Forum Questions (6)
Each Question must be answered within 6-8 sentences, there is two questions for each number. There are attached articles with each question to help you answer the question. Some questions you don’t need to refer to the article but some you do. ANSWER IN YOUR OWN OPINION. MAKE THEM LEGITMET ANSWERES!
1.) What do you think of my claim that almost no-one in politics and media makes a conscious effort to avoid rhetoric and engage in real argument? Are there exceptions, public figures that you think try to avoid rhetoric as best they can? Can anyone think of any examples of rhetoric from your own life, from a book, or from the news? A time when someone presented reasons for believing something that clearly weren’t argument at all, but they still felt quite convincing? (https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/defining-critical-thinking/766)
2.) What do you think of the Dave Barry article?. Any examples of dubious or outright absurd statistics that have come your way? Or can anyone think of any examples of what I might mean when I say that it is dangerous to be too skeptical about statistics? (http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/public_html/heuveb/Teaching/CriticalThinking/Web/Handouts/DaveBarryArgueEffectively.pdf)
3.) How would you describe the political landscape in other countries that you are familiar with? It is a common opinion that America has worse political polarization, because we have only two parties that have any real power. What, other than politics, do we associate with being “left”/”right” or “liberal”/”conservative”?
4.) How might someone try to determine, more objectively, whether or not a neighborhood is safe or unsafe? What are some other issues that people would usually use inductive arguments to reason about? (http://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/ded_ind.html)
5.) What are your major premises? If you HAD to say, “Yes, I suppose I have an ideology,” (existentialism, paleo-conservatism, classical liberalism, bohemianism, etc.) what might it be? And what would be some of its major premises? (https://myetudes.org/access/content/group/d8e623df-1730-4b24-801b-8bf6101c4899/Reading%20-%20Implied%20Premises.pdf)
6.) What do you think of his claims in, “The Peter Singer Solution to World Poverty”? What is the structure of his argument here; why should we give to the poor? What are possible objections to his theory? (http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/singermag1.html)
