Choose an issue (or make up your own), and write an argumentative essay (no more than 500 words) driven by a clear major claim/thesis (i.e., “Donuts should be illegal.”) . In addition, you must make a minimum of five Informal Logical Fallacies as you attempt to make your peers chuckle and/or think differently about the issue. Do not write about religion, gay marriage or abortion. With that said, irony and sarcasm are welcome (meanness is not). Do not identify the fallacies, as your peers will be doing that in Part II.
To recap, this assignment asks you to engage with an issue in the wrong way, to not use effective critical reasoning with regards to your subject, but to use critical reasoning with regards to illustrating that you fully comprehend a minimum of five fallacies. The goal is to think deeply about the fallacies as you study and apply them, then to never use them again! Actually, you will want to recognize and avoid them. Have fun, but make sure you are making the specific informal fallacies in the previous slide presentation.
Fallacies outside the ones presented in the slideshow will not be accepted.
Guidelines:
Short essay post must be in correct MLA format and style an no more than 500 words in length.
Research is not required, but feel free to make sources up!
Place your word count at the end of the paper in parenthesis.
You may edit as you receive feedback. If you wait too long to post, you will probably not receive helpful feedback in time to do so.
PART II: PARTICIPATION (50 POINTS–25 POINTS FOR EACH RESPONSE, TWO REQUIRED)
Choose TWO of your peers’ paragraphs that HAVE NOT received a response (or only have one), and read their fallacy-filled attempt to persuade you, and then complete the following for them (you should number your replies as they are listed below):
Identify the major claim/thesis–what are they arguing for, no matter how ridiculous.
Identify each fallacy by naming and describing it. This may be in list form.
Choose two of the fallacies and pretending that you do not know that your peer made them on purpose, use intellectual empathy to explain what the fallacy is and how they might fix it. Be gentle, and remember, pretend they did not do it on purpose.