Ragged Dick

Ragged Dick displays the implicit argument that success is ultimately a combination of both luck and skill or strength of character. In the story, Dick had to work hard and use a great deal of skillful manuevering to be where he was at the time, but ultimately, that work and perserverance alone was not enough to get him where he was. When he was looking for a job,  he was given the opportunity to save a man's child. He did not know however, that the man who owned the child was extremely wealthy and that he would get a great deal in return for his morally expected action. The man then hired him for his morally sound character. While it was important that he had the skills required to do the job successfully, the author points out that it is also important that a person also has luck and is morally strong to be successful. Otherwise, it is suggested, that Dick would not have gotten the job. 

Visual Blog

Visual arguments in today's society seem to be having a greater effect than their non-visual brethren due to the increased sensory comprehension, the opportunity to reach a greater audience, and the significantly reduced time it takes for the argument to get its point across. While a strongly worded argument will often make believers out of the people who sit down and read them in their entirety, often times nobody feels that reading an argument, especially one that contradicts their beliefs, is actually worthy of their time. A visual argument, however, is different. With a visual argument, a person does not have the ability to look at the thesis, determine that they do not agree with it, and walk away. Because the argument hits them all at once, they must accept it for what it is, regardless of their previous dispositions. The argument will then hit, not only people who are too "busy" to read, but also those who are stubbornly opposed to your beliefs. 

Recently, visual arguments have also been popular because of their ability to be placed in commonly viewed locations. While written arguments are restricted to books, packets of paper, and courtrooms, visual arguments can hit thousands of people through placement on TVs, Billboards, and bumper stickers. While often people consider these pointless, over time, they make a subconscious difference, and making even a slight impact on millions of people, is all an argument can really be expected to do. 

post # 13

When using persuasive rhetorical strategies such as ethos and pathos, the arguer must ensure that not only is the point reasonable and accurately stated, but also that the evidence used is completely rounded, illustrating all known benefits and downfalls of the point being made.  It is easy to lie in an argument with a made up statistic, and it is easy to deceive people with "true" ones that don't convey the full meaning (like saying 25% of girls die of cancer per year in a school containing four girls); however, this truly is not the point of arguing. The true point of arguing is to approach the truth, which if understood, will please the general will of the population. Those who wish to intentionally convince others of falsities can only be described as acting out of selfish greed. The unfortunate thing is, it is very difficult to determine if someone has created a decent idea out of developed, rounded, and meaningful arguments, or if they are intentionally leaving evidence out, using emotions to override logic, or even lying. This is why it is important for organizations such as the media to be truthful in its evidence.  People, who love and wish the best for their country watch the news and expect the news to tell the full story. When the news tells them lies, or subtly  deceives them with bias, the ignorant population will likely accept the news as fact, for if they are watching the news, they likely do not know when they are being misled. It is therefore important for arguments to stay informatively impartial when attempting to educate a population. While sides can and should be established on certain issues in the inevitable pursuit of the truth, ideally, the population should be making that choice, not the media. 

skateboarding

The author uses plenty of evidence to support his claims. he first describes a situation in which he was skateboarding. In this scenario, he describes the law enforcement as if they are criminals, implying his complete innocence and the excessive unfairness of the policemen. He then attempts to sympathize with the reader by pointing out a mistake that an average person would be likely to make, and he refers to his friend who had to pay $50 to make it sound more tragic. He backs his argument further by using a stereotype of his own to describe how stereotypes are afflicting him. Nearing the end, he re-states the point that skaters don't have anywhere to go, using ambiguous rules as an example and over crowded and poorly built skate parks as an example. He follows this point up with argument that skaters make the environment cleaner because they don't drive or sail in gasoline powered boats. This argument, while worded cleverly, has many faults, which the writer purposefully ignores. This writer's cunning impresses me, however, his argument does not. 

Pseudo Arguments!

Pseudo arguments are frustrating because they commonly elicit the same effect as expressing your opinions to a brick wall, and almost always end up with both sides stubbornly saying to themselves, "This guy/girl has absolutely no idea what he/she is talking about!" This is because neither can understand the other's attack on the argument because they disagree on a fundamental issue. While the supporting issue could then become the new argument and truth pursuit could follow, reality never seems to make it that easy. When person A argues against person B that racism is bad because colored people are dying, and person B comments that their dead bodies match the trees, person A will be flabbergasted. All through his life person A has been taught the horrors of racism, and person B establishes a complete standstill to all of his arguments by showing no care or sympathy and points out the convenient color coordination. Person A really has nowhere to go from this point. If person B is unwilling to accept that discrimination due to race is bad, all examples such as death rates, rights differences, and emotional examples of people who cannot pursue their dreams are useless. Because emotional connection and fairness to others is the only real basis behind equality, ignoring this leaves no way to pursue the "truth."In a sense, with a pseudo argument, neither side will head in the right direction. Topics such as racism and abortion are very sensitive issues. Politics struggles so greatly with abortion for much the same reason as the example above. When Pro-life argues that abortion is murder, pro-choice says nobody cared for the baby anyway, and when Pro-choice argues for abortion, those who are pro-life are blinded to reason by their emotional connections to their own children and loved ones. There ultimately comes a point in a pseudo argument when one realizes, there is no point in pursuing it further.

Pathos

Pathos, or emotions, is an exceptionally strong rhetorical device because it catches the attention of a large variety of audiences, establishes a solid and understandable medium for most viewers to relate to, and its attachment to emotion can keep the argument in the audience's memory for a long time. Arguments containing only persuasion can be intractably ignored, and arguments with no understanding will inevitably prove ineffective; however, the use of "pathos" attacks both of these issues and commonly proves more effective than ones based entirely on logic and reason.

While people will commonly not respond to or commonly even understand an argument about a controversial topic such as economics, emotions, like sympathy, will register with the reader or listener. For example, when establishing a point to an audience with a little education, mentioning the stock market patterns will prove pointless, but mentioning the one legged hobos on the sides of the streets will draw tears, and the person will go back and spread the "need for change" to his or her friends and family. 

If emotion alone does not connect the reader to the piece, pressure to do so often will finish the job. For example, an argument encouraging acting out against pet abuse will show the harmful and irreversible effects of abuse on a defenseless animal, such as a puppy. Just the sympathy for the baby animal alone will change the majority of the audience member's minds, but those who are not will then fall into a category contrary to "peer pressure." They will be attacked for being heartless, inconsiderate, and having an unreasonable hatred of puppies. Regardless of how this person responds or the level of logic that his argument has, the opinions of the peers around him will remain unchanged; such is the power of pathos. Not only will the emotions bring out the most powerful, angry emotions in people, but they will also pressure those who remain loyal to reason to change. 

This is not to say, however, that emotional arguments are perfect. While they do have the extremely beneficial attributes mentioned above, emotions are no substitute for reason. Emotions alone will only convince a small majority of people, and the ones that are convinced, will commonly later reason out their error in judgement. It is therefore important to maintain a balance of logic and emotion, for without emotion, you will get few listeners, and without logic, those who do listen will often not remain loyal to the cause.  

Torture

I agree with a great deal of the ideas mentioned in the article suggesting torture should be allowed under certain circumstances. While there are some faults in the piece, the faults, from what I can see, are not faults of the argument itself, but the somewhat useless nature of the argument. The argument itself is quick, solid, and specific. It describes situations in which only the most irrational of people would not imply that torture would be the correct option. The lack of application is the argument's main issue. I understand this, but it is important to understand that this is not actually the fault of the argument. When undergoing radical hyperbole this argument should be considered "useless" not "bad."

The argument uses surveys, hypothetical situations, and even historical situations to prove his point. The author points out, people were outraged that Hitler was not assassinated and assassination is simply a relative of torture. To me, this displays that some of his hypothetical circumstances, which appear at first to be too narrowly focused, have actually had application in history without being stretched to far to retain meaning. From this perspective then, the argument is clearly not useless. Hitler was the cause of the death of millions. A great majority of Jewish men would have happily shot four or five guards to get a shot at Hitler. The torture or death of innocents is unfortunate, and the author agrees, but one must understand that you are picking the lesser of two evils. The pain of a few innocents (possibly, and not included in the argument), or the death of a far greater number of innocents, just hours away from explosion. Sure, sometimes the criminal will be tough enough to handle it, and sometimes you have damaged 202 people rather than 200, but those two people are not dead. They will recover. The dead and their families, however, don't get that chance. You can't just let criminals plant a bomb, taunt America, and walk away with money, hundreds dead. Though this was not argued, the fact that we are willing to torture, will encourage fewer people to even attempt this, knowing that they will just crack later. Even worse, knowing that we will never torture will have just the opposite effect. 

Genetic Foods #2

The reading discusses both sides of the controversial issue of genetic food production and consumption. One side of the argument explores the potential long-term dangers of consuming bio-tech foods. The author discusses the possibilities of illness, potential of food to lose its nutritional value, and the harm that widespread ignorance could inflict on humanity. The author concludes with the assertion that we should halt all production of genetic foods. The other side of the argument makes the point that extensive labeling will just confuse and scare customers and decrease effectivity by increasing the price. The author states that the foods have all been extensively tested already and that the advantages of genetic foods outweigh any remaining potential harms.

I believe that genetic foods are productive and valuable. While I too share some minor concerns for the dangers of practices such as irradiation, I do not think these concerns are very valid or problematic. As with all things entering society, new genetic foods undergo extensive testing, and so far, they have shown little to no chance of harm. All things considered, it doesn't make sense to instantly condemn this exciting new research. With problems slowly developing in the world, there will undoubtedly be a time when genetic foods will prove their worth. i suppose it is also possible, though unlikely, that genetic foods illustrate problematic signs and of concern to humanity. Until then however, there is no reason to irrationally ignore the great advantages of bio-tech foods with no evidence to support the claim but potential problems and hypothetical circumstances.

Genetic Foods

The arguments on pages 1 and 24 take different approaches on the same argument. The argument on page 1 is a comic of a starving boy being refused food by a well-fed, man claiming the food has been genetically engineered and therefor, the boy should not eat it. This implicit argument is powerful because it clearly makes the reader draw the conclusion that genetic foods are helpful because, if nothing else, they are better than not having food at all. The other argument is a mix of both implicit and explicit arguments. First it illustrates a picture of a can of (genetically engineered) food. It then, instead of placing the ingredients and nutrition facts in their rightful places, puts "None of Your Business" in its place. It also has a label underneath it explaining the potentially harmful long-term effects of using genetically engineered foods. This argument, while it displays a strong point, falls a bit shorter than the other simply because a starving boy, who has nothing else to eat, would much rather eat and risk long term health problems, then perish from starvation and never live to see the long-term.