Chapter 19: Cause and Effect, was useful with the examples given and detailed explanations. However, I do not find cause and effect to be a difficult concept to understand. Something that I found helpful, though, was the Criteria for cause and effect box on page 307. Epstein explains, “There are certain necessary conditions for there to be cause and effect, once we describe the cause and effect with claims” (pg. 307). The box explains the necessary criteria for something to be considered cause and effect. A few of the criteria were: the cause precedes the effect, there is no common cause, it is nearly impossible for the cause to happen and the effect not to happen. I thought that these points were very helpful when trying to determine if a statement is a true cause and effect. Some of these points are obvious when determining the validity of cause and effect, but they really make idea of a true cause and effect a lot easier to understand.
I agree with you that the examples in the book are easy to understand and are broken down well. Some are even broken down too much, like the dog barking example. Spot barking and waking up dick are easy to understand but I get why the book did it. The criteria box will come in handy for me. I like how the book sums up points and puts them in a box so they are easy to find, rather than having to go back and read the whole chapter again. I refer back to the one with the tests for a good argument a lot.
ReplyDeleteI agree in that Cause and Effect isn’t a hard topic to understand because we’ve been introduced so much to it in the past. Cause and effect is something that happens all the time. An example would be not studying for a test will have an effect of you failing or getting a bad grade on an exam. Also, this section helped me learn how a statement is true in cause and effect. This section helped me to understand even more about Cause and Effect and how valid it really is. In everything we do, cause and effect is always there to make our decisions.
ReplyDeleteThe examples you gave were pretty good. I find myself agreeing with you about the book being easy to comprehend. I feel as if so many students in the class love this topic so much is because the majority of everyone has found themselves in a cause and effect situation. So it is easy to understand something if you have first hand experience dealing with it. One cause and effect situation Im sure everyone has been a victim of this semester is weather or not you go out and hang with your friends instead of staying in to do your homework.
ReplyDelete