Wednesday, April 28, 2010
How to Look for the Causes
In Ch. 15 section C talks about how to look for the cause in your argument. it gave an example of a waterfall in a backyard and how they kept losing water to they came up with a list of possible things that could be the problem and by narrowing them down one by one they finally came up with a solution to why their pond was losing water. A car is another similar example, if something is wrong with you car there are always several main things that you go look at first to make sure they are functioning properly. In many instances we cannot really conduct an experiment but we can do an imaginary experiment instead. This is something that we all have done when checking for truthfulness or validity of the problem. The chapter does make a note saying that this method will only help you find the causes if you are guessing the problem among the ones you are testing. I though this was helpful because this method can be put to use in our everyday lives when we need to problem solve. Anything from our cars to an argument we can assess the situation and test each individual problem as we see it.
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Yes I think you have it exactly right. It is hard to look for a cause sometimes though, especially if someone is stating a false cause or trying to misrepresent a relationship for their own purposes. Sometimes, like with the waterfall example, it can seem like a series of trial and error before you really find the true root cause. I think it has become more difficult thought to find the real root cause now, because so many people will try to take advantage of a situation like that to mislead people to try to sell them something they don’t need.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your looking for causes blog. It really relates to almost everyone lives because when there is a problem we all look for the causes. The example you gave about narrowing down the causes with the waterfall and car are excellent real life examples that can happen. Fixing anything when it comes to cars or finding a leak can help when narrowing down the causes. I myself sometimes forget to just take a step back and think logically about what the causes could be and the narrow it down. This makes life a lot easier when solving problems or situations.
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