Search through common media sources looking for examples of fallacies

Based on the selected prompt, you may need to review one or more of the interactive modules below to better prepare for your discussion:

Buying a Car (Links to an external site.): This scenario will introduce you to evaluating arguments.

The Parking Garage (Links to an external site.): This scenario will help you to examine your own biases and stereotypes.

The Graduate (Links to an external site.): This scenario will present several arguments and demonstrate how arguments appear in daily life and can be broken down into premise and conclusion form.

PHI103 Informal Fallacies (Links to an external site.): This practice activity will help you identify types of fallacies.

PHI103 Rhetorical Devices Knowledge Check (Links to an external site.): This practice activity will help in identifying

rhetorical devices.

This week you will select only one of two discussion topic tasks. Please indicate in your initial post which task you are responding to. You should then respond to x3 colleague posts – you may respond to either task (1 or 2) from a colleague.

Task 1 – Logical Fallacies

Once you learn the names of the major logical fallacies, you will probably start noticing them all over the place, including in advertisements, movies, TV shows, and everyday conversations. This can be both fascinating and frustrating, but it can certainly help you to avoid certain pitfalls in reasoning that are unfortunately very common. This exercise gives you a chance to practice identifying fallacies as they occur in daily life.

Prepare: To prepare to address this prompt, carefully read through Chapter 7 of our book, paying special attention to learning the names of common fallacies, biases, and rhetorical tricks. Take a look as well at the required resources from this week.

Reflect: Search through common media sources looking for examples of fallacies. Some common places to find fallacies include advertisements, opinion pieces in news media, and arguments about politics, religion, and other controversial issues. You may also notice fallacies in your daily life.

Write: Present three distinct informal logical fallacies you have discovered in these types of sources or in your life. Make sure to identify the specific fallacy committed by each example. Explain how the fallacies were used and the context in which they occurred. Then, explain how the person should have presented the argument to have avoided committing this logical error.

Task 2 – Preconception Scenarios

Dear Thinkers:

Biases affect all of us, and we are all prone to committing fallacious reasoning at times. This discussion allows us to investigate some of our own sources of biases and ways in which we may be prone to fall for fallacious reasoning.

Prepare: Prior to answering this question, make sure that you have completed the “ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.Parking GarageLinks to an external site (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.Links to an external site.” and “Buying a CarLinks to an external site (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.Links to an external site.” scenarios. Make sure to read Chapters 7 and 8 of our book, paying special attention to ways in which people are affected by biases (including the sections “Stereotypes” and “Purpose and Potential Bias” in Chapter 8).

Reflect: Think about why you made the choices you made in each scenario. Do those choices tell you anything about yourself and the way that you think? Would you do anything different if you were to do it again?

Write:

Address your experiences in each scenario in the following posts: (NOTE: Include all parts in a single post)

Part 1: Answer the following questions: Why did you take the route you did in the parking garage scenarioLinks to an external site.? Did you notice that you had preconceptions about different types of people and situations? Could those types of preconceptions ever lead to problematic inferences?

Part 2: In the Buying a Car scenarioLinks to an external site., did you feel that the salesman had ulterior motives? Did they lead him to have any biases in terms of he wanted you to purchase? Point out some of the biases that you have in real life. Are you am interested party when it comes to certain types of questions? How does that potentially cloud your judgment? Relate your answer to the content about biases.