Chapter 2 Question # 3

Emotional intelligence according to the Boss text is “having the ability to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotion; the ability to access or generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth.”  As human beings we have various different types of emotions such as empathy, anger, sadness, or happiness. One of the most important and common type of emotion is empathy which is the ability to understand others experiences and the emotions of others.  A person who is empathetic is more open to other people’s perspectives, is more flexible, and can adapt to different situations almost instantly. They also have important skills in forming an acceptable argument for a planned event or action. Some empathetic people are often also very sympathetic. In other words they really do feel for the other person and have no control over it. 

Chapter 2 Question # 2

Evolution and a belief in God are incompatible as Dawkins claims. If you believe in evolution then believing in God doesn’t fit or make any sense. This is because Evolution is the idea that all living things on this Earth came from a single organism, like how from a cell came a human being. Believing in Evolution, God would not have been able to create this earth and the world we live in which is the common belief in today’s society. Dawkins bring out many points, which support the belief in God and how the belief in evolution is incompatible. An example of this is, the argument from degree.  He states that just because someone is not the maximum of something that doesn’t mean that there is God or a higher being. To this Aquinas would probably respond by arguing that the idea that God does not exist is not fully supported by Dawkins with examples or evidence, rather than just from personal beliefs or his own view points. 

Chapter 2 Question # 1

When choosing a career, it is important to know your strengths and your weaknesses to ensure that you will have great achievement in whichever career you are trying to pursue. For example, if your math skills are a little weak, you may find alternate careers that do not involve math and try to stay away from a careers such as being math teacher or an accountant since it involves a great deal of math. I believe that the type of reasoning I am strongest in is Inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning in other words is constructing or evaluating general propositions. This can be used in a career choice because I can choose something where I have the opportunity to evaluate and to prove something to be possible if I did something in the legal courts department. Before choosing a career it is important to know what your strengths are individually because that will help you be more successful and will keep you happy with your position in that specific career choice. 

Chapter 7 Question # 3

A method that is used to ensure that a generalization about a population is reliable is called sampling to collect dada about a population at large or diverse. Sampling consists of selecting only some members of group and then making a generalization about the entire population that is based on only those few members of the group. A representative sample is a sample that is similar to the larger population from which it was drawn. When a pollster wants to get a representative sample, they use the method called random sampling. Random sampling is where every member of the population has an equal chance of being a part of the sample. Another type of sample is self-selected sample. The self-selected sample is a sample where only the people most interested in the poll or survey participate. This usually occurs on polls that are sponsored by television shows such as American Idol or award shows such as the VMA's where it is unrepresentative since its relied on the phone calls from viewers or the subscribers. 

Chapter 7 Question # 2

Dr. Novello uses cause and effect inductive reasoning when she begins to explain how the number of children and teens who smoked are increasing dramatically once Camel cigarettes were introduced in 1988. The effect Dr. Novello states is the dramatic increase in the number of the smokers who are teens and children, which was caused by the Camel cigarettes, Joe Camel ads. Overall this concludes that that all of the ads that were use for the Camel cigarettes were managed to be directed towards teens and children’s which then caused the increase in smoking for teens and children. Dr. Novello uses the cause and effect inductive reasoning to find a solution to this problem and worked to ban ads of cigarettes that were targeted towards young youth since it had caused much harm. With Dr. Novello’s use of cause and effect inductive reasoning, the ban of these ads actually did bring a decrease in the number of teen and child smokers, which concludes that Dr. Novello was successful in the use of cause and effect reasoning. 

Chapter 7 Question # 1

If an argument is inductive, then you should look for certain words or phrases that suggest the conclusion. Inductive arguments happen in our daily life almost every day. For example, this last week I was trying to figure out what to wear to school the next day. I used my judgment of what the weather was like the day before to help me decide what to wear. If it was a little chilly in the morning but became hot in the afternoon, I would know to wear a light jacket to school in the morning. If it were hot in the morning and hot in the afternoon, I would not wear a jacket. If it were cold in the morning and cold in the afternoon, I would bring a heavy jacket to school to make myself feel warm. Additionally, listening to the weather channel that day helps make a decision by the use of pictures and words the reporter is giving. In this case, my conclusion was right using inductive reasoning. 

Chapter 8 Question # 3

Deductive arguments are presented in a form of syllogisms with two supporting premises and a conclusion. A deductive argument is valid where the form or patter of reasoning is where the conclusion must be true if the premises are assumed to be true. There are several types of deductive arguments including; arguments by elimination, arguments based on mathematics, and arguments by definition. The first one, argument by elimination is a deductive argument that rule out different possibilities until only one remains. The second one, an argument based on mathematics is a deductive argument in which the conclusion depends on a mathematical calculation. The last one is the argument from definition which is a deductive argument in which conclusion is true because it is based on the definition of a key term. These are all important ways to present deductive argument and the different forms of syllogisms. It is important to have a valid form of a deductive argument. 

Chapter 8 Question # 2

In Perspectives on Death Penalty, Sister Helen Prejean maintains that the death penalty is a violation of human dignity and is contrary to the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, “who taught us to not return hate for hate and evil for evil”. From this quote, I believe that this passage prohibits the use of the death penalty. This is because the death penalty is pretty much giving back evil for evil. Having someone’s life taken away from him or her is evil. The death penalty is taking away the persons life as a punishment for a serious crime that was committed. Therefore, the death penalty is evil. From the scriptural passage the quote with the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, “who taught us to not return hate for hate and evil for evil,” I placed the meaning of the death penalty, and the fact that having someone’s life taken away is evil which is based on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth to make my point a valid deductive argument. 

Chapter 8 Question # 1

In the story “Silver Blaze”, Sherlock Holmes tells Watson that when it comes to the art of reasoning many people rely on opinion and unsupported assumptions. The difficulty, he maintains, is to detach the framework of undeniable fact from the embellishments of hearsay and reports. I fell like what Sherlock Holmes meant by this was that you need to have legitimate proof to back up your reasoning. When you start giving out opinions and unsupported assumptions it turns the reasoning into something completely different that doesn’t make sense in the end. A personal experience that popped into my head instantly while thinking of this was that about 3 years ago my friends were planning me a surprise sweet 16 birthday party. Since it was a secret, I thought that they were purposely excluding me from their hangouts and whenever I would come up to them they would all just stop talking so I felt really left out and out of place. Finally after confronting them, I realized it was all a misunderstanding and felt like a complete idiot for going off with unsupported assumptions and just jumping to conclusions.