Fallacies

The concepts that I believe that needs more explanation are fallacies. Most people do not realize that there are so many different types of fallacies. One type of fallacy that I feel is used by a lot of different people every day is the ad hominem fallacy or as it is also known as the personal attack fallacy. As you can guess from the second way of saying it is a fallacy that occurs when there is a disagreement and instead of refuting the argument the person personally attacks the other in order to make the argument seem invalid.

One other type of fallacy that really seems very commonly used in everyday life is the appeal to pity. When you use this you are trying to evoke emotions in order to initiate the proper response. You see this type of fallacy mostly when different types of organizations are advertizing something. For example, when you see the commercials on television about sponsoring a child in another country, the commercials show sad little children in black and white. This evokes emotions of many people which makes them sad for the children and makes them do what the commercial says, sponsor a child.   

What I've Learned

Starting the class I thought I knew the concepts, I looked through the book and I really didn’t see anything that I had not seen before. However, while going through the class I figured out that there were a lot of things that I did not know. I had gaps in what I had known and this class has helped me to figure out the things that I didn’t know.

For example, rhetoric devices, when I came into the class I had only known two, hyperbole and sarcasm. Now I have learned about euphemism and dysphemism. Also I had a small amount of knowledge of inductive and deductive reasoning and this class has expanded that knowledge considerably which has really helped me in other classes.  The class has also helped me to understand how to analyze things critically. I had known little of these subjects prior to the class and now I have a much better grasp of the concepts and it is helping me considerably in my other classes.

Favorite Parts and Least Favorite Parts

When I had first come into this class I was quite skeptical as to how the way the class would be structured. This is the first only online class I have ever taken and when I have taken other classes that are partially online I have never done very well. However, much to my surprise the class was much easier than I had thought previously.

The very best part of the class was the fact that the concepts that we learned, I had already had partial exposure to. This made the class and the concepts easy as well as worthwhile because I was building my knowledge on concepts I had thought I had already known. The bad thing about the class was the group projects, I really don’t have that much free time and very little of it is spent at San Jose State so this made it very difficult to do group meetings which made group projects get done last minute.