I learned...

Over the course of the semester I’ve learned that in everyday life, people argue, debate, and reason using different concepts, but they just don’t know exactly what kind of argument they are making. The two concepts that really popped out to me taking this course were the vague versus ambiguous sentences and the appeal to emotion concepts. In reasoning, we can tolerate some vagueness, but we certainly cannot tolerate any ambiguity. With vagueness, one person can say, “Add a pinch of salt to the dish.” Then we can question them and be “smart” by asking, “What’s a pinch of salt…50 grains or 100…but isn’t everybody’s finger different in size…?” With ambiguity, one can say, “Everybody has to dance in front of the mirror.” With that, we can question if the person is saying everyone has to dance as groups or individuals. As with the appeal to emotion concepts, there were two that caught my eye. I would constantly see heartbreaking advertisements about young children fighting diseases and also ones that frighten me. Know I can watch these advertisements knowing that they are trying to persuade me to do something about the situation because of the appeal to pity or the appeal to fear.