Saturday, October 23, 2010

Concept That Need Further Discussion

To be honest, I think most of the later chapters' concepts need further discussion. I know this is an online class, so most of the things we learn are from independent study. Therefore, most of the concepts in the chapters after chapter 5 are more complicated and hard to understand just by reading the text. I think one of the most confusing and hard to remember chapter is the one about Fallacies. There are way too many types of fallacies, yet the book's text are not good enough to help us to understand each type deeply. Furthermore, since there are too many types of fallacies, we usually get confused one type to another. Hence, we recognize them incorrectly when there are questions ask about the fallacy's types. There are many questions like that in the previous quiz and midterm. There are about seven of them on the midterm asking about the fallacy types. I have some wrong questions, and I do not know which one I get wrong since we cannot go back to the tests to revise our mistakes. So in the end, I do not know which parts I do are wrong on the tests and learn nothing. Even though, I do some research about the fallacy types, but I still have a hard time to memorize all of them because they are familiar yet very different. And the online information are also different from what we read in the book, so it could be confusing as well.  Therefore, I always have flip through the book or go back to the website and read the fallacy type's definition or structure when I take the tests. I think it would be better if students could know the fallacy types well without go back to the book and revise. It is a waste of time when we take the tests.

Anyway, here are some website that I find helpful for the fallacy types. Just read them carefully and then compare them to the book's information. One of the tip that I use to memorize them is making examples. The book always use "A and B" examples, so it would be easier to understand if you come up with your own examples. You would learn more from making fallacies' examples. However, you should avoid them when you make real arguments.

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html

http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/fallacies.html

1 comment:

  1. I do agree that there are a lot of things that did not get mention by just posting on our blogs each week. However, I find it really useful after reading the chapter to go on other people's blog. I can see how other people view the concept, how the concepts are different or similar than what I thought. Than if I'm not sure about something, I would go back to the book and try to make a better understanding on the concept. Since this class is an online class, there is a lot of independence study involve. So I think that by reading the book on concepts that are not so clear and see how other people respond to it will help you clarify the chapter.

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