xxx -- 06 -- Opinions -Evaluations - Main Ideas - Details - Inference

TFY Glossary Chapter 7
Evaluate	To determine the value or worth of something.
Evaluations in word connotations	Highly connotative words can be chosen to convey a person’s likes and dislikes under the guise of offering facts.
Expectations	Mental constructs that anticipate the way things will be or should be.
Infer	To use imagination and reasoning to fill in missing facts. To connect the dots.
Opinion	Opinion is a word used to include an unsupported belief, a supported argument, an expert’s judgment, prevailing public sentiment, and a formal statement by a court.
Premature evaluation	To judge something before one has finished examining it.
Principal claim and reasons	These are the two parts of an argument. The principal claim is the thesis or conclusion. The reasons support this claim through evidence or other claims. A claim is an assertion about something.
Propaganda	Propaganda is the manipulation of public opinion for the benefit of the propagator.
Relativism	Relativism is the belief that concepts such as right and wrong are not absolutes but depend on situations and the cultures.
Skilled Evaluations	Skilled evaluations are opinions formed by experts after a careful and impartial study.
Thinking	Purposeful mental activity such as reasoning, deciding, judging, believing, supposing, expecting, intending, recalling, remembering, visualizing, imagining, devising, inventing, concentrating, conceiving, considering.

Web Links Chapter 7 back to top FRANK ACKERMAN AND LISA HEINZERLING If you want to know more about cost-benefit analysis, read these interviews with the authors of Priceless. http://www.stayfreemagazine.org/archives/23/priceless.html MOVIE REVIEWS Enjoy reading from this wide assortment of movie reviews. Select a film that you have already seen. Evaluate the review. http://rottentomatoes.com PUBLIC RELATIONS This site offers a critical account of Edward Bernays’ creation of the U.S. public relations industry. http://www.americanidealism.com/articles/edward-bernays-forger-of-the-public-relations-industry.html SOME PROPAGANDA BASICS This website can get you started learning more about propaganda. http://www.propagandacritic.com/ WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY In this 1999 Salon interview, learn more about the career of author of Porn, Pervasive Presence: The Creepy Wallpaper of Our Lives. http://www.salon.com/people/feature/1999/09/03/wfb/ WORLD WAR II PROPAGANDA In hindsight, propaganda can seem quaint and obvious. Study the posters shown in this website and see if you agree with this statement. http://www.teacheroz.com/WWIIpropaganda.htm ```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````

CRCB C7, Inference

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER GOALS

After learning Chapter 7, you should be able to demonstrate:

What inference is.

Strategies you can use to infer an author’s meaning as you read.

What limits the amount of information you should infer.

How to identify implied main ideas.

What is Inference?

Inference is the process of making assumptions and drawing conclusions about information when an author’s ideas are not directly stated.

Inference Strategies

Understand an author’s purpose.

Note comparisons and implied similarities.

Understand an author’s use of tone.

Detect an author’s bias.

Recognize information gaps.

Tips For Recognizing Information Gaps

Consider all information presented.

Note author’s use of key words and phrases.

Identify when an author leaps from one idea to the next, and mentally fill in the blanks.

Knowing How Much to Infer

Recognize author’s perspective.

Use the text to support your conclusion.

Chapter Vocabulary

inference

diction

imply

purpose

tone

author’s bias

information gaps

implied main idea

Reading for Thinking Exercises

Assumption -- Identify Hidden

Identify the likely hidden assumptions in these arguments:

1. We should reduce the penalty for drunken driving, as a milder penalty would mean more convictions.
2. Moby Dick is a whale. So Moby Dick is a mammal.
3. Giving students a fail grade will damage their self-confidence. Therefore, we should not fail students.
4. It should not be illegal for adults to smoke pot. After all, it does not harm anyone.
5. There is nothing wrong talking on a mobile phone during lectures. Other students do it all the time.
6. Killing an innocent person is wrong. Therefore, abortion is wrong.
7. Traces of ammonia have been found in Mars' atmosphere. So there must be life on Mars.
8. There cannot be more than one God. Otherwise, there would be two Gods equally powerful, or one is more powerful than the other. 

from http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/arg/hidden.php

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We should reduce the penalty for drunken driving, as a milder penalty would mean more convictions. [Show answer]

We should increase the number of convictions for drunken driving.

Moby Dick is a whale. So Moby Dick is a mammal. [Show answer]

“Anything that is a whale is a mammal”, or “If Moby Dick is a whale it is a mammal.”

Giving students a fail grade will damage their self-confidence. Therefore, we should not fail students. [Show answer]

We should not damage students' self-confidence.

It should not be illegal for adults to smoke pot. After all, it does not harm anyone. [Show answer]

Anything that does not cause harm should not be made illegal.

There is nothing wrong talking on a mobile phone during lectures. Other students do it all the time. [Show answer]

If an action is done by other students (or people) all the time, then there is nothing wrong with it.

Killing an innocent person is wrong. Therefore, abortion is wrong. [Show answer]

Abortion involves the killing of an innocent person.

Traces of ammonia have been found in Mars' atmosphere. So there must be life on Mars. [Show answer]

"Only living things produce ammonia." (or something similar)

There cannot be more than one God. Otherwise, there would be two Gods equally powerful, or one is more powerful than the other. [Show answer]

If something is a God, nothing else can be as powerful or more powerful than it.

from:  http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/arg/hidden.php

Paragraph -- sentence order

Arrange for Main Ideas

1.  The rosary beads they’d twisted and looped around her knotty hands were her everyday amber ones, not the good wine-red ones she took out of their velvet case at Easter and Christmas – the ones Grandma herself would have chosen for this occasion. 

 

2.  Mrs. Mumphy and her daughter had gone to Grandma’s house to pick out her clothes. 

3.  She had on the green print dress she’d worn to our wedding.

 

4.  I forced my eyes up to her wax-museum face.

 

5.  Death or the undertaker had relaxed her facial muscles.

 

6. She was and wasn’t Grandma.

Paragraph 1 - Meaning

Six days before the sunset, two girls walked into town.  The dog was small and brown; he sat patiently waiting by the tree for the green side.  But, how many times must it be returned before it can be eaten.  Matter as we have seen, can exist in three forms.  However, blood was the elixir that sustained his dark, dark life.

In one of Watson's most famous experiments, he and his second wife conditioned a boy named Albert to fear a white rat.  At the beginning of the study, Albert was unafraid of the animal and played with it freely.  While Albert was doing so one day, Watson deliberately frightened the child by sounding a terrifying noise behind him.  Albert was startled and began to cry.  Thereafter, he avoided the rat and cried if it was brought close to him.

(Adapted from:  McConnell, J.   (1986).  Understanding Human Behavior.  Holt, Rinehart, and Winston:  Fort Worth  P, 268)

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Where do you stand with regard to critical thinking?

Where do you stand with regard to critical thinking?

FEET: What do I stand for as a foundation of critical thinking?

STOMACH: What upsets me about critical thinking?

HEART: What do I love about critical thinking?

HANDS: What do I feel about critical thinking?

EARS: What do I hear about critical thinking?

EYES: What do I see about critical thinking?

BRAIN: What do I think about critical thinking?