Wednesday, September 15, 2010

My roommate and I were arguing on whether we should go out at night or stay in for the night. I wanted to go out and she wanted to stay in. I explained to her that it was the weekend and we had worked hard all week so we definitely deserved a night out as a reward. She argued that we would end up spending too much money and being very hungover the next day. I argued that life is too short and if we don't go out now we will waste our youth and that she is too boring. She responded that she was just smart and had better reasoning. Making the claim that she is too boring is backed up bu the fact that she doesn't want to go out. The warrant here is that boring people don't want to go out, therefore she is boring. Having a claim of fact rather than of value would have have helped me make my argument stronger. We were using logos when we both made our first points. Spending too much money is going to happen and we worked hard all week resulting in the need to be rewarded. Both points are valid, but after making these points, we fell into fallacies. I used ad hominem attacks on her when I said that she is too boring, making my argument weak and not effective. Slippery slope was also used when I told her that if we didn't enjoy ourselves now we were going to waste our youth. The strenths in both of our arguments were in the beginning before we started attacking each other's characters rather than giving good support for our positions. I feel like we were both on the right track, and then we just didn't have enoughanymore valid reasons to persuade each other that one choice was better than the other, but we ended up going out and spending too much money and felt horrible the next day.

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