Skip to main content

Chapter 8

When I began reading this chapter, I didn't realize how many types of values there are. I thought that values were simply what people thought was important. However, this chapter introduced me to new concepts and ideas centered around the concept of values. Terms such as stated/implied values, positive/negative values, terminal/instrumental values and abstract/concrete values were all new to me.

While I found all of these terms new and interesting, the ones that caught my attention the most were positive and negative values. Specifically, I thought that it was interesting how they can be used in an argument. Upon reading the title of that section, I figured that positive values were things that were good that we would want to play off of in an argument, and negative values were either contradictory values, or values that many people don't hold, and I thought they were things that one would want to stay away from in an argument. For example, I were to make an argument about free college, I would play off of the benefits that everyone having access to education would bring to society, but I may try to stay away from saying something like, "we all need to pay to make sure everyone can have an education to make our society better." I thought that a positive value would be equal opportunity and a developing society, and a negative value would be everyone paying to allow others to go to college.

However, the book stated that, to go against an argument, you may want to point out positive values that oppose the argument or negative values that go along with the argument. This was obviously a bit different of an interpretation than my own. Though it does state that this could "depend on the (argument) strategy devised." In the books example, they talked more about keywords and the connotations that they held to positive or negative values. For example, if I were to say, "Free college for all does not make economic sense. It would force citizens to pay for a service that they may not directly benefit from. We have reason to believe that there are still enough students going to university and bettering our society without the added cost to the public." So, through the book's definition and example of these terms, the negative values here would be "does not make economic sense," "force," "may not directly benefit," and the positive value would be "reason" and "bettering."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chapter 9

In Chapter 9, the authors of the text discuss credibility. The text remarks that credibility is not only able to serve as a claim in argumentation, but it also plays a significant role as a means to support a claim (Rieke, Sillars, & Peterson, 142). The text then goes into detail about characteristics and forms of credibility but finally goes over the general principle the authors suggest for the use of credibility. Credibility can be incredibly subjective, but there are still some general principles of credibility that can apply to most situations. The principle I found to stand out the most in the group of principles the authors presented was the principle of developing credibility from reputation. Reputation is the credibility someone possesses with decision makers before they argue (Rieke, Sillars, & Peterson, 147). When I think of reputation in argument, I always manage to think of the polarized reputation of Donald Trump. There is a significant amount of people who hat
1 comment
Read more

Chapter 10

There were a couple of terms I found in this chapter that I wish were explained a little more. First, the concept of uncritical responses to refutation is only covered briefly. I think that this is one of the most fundamental barriers to effective public argumentation in the United States right now. I find this issue most concerning for the liberal party. Recalling the last election and the concept of 'incremental' argumentation, I feel that people demonstrated a massive failure of critical thinking by voting for third parties or not voting. People who were disappointed with Hillary Clinton's candidacy in place of Bernie Sanders decided to either continue voting for Bernie or not vote altogether. Neither of these strategies amounted to effective support of their cause, and they constitute the uncritical "knee-jerk" reaction described in this chapter. In this case, uncritical response to opposition worked directly against the interests of the decision-makers. A
1 comment
Read more

Blog Post 3- Chapter 4

In chapter 4 we take a look at the importance of understanding argument structures. We are able to look at the Toulmin model. It is a tool that is used to analyze an argument to see the components of one. The model is made up of several different filters to which we can look at an argument. According to the model an argument must have a claim, grounds, warrant, backing, qualifier, and rebuttal/reservation. This tool allows us to analyze an argument and ask the question “Is this a good argument?”. I think this is important because without any criteria as talked about before in chapter 2, an argument won’t have standards to which it has to meet. Also in chapter 4 we take a look at the reasoning processes and what the commonplaces of the reasoning’s are. There are several commonplaces which “Constitute the basis of most arguments” as according to the textbook. (Pg. 57). The processes are, logic or deduction, generalization, cause, sign, analogy and authority. I will look dee
Post a Comment
Read more