Skip to main content

Chapter 7 Blog Post


    The chapter of evidence is important for us to understand because the role of evidence plays one of the most important parts in all kinds of arguments. A powerful evidence is helpful for adding the credibility of the argument as well as letting the decision maker give more solid adherence to a claim. On the contrary, if one fails to demonstrate a strong enough evidence, the credibility would on the decline, and sometimes the argument would be totally damaged. The authors explain the term evidence as the support for a claim that the arguer discovers from experience or outside authority (pg. 103). A successful argument demonstrates the careful use of three forms of evidence including example, statistics, and testimony.
    Considering the general goal of an argument is to persuade the decision maker, it is hard to correctly prescribe how evidence should be used to back up the argument since its believability is influenced by the decision maker and their experience (pg. 109). But there are still some reasonable standards for developing more forceful evidence: examples should be sufficient and representative with valuable characteristics and details; the source of statistics should be current, reliable, carefully considered, and made clearer through comparison; the testimony should be based on credibility measures; negative instances should also be mentioned, and the evidence should include experience which the decision maker relates to. This guide for the use of evidence reminds me of my paper from the last semester’s writing class. My argument in the paper is that after the Communist Party implemented the notorious one-child policy for two decades, the new two-child policy is not a solution for gender imbalance, population aging and labor force shrinking in China. In order to develop a strong support for my argument, I cited eight recent sources including sufficient data, a clear comparison on the new generation’s changing idea about having kids and several personal stories from citizens with both positive and negative propositions, and I used reliable sources from authorities such as The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and other peer-reviewed academic research articles. I think it is extremely important to talk about negative instances because the acknowledgment of them could strengthen an argument and makes the arguer seem more trustworthy. In my case, I covered this by citing some research from scholars who insist that the two-child policy could ease population aging in China. Furthermore, the use of decision makers’ experience could help supporting one’s argument. In my paper, I reminded some decision makers by mentioning that Chinese citizens have a historical reason for rebelliously against the new policy after the brutal implementing of the old one-child policy. However, it could only relate to Chinese people rather than the others. So it is difficult to successfully reflect all the decision makers’ experience, and it always depends on the specific sphere in which the argumentation occurs.

Rieke, R. D., Sillars, M. O., & Peterson, T. R. (2013). Argumentation and critical decision making. Boston: Pearson.


Comments

  1. YiwanningOctober 22, 2018 at 7:18 PM

    Hello Yujia
    I really enjoy reading your post and your solid and insight point about this chapter. About your example of evidences can be difficult to choose when it comes to different decision makers, I feel the same way about Emma Watson's feminism speech as a female goodwill ambassador in UN, but my angle is Emma Watson herself as a rhetor of a persuasive speech. Emma Watson is a high class, highly educated, beautiful, young, white woman. In Emma’s speech, she stated that “My life is a sheer privilege because my parents didn’t love me less because I was born a daughter. My school did not limit me because I was a girl. My mentors didn’t assume I would go less far because I might give birth to a child one day. These influences were the gender equality ambassadors that made me who I am today. They may not know it, but they are the inadvertent feminists who are changing the world today. And we need more of those” Is it possible that only the affirmative action of those who embrace privilege will be taken seriously, considered and accepted? Is Emma Watson's demand fits all women's need?

    http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2014/9/emma-watson-gender-equality-is-your-issue-too

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chap 5

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, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Chaper 8

Chapter 8 of Argumentation and Critical Decision Making continues down the route of talking about support for argumentation. This chapter specifically focuses on values as support for arguments, how to recognize them and the best ways to attack them. Values are defined as “ concepts of what is desirable that arguers use and decision makers understand” (121).  There are several types of values mentioned such as stated, implied, positive, negative, terminal, instrumental, abstract and concrete values.  Stated values are state directly what concepts they hold. For example, words such as “freedom” or “health” are stated values because they mean exactly what they're trying to portray. Not all values are as explicit. Some are more vague and called implied values. One of the examples that the book uses to show the contrast between the two is in the case of work equality. When talking about the subject saying, “ Equal pay for equal work” would be a stated value and “ Women deserve th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Case Building

Chapter 6 of Argumentation and Critical Decision Making focuses on the steps required in building a case. Among the concepts that are discussed, visualization stands out as one of the most important. On page 101, the authors even state “Powerful arguments are only half of the job in preparing a case or presentation. The other half is developing a convincing vision through which you can tell the story of your ultimate purpose” In other words, having a great argument alone is not going to necessarily gain you adherence. Instead, it needs to be supplemented with a story that vividly shows the decision maker the outcome if they were to agree to the proposition.   The chapter goes on to say that to create a powerful vision you must know the decision maker’s narrative of the subject you are arguing about. The example that is given is college. Some decision makers might have had the greatest time of their lives in college during which they made a ton of friends and found love. On the ...
1 comment
Read more