Tuesday, October 13

Today, we began by re-setting the discussion we had last week about defining terms in a logos-based argument. Specifically, we talked about three key logos-related concepts:

Claim -- a statement that a speaker or writer is trying to prove, or make understood, to an audience.

Relative Terms -- words or phrases that get their meaning from the context in which they are used, and from the subjective judgment of the people who are using them. "Good," "cool," "fun,"
"important," and "interesting" are all terms that came up in our discussion.

Criteria -- specific categories, qualities, reasons, or variables that thinkers, speakers, and writers use to define relative terms and make judgments/form opinions.

The "A" group then looked at two real-world situations in which relative terms, and their definition by criteria, played an extremely important role: a UN debate over a terrorism resolution following the 9/11 attacks, and a 2007 article about the legal definition of "torture" as it applied to U.S. treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Links to both articles are below:

UN Terrorism Debate

Torture Definition Article

The "B" group attempted to define the relative terms in the claims below with effective criteria. We agreed that the third was challenging, for a number of reasons.

Bagels are better than pretzels.
Rain is beneficial.
Paula Abdul is non-human.

Then, both classes looked at nine pieces of evidence that were all meant to prove a particular claim ("Cigarette smoking in public places should be illegal in the United States"). Here is the link to the handout:

Evidence Evaluation

In small groups, you discussed the strengths and weaknesses of each piece of evidence, and eventually ranked the evidence in order of effectiveness; you also began to discuss the criteria that allowed you to distinguish one piece of evidence from another.

There was no homework assigned, except for the next Animal Farm reading, which is due on Monday, October 19.