Author Archives: Melissa Prescott

Reading Reflection #6: Logical Fallacies

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  1. The fallacy that comes to mind is the fallacy of explaining by naming. It mainly comes up in conversations with friends and family in trying to understand a certain problem, is we state what the problem or person is doing or what they are then we feel we understand the problem when really we don’t. I’ve heard it in political commercials as well.
  2. Back in 2012 I was trying to explain to my mom why I do some of the things I do and blamed her and my dad for things they did in my past, diverting there attention from the issue and onto them using the red herring fallacy.
  3. ad-hominem, explaining by naming, slippery slope, appeal to emotion, either-or
  4. ad-hominem, explaining by naming, red herring, slippery slope
  5. For number four, instead of attacking the people complaining, it could be explained why these parties are good for the campus community. Also, instead of insulting them, state reasons why such complaints are unjustified. Something else that could be changed to make this argument better is the minimizing at the beginning of the paragraph, those actions of fights and rapes are pretty messed up and to recognize that and acknowledge it would be better. Also explain why these types of things won’t happen again, what precautions are being made to stop these sorts of actions at a party.

Reading Reflection #5: Ambiguity and Assumptions

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  1. Ambiguity refers to the existence of multiple possible meanings for a word or phrase.
  2. Because you may interpret the word or phrase wrong and base your opinion on it for, or against the argument.
  3. Because they often only offer synonyms or examples of the word or phrase. They don’t convey specific criteria to help understand the argument as a whole.
  4. By asking the critical question, “Do I understand its meaning,” and seeing if you can replace the term with two or more alternate meanings and seeing if its changes your position in the argument or if it changes the outcome of the paper you are reading.
  5. They are a lot like descriptive and prescriptive issues in that descriptive assumptions rely on what the world was, is, or will be and prescriptive assumptions or value assumptions are based on values of how the communicator thinks the world should be.
  6. I believe they are because how can you fight for something without first believing this is how the world should think or this is how the world should be? You can’t argue for something without having the values to back it up. For example, if I were to fight for the rights of animals I would assume that the people that I am talking to wouldn’t think that it is right to hurt an animal for no reason. Having values matters to whatever you are arguing and without them you cannot argue anything.
  7. I don’t believe they do it, or should do it, because positions we take and positions we are against are common knowledge. If we take the time to hear a speaker or to read an article, we are operating under the assumption that what we hear or read will be understood and if it not and we think the material is worth is than we will find out understanding by digging into the article or speech more thoroughly. No need to exert intentions if they are already there to find. Don’t be lazy.
  8. Independence-Obedience

Reading Reflection #4: Group Topic Article

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My group is Health and Health Care. The article I read was State of The Science: Implicit Bias Review by Staats, Cheryl et al. The purpose of this article is to inform providers of the threat of implicit bias and that it is present in all facets of healthcare from Oncologists, to med school students. This article also aim to reduce implicit bias within healthcare. Some main points in the article come mostly from studies done within the workplace of healthcare professionals. The studies, various in methods, found much evidence of implicit bias, and outside of the studies, the message was clear that implicit bias is sickening the relationship between doctor and patient and something has to be done about it. Making staff at a med school take an implicit association test proved to be effective in that the school had the highest diverse enrollment since the school was opened (43). I believe if this happened everywhere, it would definitely reduce implicit bias everywhere. Three quotes that I will share with my group are:

  1.  “First, they predicted
    that physicians with higher implicit racial bias
    would tend to use first-person plural pronouns
    (e.g., we, us, our) more often than first-person
    singular pronouns (e.g., I, me, my) in comparison
    to their professional counterparts with lower
    levels of implicit racial bias.”
  2. “Recognizing that health care settings can often
    be hectic environments featuring stress, fatigue,
    time pressures, and other factors that can
    increase cognitive load, previous research has
    considered the notion that this environment
    may be conducive to biases.”
  3. “authors discussed four possible manifestations of implicit
    bias that can harm outcomes for pediatric
    patients, including racialized health disparities,
    stereotype threat, racial microaggressions, and
    language use.”

Work Cited: Staats, Cheryl et. al., “State of The Science: Implicit Bias Review” 2017 edition, p. 39-47 kirwanintitute.osu.edu