Wow, I can't believe how fast this semester flew by. As we're coming into the last discussion week, I feel like I've actually been able to take concepts we've discussed in class and have applied them into my general daily conversations without even realizing it. Just the other day, a few friends and I were sitting out in front of Yogurtland having a pretty deep conversation, ranging from politics, certain religious issues, Korea, and general opinions of other people that we've come across in the past. The conversation quickly turned into breaking down all the fallacies, composition issues, and all of the weak/invalid arguments people more often than not use. A pretty easy example was on the discussion of agnostic vs. atheist, also talking about deism.
Ex: I have a certain friend who proclaims himself as a radical extremist right-wing hardcore Christian, who constantly sparks off various debates on Facebook over Jesus and various Christian faiths. I don't have anything against Christianity or anything like that, but I do take issue with people who "shift the burden of proof" when proclaiming God does/doesn't exist, and will try to make you prove them wrong.
Various occurences pop up all like that all the time where I'll just realize, "Oh, that's an invalid argument because of this this and that", or "You're basically using reverse causation to prove your point", etc etc etc. I knew I'd enjoy this class before the semester even began, generally because I like to debate, but I really felt like I was able to learn quite a bit that will further help me on any future discussions. I should be able to hold my own even better now in whatever discussion I have in the future, using purely logical concepts instead of spewing fallacies, ad hominems, strawman arguments, and other bad ways of arguing I'm sure most of us have been exposed to.
I have also found many different concepts from this class to be useful in my daily conversations and I am also a fan of debating. When I was at work the other day, one of my co-workers asked me what I think about the Cam Newton investigation and college athletes getting paid to play sports at school. Like other debates along with this one, I found myself in my head pointing out different fallacies and weak or strong arguments that everyone was bringing up in their feelings about the issue. Great post and I thought you brought up a lot of the important topics from the semester!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you this semester went by really fast. We went through a lot concepts that we use in our daily lives. I have notice too that I come across fallacies while talking to my friends. I like the example you used about religion and talking about it with your friends. I like having those deep conversations about interesting things. I found this class very interesting because we got to learn about so many concepts I have never heard about. Now that I have learned about these concepts I will be able to use them for future projects and work. Overall the biggest concept I learned about was fallacies.
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