WED FEB 21
- Link to Revision Advice for P04: Visual Rhetoric
- Lecture/Demonstration: Types of Causal Arguments
- Exercise: Critique a Draft Causal Argument
- Read the Draft Causal Argument by Prof2020
- Choose and Reply to your favorite critique of this first draft
- Add your own Critique in a Reply
- Portfolio Assignment P05: Causal Argument
- DUE WED FEB 28
Rowan Counterintuitive 
Today, we began class by talking about the visual rhetoric assignment. We shared our opinions and experiences after doing the assignment. Then, we started to analyze another video frame by frame. The first frame consisted of a dog who looks injured at the veterinarian. You can tell its injured by the bloody rag/paper towel/gauze. The second frame was a quick movement of the dog’s eyes and the camera moved closer. After that, we are shown two people over the dog. There is a woman and a man. The man seems to be the veterinarian and the woman may be a stranger/owner/etc. The dog then starts to sit up. The advertisement ended up being for animal abuse. It made me feel very sympathetic towards the woman and dog. We moved on to types of causal arguments. We discussed each type. There is single cause with single effect, single cause with several effects, several causes with a single effect, a causal change, and causation fallacy. We discussed each into detail with different scenarios. This helped me understand the types of causal arguments in a lot more depth.
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Opened class with a review of the moving image of assignment by breaking down a video about animal and domestic abuse. The main part of class began with going over the types of causal arguments.
The types of arguments start with “single cause, single effect” which is where X causes Y. Single cause is uncommon. Ethical argument ensued about whether or not what you post on social media should be dictated by your business life. “Single cause with several effects” is the next type of argument. This is where X causes Y and Z. The next type of argument is “Several causes with a single effect.” This is where both X and Y cause Z. A causal chain is another type. This is where X causes Y causes Z. Causation Fallacy, where X does not cause Y, is the last causal argument.
The next topic of class was the sample Causal Argument about 9/11 possibly being the cause of more racism in America.
“What caused my car to be in the bay” is a fantastic riddle to occupy college students for like 5 minutes.
Class was fun and interesting.
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In today’s class, we discussed causal claims and were given examples of to help us create our own causal arguments for the topic we are writing about. The few examples were a single cause with a single effect, but there are many different things that happen with only one cause. Another is a single cause with several causes, for example everyone has been impacted from the cause. One last strong causal argument was a causal claim, with is where one cause leads to something, then something else happens because of that; so X causes Y, which causes Z. We also discussed how there can be many different causes, with one underlying cause.
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Prof. started class with another visual rhetoric analysis, this one of a dog that is injured. The class analyzed it second-by-second. The reason we keep doing our work in pieces is so that the work is frontloaded for the semester, with less work later on. In a causal essay, a person must separate ethical dilemmas and causal arguments. Make sure that you do not cast too wide of a net with your causal argument. If you can cast doubt on a claim, it can help prove your point to the contrary. If you are trying to disprove a theory, you can find a fallacy in the person’s argument instead of trying to find proof. If a person sneezes, we will now say “welcome back,” instead of “Bless you.” This is because in the past, people believed that if you sneezed, you died because your heart skipped a beat. We are treating it as though the person actually died and returned to life. We discussed underlying causes with the question: “what caused my car to end up in the bay?” and ultimately decided that gravity caused the car to end up in the bay. Using the example of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Prof. argued that some events simply follow one another, breakfast does not cause dinner.
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You can never add too much detail to the visual rhetoric assignment.
There are five causal arguments:
Single cause with single effect – X causes Y
Single cause with several effects – X causes Y and Z
Several causes for a single effect – Both X and Y cause Z
Causal chain – X causes Y, which causes Z
Causation fallacy – X does not cause Y
Make sure to include lots of evidence to support your claims when making a causal argument.
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