EN 2120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Global Warming, Conversation Threading, Ad Hominem
19 Jan 2015
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We argue every day with cashiers, waiters, bill companies, parents. Successful activist essays include: logic; 2) credibility; 3) emotion. Formal argument - an effort to arrive at the truth about a subject through the use of formal logic. Induction: using specific examples that add up to a general point. Inductive argument example: the earth is getting warmer; 2) the rate of warming is increasing; 3) there"s an increased variability in weather patterns. Successful if examples are truthful and useful, and general point does not reach too far from examples. Deduction: make a general statement, and then make increasingly specific statements logically from it. Deductive argument example: global warming affects all countries; 2) canada is a country. Logically sound if the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises (no exceptions) Deduction is a more abstract and tricky argumentative strategy: all doctors have medical degrees, duncan koerber is a doctor.
