Chapter five goes more into depth about how one can apply analysis in order to discover a proposition for you to argue, and then how to deliver a well thought out argument. It starts off with mentioning that critical decision making can play an important role in helping you construct your proposition. If one is able to reform a statement into a proposition, then you can begin forming your argument. Once a question has been chosen, one should gather as much factual information as possible, this will construct the core of the argument you intend to present. Another part of chapter five that I enjoyed learning about was remembering to always evaluate each alternative, look at all the positive and negative aspects of different arguments. More often than not, people make decisions without having considered evaluating the costs and risks of their alternatives. People tend to go with the first alternative that fits their situation, which takes away the possibility of finding other alternative that might be even better than what they had previously chosen. Locating the points of disagreement is also another important element when analyzing an argument. It is a technique one can apply in order to locate the parts of an argument with which you do not agree with. This simplify the process of establishing a counter-argument, since you know precisely what it is that you are disagreeing on.
Chapter five focuses primarily on identifying and developing propositions for problems that people think are relevant. It goes over 6 steps for choosing a valid proposition based on a perceived “feeling of doubt.” While all six steps may not be necessary, the collectively ensure a well thought out and firm proposition. The six steps include identifying the question, surveying implicated objectives (or understanding what is the goal accomplishment in regard to the question), searching for new information, considering alternative options, considering costs and risks of each potential proposition, and then finally choosing one of the propositions. The authors then go on to talk about analyzing and strengthening the proposition chosen. This includes identification and ranking of the issues that the proposition addresses as well as understanding how the decision makers will react to these issues and propositions. In general, with all these methods of critically analyzing the proposition, ...
I think you and I agree with the overall benefit of this chapter, Matz. I also talked about how this makes you sit and plan a well thought out argument. For instance, like you stated above, people tend to not want to think things through and go with option number one and this is against that and makes you spend time and think before you open your mouth to start an argument. This chapter was very enjoying for me as well because I tend to rush things when it comes to arguing and not thinking it through. So, I loved it because it helped me personally with arguing. Do you think this chapter teaches us to make the perfect argument or do we still need a little more information to make that? Or is it even possible to make an perfect argument?
ReplyDeleteI agree with your interpretation of the main points of this chapter. I found it very interesting that you chose to focus a lot of your reflection on looking at different ways to go about a situation and the different views that people can have on an argument. In my blog post, I focused on the five critical values, and I believe that what you discussed really mirrors a lot of them.
ReplyDeleteInitially, I thought that the concept of finding points of disagreement and analyzing alternate solutions most closely resembled "clarity," because that discusses considering opposition arguments to be able to counter them. However, I think it also relates to the other four: significance, relevance, inherency and consistency.
While I believe that, out of these final four, your highlighted concept most correlates with significance and relevance, all of the critical values require the presenter to analyze the audience. This means noting those potential points of disagreement and being prepared to counter, or consider shifting to more closely fit, alternatives that the audience may present.
When reading your blog, I was thinking about how people's best ideas often are not the first ideas. It tends to take time to come up with an original and unique thought or idea. As you mentioned, taking the first idea or alternative isn't always the best option. I think we all can do a better job of slowing down and analyzing the argument we are working with in order to have a stronger argument or counter arguments. Also, when trying to refute an argument, it is easy to just go with the first thoughts that come to mind, but taking time to do research and come back with an actual argument, not an attack, is a great skill.
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