although both parties may be discussing and recounting the same event, their different variations of the truth of the event gives the facts of the story meaning and reputability. The "truth of the matter" is not so easy to parse out. And often times, there are multiple truths and hundreds of vantage points. Despite this however, the judges and/or the jury must decide which set of facts composed in which narrative are the most convincing and the most likely to repli

I ended up choosing to make this post about chapter 16 of the book, which revolves around argumentation within the field of politics. In the chapter they mention how political choices are made not only within the field of politics, but also in many other different situations such as for families to professional organization. One always tried to argue ones case and why the other person should agree with you, this can take place in a business meeting, or even just a family having a discussion around the dinner table. Which if you look at the basics of political argumentation, there are a lot similarities of what makes up an argument. Within politics there are often made policy claims which means that someone wished to change something about a certain topic. This type of discussion and policy claim often takes place within families as well as organizations. The chapter also brings up Aristotle and him having a certain amount of argumentation topics which more often than not is the basic t

In Chapter 13, the authors of the text discuss argumentation in science. They stress that scientific methods are best when we try to make an understanding of our world accessible to ourselves and the people around us. The authors remark, “Scientific standards for evidence and argument are held up as the way to understand what the natural world is like” (Rieke, Sillars, & Peterson, 204). Science provides an extremely persuasive narrative, and the authors believe that this is because science appears so consistent with many of our society’s core values like knowledge, order, usefulness, prediction, and especially rationality. When we combine these values, we make rational decisions that ultimately are useful to us. I believe this is why we popularly emphasize argument with approaches that are based in thinking oriented around scientific methods of reasoning. Scientific approaches to argumentation don’t only appear in labs or a physics lecture, either. We use these approaches commonly