3) Normal Conditions For A Nintendo DS

Normal conditions are claims that remain unstated in an argument. They remain unstated because in most cases, they are not needed in the argument. However, these small details make the argument stronger. A normal condition is more focused on making the cause and effect relationship between two events more valid or stronger. However, because the normal condition claim may be common sense, or may describe a "normal condition" of the current situation, it usually does not need to be stated in the premises or claims. Below is an example of an argument explaining a cause and effect.

My Nintendo DS's light turned red.
It turned red because the battery is dying.
It only turns red when I play my DS for a long time without charging it.

The cause and effect you see above describes the cause and effect simply. I can add more claims which do make the relationship stronger but are not necessary. Here are some examples.

The company, Nintendo, programmed the DS to turn red when the battery is dying or needs to be charged.
As far as I know, a DS is not like a PS3's or Xbox 360's where when you see a red light, it means it needs to addressed.
Since a DS is portable, it would be reasonable to use the red light feature to indicate the battery is dying.

Anyways, there are more to list, but that's just the basic idea. Let's just say if I added those premises, it establishes that the red light for the DS really does mean that the battery is dying. There is no other meaning towards it. However, because those claims are probably already known through common sense, it does not need to be added to the premise.

- Pink Bean

2) Mission Critical Website

This website actually showed very in-depth explanations of most of the content we learned. I noticed that this site listed fallacies we have not learned from our textbook such as Ad Hominem. I also noticed that it organized certain reasonings into an inductive and deductive category. In a previous blog, I mentioned I had trouble understand what exactly an inductive reasoning was. I think this website can give a better understanding of it because subcategories of arguments are actually listed under either inductive or deductive. This lets readers be aware on what type of reasoning they are actually using.

According to the website, causal argument is actually an inductive argument. I actually did not really think about that until I seen this website. Other than that, it also listed other arguments that we may use and identifies them as deductive arguments.

I also thought it was good that they added the Ad Hominem fallacy because it was not listed in the book (or I did not see it). I thought it was good they added that fallacy because some are not aware that the argument itself is actually a fallacy. It basically sums up that you should give anyone's argument a chance no matter what kind of person they are. For example, if a little kid is telling you something that seems unbelievable, you'll probably tell him or her that he or she is lying because little kids are seen as having small knowledge about the world. Although it seems believable, it is still a fallacy to assume that he or she is wrong all because of what the person is.

I thought the Ad Hominem fallacy was very similar to a fallacy we learned which was "mistaking a person or group." I am not sure if it's actually the same fallacy because it didn't state that it was Ad Hominem. It might be though. haha but maybe not

- Pink Bean

1) Cause and Effect Website

The cause and effect website was useful because it went in-depth of a topic that was was scarcely explained. Although the topic of causal reasoning was pretty straightforward and simple, this website still was able to expand my knowledge of it.

I liked how in the end of the page, it explained what makes a causal argument strong because not arguments will always be strong even though they may follow the cause and effect pattern.

Of the three steps they mentioned, the one I thought was the most interesting was the second point which was questioning if the "bicycle" really did cause the accident. It is possible that the driver may have done a mistake or if the cause of the accident was something else other than the bicycle.

I thought this point was interesting because it makes you aware that all because a certain event or thing was present, it doesn't mean that it is the cause of another event. It could be possible that the driver overlooked another cause of the accident because he or she was too focused on the bike. That is why before assuming that the bike caused the accident, we must look into other criteria or clues.

- Pink Bean