Reading the book and doing the exercises and reading the website increased my knowledge about cause and effect (causal arguments). I thought that the book would have been easier to understand so I read that first, but I was still a bit confused until I looked over and read the introduction to causal arguments website. Reading the book was a little overwhelming with so many different examples thrown at you, but the website only followed one example and applied all the concepts within a casual argument which made it easier to comprehend. Though, I liked how the book broke down the parts into sections of deciding what is the cause such as: causes and effects, the normal conditions, particular causes, generalizations, and general causes, the causes precedes the effect, the cause makes a difference, overlooking a common sense, tracing the cause backwards, criteria for cause and effect, and the two mistakes in evaluating cause and effect (reversing cause and effect and looking too hard for a cause) because it helped me understand how to look for a cause. Both book and website helped me, but the website was more helpful in terms of simplicity and not so overwhelming like the book.
Good post Emcee!! I agree with everything you said, because I too started off the assignment reading the book and felt very overwhelmed with all the information that was given to me. But I think that if I hadn't have read the book first, I would have been so confused about how to look for a cause. The book broke down the concepts, and although I was still a little confused about some of them, it still gave me a great foundation for understanding them. So after reading the book, understanding the website was easy, and as you said, was more helpful in terms of simplicity as it contained most all information, while it applied it just one example.
ReplyDelete