Quick Write

What makes a good Dracula? What does Dracula have to have to be considered Dracula?

Questions vs Answers

Let’s take a step back and think about critical thinking again. Critical thinking relies on forming and asking questions. When we assume things, we are providing answers without asking questions.

This class is meant to move you past your comfort zone. It should challenge you intellectually and morally. You should evaluate your thinking and your beliefs. Not to get rid of them, but to know what you know and don’t know. You choose to believe what you want, not just believe what has been passed down to you.

If this class is challenging, good. That is the point of it. Questions lead to knowledge and learning, answers lead to dead ends.

Monster Criteria

Let’s develop criteria for evaluating a monster. Let’s use Dracula from the quick write.

What must a Vampire have to be Dracula?

You cannot develop the criteria until you have gone through the primary texts. You have to gather the data and use that to develop your criteria.

Fallacies Continued

Ethical Fallacies (Ethos)

False Authority – Offering yourself or other authorities as sufficient evidence.

Dogmatism – persuade by assuming a position based in biblical passages.

Moral Equivocation – suggesting that serious wrongdoings do not differ from minor ones.

Ad Hominem (At the person) – Attacks directed at character instead of the claims or argument.

Logical Fallacies (Logos)

Hasty Generalizations – conclusions drawn from insufficient evidence. Jumping to conclusions. The most common fallacy you will encounter.

Faulty Causality – assuming because one event happened after another, the first causes the second.

Begging the Question – a form of circular logic. an argument based on claims that cannot be accepted as true.

Equivocation – the use of ambiguous language to conceal the truth or to avoid committing oneself.

Non Sequitur – an argument in which claims, reasons, or warrants fail to connect logically.

The Straw Man – Misrepresenting an argument in order to knock it down. Arguing something that is not really there.

Faulty Analogy – An extended comparison that is inaccurate or inconsequential.

Red Herring – Partway through an argument, the arguer goes off on a tangent, raising a side issue that distracts the audience from what’s really at stake. Often, the arguer never returns to the original issue.

Group Work

We read Collaborating Online: Digital Strategies for Group Work for this week. This should help you with planning and developing a strategy to work as a group.

You have the rest of the class to get in groups and plan on the project.

How are you going to continue working?