Quiz 7 Please write your name and "Quiz 7" at the top of your paper. In class we discussed three criteria we use to evaluate competing scientific explanation. Describe two of them (5 points each).
Quiz 5 Please write your name and "Quiz 5" at the top of your paper. Each of the following passages commits at least one fallacy. Identify and briefly explain one fallacy for each of the passages.
- If you want a life full of sexual pleasure, don’t graduate from college. A study to be published next month in American Demographics magazine shows that people with the most education have the least amount of sex.
- If science wishes to argue that we cannot know what was going on in [the gorilla] Binti’s head when she acted as she did, science must also acknowledge that it cannot prove that nothing was going on. It is because of our irresolvable ignorance, as much as fellow-feeling, that we should give animals the benefit of the doubt and treat them with the respect we accord ourselves.
- What is more useful, the Sun or the Moon? The moon is more useful since it gives us light during the night, when it is dark, whereas the Sun shines only in the daytime, when it is light anyway.
- You know why you think that? Because you are an idiot!
- Why should you clean your room? If you don’t you will be grounded.
Quiz 4 Please write your name and "Quiz 4" at the top of your paper. Each of the following passages contains at least one slanter. Identify and briefly explain one slanter for each of the passages.
- During the half-time performance at Super Bowl XXXVIII Janet Jackson experienced a “wardrobe malfunction” exposing her breast.
- Comedian Bill Maher once described a conservative as someone who thinks all problems can be solved by either more guns or more Jesus.
- Ladies and gentleman, I am proof that there is at least one candidate in this race who does not have a drinking problem.
- Great Western pays up to 12 percent more interest in checking accounts.
- John “borrowed” Hank’s umbrella, and Hank hasn’t seen it since.
- After George W. Bush announced he wanted to privatize large sectors of the government, Bobby L. Harnage said Bush had “declared all-out war on federal employees.”
- Making a former corporate CEO the head of the SEC is like putting a fox in charge of the henhouse.
- Remember, it’s not drilling for oil. It’s responsible energy exploration.
- George Bush ‘won’ the election in 2000, didn’t he?
- National Health Care: The compassion of the IRS and the efficiency of the Post Office, all at Pentagon prices.
Quiz 3 Please write your name and "Quiz 3" at the top of your paper. Draw a truth table for each of the following four symbols:
•; ~; Ú; É
Quiz 2 Please write your name and “Quiz 2” at the top of your paper. Diagram each of the following arguments. Each diagram is worth five points. - Cottage cheese will help you to be slender, youthful, and more beautiful. Enjoy it often.
- From a letter to the editor: “The idea of a free press in America today is a joke. A small group of people, the nation’s advertisers, controls the media more effectively than if they owned it outright. Through fear of an advertising boycott, the can dictate everything from programming to news report content. Politicians as well as editors shiver in their boots at the thought of such a boycott. This situation is intolerable and ought to be changed. I suggest we all listen to National Public Radio and public television.
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