Journal Week 5

Journal Week 5 –
How might following a structured approach to creating sound and strong arguments impact your life?
Coercing others to agree with your argument requires sound premises. In life, you come across opportunities to apply this skill. These opportunities may be a promotion at work, a kitchen design your spouse does not agree with, or a plea for mercy from a police officer after you are caught speeding and running a red light in order to get home to meet your children at the bus.
How have you begun to use logic as a tool for improving your everyday life?
This class was perfect timing for my end of year review at work. We are asked to create a self-review that our supervisors can use to evaluate our performance. A portion of the self-review requires fact based scores attained throughout the year; the remainder is how you performed tasks. In the past, my reviews summed up to a plea for promotion and more money. I was able to apply critical thinking and create premises that are fact based. Above average scores received throughout the year shows my ability to perform my job with excellence. Experience with systems provided an opportunity to train and coach other instructional designers. A company approved pay scale calculated with performance (based on scores) and experience provides evidence for a pay raise.
What are your future goals for changing your critical thinking and reasoning skills as a result of what you have learned in this course?
I tend to jump into an argument with little to no thought. In this class, I have learned to take time to analyze the information and the opposing argument in order to make my argument deductive, sound, and strong. Jumping the gun leads to false premises with unsupported conclusions. Critical thinking removes clouded premises, attached by emotion that inevitably ends in a weak argument.