Content Fallacies: I Didn't Quite Understand That..

One of the concepts that I did not quite understand when we first covered it is Content Fallacies. After doing the evaluation of a Social Organization paper I was better able to understand what exactly a content fallacy actually is. Here is my attempt to explain:

There are 2 types of fallacies, Structural (formal) and Content (informal). In Structural Fallacies, the fallacy occurs because of the structure of the premises. With content fallacies, there is something wrong with the content of what is being assert.

My hang up on understanding content fallacies was actually trying to find a list of content fallacies. A content fallacy is an actual type of fallacy. Lol :).

Reflection of My Summer

This summer I learned throughout this class to be organized. At first I started off very organized and I was up to date with everything. I went on vacation and things became unorganized and I ended up forgetting about a whole weeks worth of discussions. If I would've remained organized I would not have forgotten to do the weekly discussions.

My favorite thing about the class is that it is online and that I could pretty much do everything at my own pace. I was basically only responsible for meeting deadlines. I liked that the teacher was very accessible and was there to answer ALL of my questions (which is hard to find in an online class). What I didn't like about the class is the fact that the discussion questions had to be posted no sooner than 12 hours apart. This kinda threw me off over these last couple of weeks because I would have rather done all of them at once and when I would think about it again the discussion week would be over. My fault, should've been more organized :).

My only suggestion to improve this class would probably be to change the policy on the discussion questions. We should be allowed to post at will as long as we get the 3 questions answered within the week. I also think that we should be able to chose what to discuss like we do the 3 and then we have optional discussions as well.

This Summer I Learned....

Over the course of the summer I learned a lot about thinking critically. What I found most interesting over all the concepts that we have covered this summer is the ways in which people manipulate numbers to have ambiguous meanings. For example the use of general terms like "some" or using percentages as proof for something that has not been proven.

EX:

Some of the workers at Jamba Juice know how to make all of the smoothies.

This example is too vague because it does not show how many of the workers know how to make all of the smoothies. This could mean that only a couple of the workers know how to make all the smoothies or almost all of them know how. This claim is too general and should be made more specific.

To better this example you could say that:

80% of the workers at Jamba Juice know how to make all of the smoothies.

However, this claim is also very general. Someone who is not thinking critically would probably fall into this trap just because of the use of numbers; but someone who is thinking critically would evaluate the claim as being ambiguous. This statement could mean that 80% of all Jamba Juice workers or 80% of the workers at a particular store. This is a matter of 10 vs 1000. 80% of 10 and 80% of 1000 is a big difference.