Class notes - September 20, 2007

  1. Quality of the evidence
    1. Some arguments are better at convincing us than others.
    2. Why is this?  
    3. Evidence - explicit information shared by the communicator that is used to back up or to justify the dependability of a factual claim.
    4. Kinds of evidence
      1. Brainstorm with your team about the kinds of evidence
      2. Use book, articles, your own thoughts
      3. For each, describe why it might be good to use that type of evidence or in what situation would you use that evidence.
      4. For each, describe why it might be a drawback to use that kind of evidence or in what situation you would not use that kind of evidence.
      5. Each team should put their results on the board.  Each group should put up no more than 3.  Each new group adds at least one that is not already up.
      6. Pro Evidence con
        can be relavent Personal objservation emotional bias/unreliable/opinion
        people can relate/easyCommon sense everyone is different/not every on has it
        help relate familiar to unfamiliar analogy hard to make correctly/don't make sense
        first hand experience/example Testimony small sample/who are they
        will make you aware of something you didn't see youself Personal observation people see things differently/small ample
        more experience/align you with authority appeal to authority selective/misused/who are thye?
        IQ/some are better than othersintuition based on experience/private
        detail easy to visualize Cases
        Research
        Statistics
    5. Looking for evidence
      1. What kind of evidence do we find in?
        1. Stem cell articles
        2. Descriptive assumption paragraphs
        3. The opinions that you wrote
      2. For each, is it effective, and why?
  2. Assignment for Monday - Read thoroughly, Chapter 7 and Carl Sagan's Baloney detection kit article (found in the assignment page)
  3. Desmond Tutu speech.  Come early to get a seat.