Week 6 ; Ch.2 #3

In this chapter, there is a section called, "Emotional Intelligence and the Positive Effects of Emotion". Emotional intelligence is defined as, "the ability to perceive accurately, appraise and express emotion". A few examples of emotions are: empathy, outrage, love, happiness, and guilt. Sometimes, an inability to communicate our emotions can negatively affect a person's behavior and decisions. For example, if a person is upset, and the person that they're upset with is trying to talk to them to apologize, but they are too upset to even give that person a chance to explain themselves. This could cause friendships to end. Empathy is the ability to enter into and understand the emotions of others. An empathetic person is more open to other people's opinions and thoughts. With this trait, people are able to become better listeners and communicators. Emotions can also help us correct past mistakes. This is because when it's an "in the moment" event, your emotions get the best of you and you might do something that you regret. As time passes, you could realize what you did wrong, and try to correct your mistakes.

Week 6 ; Ch.2 #2

Dawkins claims that evolution and a belief in God are incompatible. Evolution is the process of how things in this world became the way it is now with little changes as generations pass. When someone believes in God, that means they believe that God is the one that created this earth and everyone in it. If someone believes in evolution, they can't possibly believe in God as well because both ideas contradict each other. Aquinas writes about how the existence of God can be proved in five ways. These five ways are: the argument from motion, nature of the efficient cause, possibility and necessity, gradation to be found in things, and governance of the world. Dawkins on the other hand says that Aquinas's first three points mean the same thing, but is written differently, so he brings out his own ideas on how the existence of God is incompatible with the belief in evolution. If Aquinas was alive today, I think he wouldn't agree with what Dawkins believes in, and would say that it's not proof at all, that it's only his own opinion and beliefs, not evidence.

Week 6 ; Ch.2 #1

I agree with the quote that, "identifying your strengths is important in choosing a career" because without knowing your own strengths, how would you ever work towards a goal in life? Before choosing a career, you need to know what you're passionate about so that you could work hard towards the dream career you want. If you choose a career that you're not passionate about, that could cause it to become tedious, and you could possibly start to dread going to work. I personally think I'm strongest in communication because I like to talk to people, and communicating to solve problems. I like to give people advice when they ask, and tell them my personal opinion about things. This is one of the reasons why I want to pursue a career in nursing. Another reason why I want to major in nursing is because I like helping people, it's a good feeling when you know that you've made a positive impact in someone's life. 

Week 4 ; Ch.7 #3

In Think, on pages 224-225, there is a section on how to evaluate casual arguments. There are four steps to this process. By taking these steps into mind, it can help you make better decisions in life and your relationships with others. The first step is that you shouldn't assume anything, you should always look for evidence first. The more evidence there is, the stronger your argument will be. If you don't do your research and find evidence, you could cause conflict between yourself and others. The second step is that the argument shouldn't contain fallacies, which are false ideas that tend to seem correct at first. The third step is that the information to know/find out should be up-to-date, and not from a year ago. The last and final step is that the conclusion of an argument shouldn't go beyond the premises, meaning if the conclusion isn't 100% true, you should use the word "probably", or any other word similar to that. I think all of these steps are understandable and makes sense on how it could help you make better decisions in life. These steps help you make sure that you stand neutral in an argument, until evidence is found through research.

Week 4 ; Ch.7 #2

In the story about Antonia Novello, it talks about the difficult life situation she had growing up. As she grew older, she set a dream for herself and was motivated to achieve that goal to become a doctor. When she was younger, she was poor and got sick a lot, so when she got older, she decided to do something about it instead of just living her whole life in poverty. She had the ability to think critically about health-care issues. Novello noticed that the problem of children and teens smoking increased due to the ads introduced. Since she had childhood hardships, she probably doesn't want children and teens experiencing the same thing that she did. To help children and teens become more aware of the problem, she started working for more education in schools and banned alcohol and cigarette ads that were meant to target the younger generation. I think it's great what Novello did because it helps lead children and teens towards the right path towards success, rather than ruining their future with drugs and alcohol.

Week 4 ; Ch.7 #1

In chapter 7, it states that an inductive argument is an argument that states something is probably true or false, but not strongly supported. The book says that inductive arguments usually use the phrases, probably, most likely, chances are that, it is reasonable to suppose that, we can expect that, and it seems probable that. A recent example of an inductive argument that I used in the past week was when I was at work. I work at the Jamba Juice in the Student Union, and I was working the cash register one day. A customer was really indecisive on what smoothie they wanted, so I asked them if they would rather have something fruity or something creamy. They replied that they wanted something fruity, so I asked them what their favorite fruits were to try and help narrow down their wide variety of selections. They said that two of their top favorite fruits were strawberries and peaches. From this, I asked them if they wanted something sour or sweet. They said they wanted to try something sour, so I told them that they would probably like the Strawberry Surf Rider or Caribbean Passion because both drinks are sour/tart, and they have both of the fruits that they wanted. The customer finally ordered and decided to get a Caribbean Passion. This example is both a deductive and inductive argument because I used the process of elimination to narrow down the choices, but I also left them to decide which drink they wanted out of two different ones because they would probably like both according to the information they told me.

Week 3 ; Ch.8 #3

In chapter 8 of Think, it tells you the three different types of deductive arguments. The first type is argument by elimination, where different possibilities of a situation are eliminated until there is only one conclusion that remains. The second type is argument based on mathematics, which means that the conclusion has to be calculated from a mathematical or geometrical situation. The last type is argument from definition, which is where the conclusion is true based on fact or a certain definition for a term. An example of the first type would be like Sherlock Holmes, trying to find out where the missing racehorse was by using logic to eliminate the other possible places the horse could've been. For the second type, an example of this would be trying to measure how much space you have in your room by taking several math steps. An example of the last type of deductive argument from the book is, "Paulo is a father. All fathers are men. Therefore, Paulo is a man" (Boss, 244). This is true because by definition, a father is a male parent. I personally like argument by elimination because I like to rule things out when trying to solve something, and you have to really use your logic to think about certain situations and the possibilities.

Week 3 ; Ch.8 #2

In Christianity, teachings tell that you should never take a life. Teachings of Jesus of Nazareth also state that you shouldn't return hate for hate or evil for evil. So...doesn't the death penalty contradict this? Christianity teaches people that they're all God's children, so why would a person want to put their "brother" or "sister" to death? Of course besides these reasonings, a person could always say that the person in the death penalty deserves to be in there because of the poor actions they made. Just think about it, if you're Christian and have those beliefs, then one of your family members gets murdered, would you just forgive the suspect or would you want justice served to them? It's a hard decision to make because it's a person's life that could possibly be taken away because they took the life of another. I am Christian, so it's also a pretty difficult situation for me to decide, but I guess it all depends on the situation.

Week 3 ; Ch.8 #1

When Sherlock Holmes tells Watson that when it comes to art of reasoning, may people rely on opinion and unsupported assumptions, I think he means that when people try to figure things out, they are usually biased with their decisions. For example, when I was in my junior year of high school, my friends and I were at a party. My friend left her phone to charge in a room that nobody was supposed to go into, and when she came back into the room, her phone was gone. She immediately thought it was the girl that she didn't like because everyone knew one another  at the party. My friend went up to the girl saying, "Where's my phone? I know you took it." without any proof at all. Today, many people assume things and never really take the time to figure things out fairly. When you make an assumption, you should always have proof to back it up, otherwise you could blame innocent people. When innocent people are blamed, that's usually when conflicts start to happen because nobody likes to be blamed for other people's mistakes.

Week 2 ; Ch.6 #3

In chapter 6 in Think by Judith Boss, it states that an issue is an "ill-defined complex of problems involving controversy or uncertainty". Arguments usually tend to help us analyze issues and which side of the issue is the more reasonable one. When you identify an issue, you need to think clearly and have good communication skills. An example of this would be if a person's best friend started ignoring them because they had a friend that they had more in common with. The rejected friend would probably feel uncomfortable being around the other two friends, and would no longer want to hang out with them. If the rejected friend went up to the best friend to talk about it, the best friend would most likely get defensive and tell her that she wasn't ignoring her on purpose, and that she has just been busy. This would cause an argument and possibly end a friendship. In order to make the situation fair, both parties should be open-minded and understand what the other person feels, so they could work out the tension. 

Week 2 ; Ch.6 #2

There have been multiple times when I've stood my ground despite losing a friend. I'm the type of person where if you do something that isn't fair or right, I will call you out on it and not have a problem with it. It's not that I'm a mean person, but I just don't beat around the bush or try to "sugar coat" things when there's a problem at stake. A recent example of this was when my roommate's sister came to San Jose to visit her, but she didn't want to put her own plans aside to spend time with her sister. Instead, she left her sister at our house and went to a soccer game with one of our other roommates. I thought this was messed up because her sister drove two hours to be with her sister, but my roommate didn't care. So, when my roommate got home from the soccer game, she came to my room and I told her that it wasn't right for her to ditch her sister like that because I spent more time with her than she actually did. My roommate didn't think she did anything wrong, so she just walked out of my room.The reason why she went to the soccer game in the first place was because the guy she liked was playing. I told her that it wasn't going to be the last soccer game he'd play, and that she should never put a guy before her family. She was in denial at first, but she eventually realized that I was right, and she apologized to me.

Week 2 ; Ch.6 #1

 Same-sex couples/marriages have been a dilemma in the United States for a while now. President Barak Obama is all about equal rights, but when it comes to same-sex marriages, he doesn't approve of them. Why should gay and lesbian couples be treated differently than anyone else because after all, they're humans too. Since Obama doesn't agree with same-sex marriages, he isn't consistent in his beliefs of equal rights and opportunities for all people, regardless of their sexual orientation. He agrees with same-sex couples to an extent because he probably doesn't want to lose any of his supporters that also disapprove of this. In response to Nava and Dawidoff, Obama would most likely say that his stance isn't a denial of the basic rights of same-sex couples because he still supports them on a civil union level. He doesn't totally deny them, but if he were to support civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, I think he should support them completely on a federal level as well.