Monday, November 15, 2010
Week 13 - Post 1: Cause and Effect Website
While I am somewhat familiar with casual arguments, I was not aware of significant differences until reading the Cause and Effect Website. First, I read over the website to gain an understanding of the material. I learned that the effectiveness of a casual argument is dependent on three principles. The website states that these principles are, “how acceptable or demonstrable the implied comparison is”, “how likely the case for causation seems to be”, and, “how credible the “only significant difference” or “only significant commonality” claim is.” The only aspect of these principles that I had difficulty with was the “only significant difference.” For example, the second question in the exercises that asked which reason would be considered the most significant “difference” proved to be challenging for me. While I selected “They all ate from the same bowl”, the answer was actually, “No one else at the picnic ate potato salad.” After reading the explanation, I realized that my answer was falsely based on the commonality of the ill people and not the difference separating them from the other well people. The exercises at the end of the website were definitely helpful in applying these concepts to an everyday situation.
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The cause and effect website was confusing to me but I agree that the exercises at the end of the website helped me a little in applying the concepts. The site explained the three principles that helped a little also but the examples on the three drivers had too much information for me to understand. I liked the third principle because it can be a question that can help me figure out if an argument is a strong causal argument. The significant difference problem was tough for me also! I had selected "They all ate from the same bowl" instead of "No one else at the picnic ate potato salad". The significant difference was on the other people at the picnic.
ReplyDeleteHey SammyGirl, I really like your post and how you brought up the three principles that a causal argument is dependent on. This helped make the process of causal arguments more clear to me because I only briefly explained what they were and said that it seems it is easy to find these in a court room. I was also initially confused with the second exercise and instead focused on the first one. An example that I came up with for this is how a "commonality" of all roommates getting sick may be because they all went out to eat and had the same thing to eat.
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