4.11: Exercises
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1. Do one, but only one, of the following two parts, as directed by your instructor: (a) Find an example of propaganda; say where you found it; and explain why it is propaganda. (b) Find a new example of propaganda that is not discoverable by searching the Internet for the phrase "example of propaganda;" say where you found it; and explain why it is propaganda.
■ 2. Create a single sentence that is a rewrite of the following peculiar sentence; your sentence should simultaneously apply both the principles of charity and fidelity:
The criminal trial of Amy Boycott began yesterday in Illinois and Indiana, making headlines in both states.
■ 3. Consider the following sentence: "I'm not alive today." The sentence is strange. Which of the following sentences would count as being an interpretation that applies both fidelity and charity?
I'm not alive tomorrow.
I'm alive today but not alive today.
I'm not very animated today.
I'm not under arrest today.
■ 4. If Darryl tells me his father carries a cane, and I tell Samantha that Darryl’s father carries a walking stick, have I violated the principle of fidelity?
5. The statement below is apparently contradictory because it suggests that a cheetah is faster than a dog but not faster than a dog. If you wished to remove the greyhound comment while rephrasing the statement, which one of the following is the best way to do it while being charitable and using the principle of fidelity?
The cheetah is the fastest land animal even faster than a greyhound, but the cheetah in our zoo is sick and cannot run as fast as a dog.
a. All cheetahs run fast, but the cheetah in our zoo is sick and cannot run fast.
b. The average cheetah runs faster than the average of any other kind of land animal, but the cheetah in our zoo is sick and cannot run as fast as most dogs.
c. The cheetah is the fastest land animal, but not the fastest water animal or flying animal. The cheetah in our zoo is sick.
d. The cheetah is not the fastest land animal, although some are very fast, and the cheetah in our zoo is sick and cannot run as fast as a dog.
e. Some cheetahs are fast, and some are not; for example, the cheetah in our zoo is sick and cannot run as fast as a dog.
6. Create a dialogue in which the speaker clearly fails to properly apply the principle of charity. Don't mention the principle during the dialogue, but at the end identify where the failure occurs and why you are justified in saying it occurs there.
7. Visit the Internet or a local supermarket's magazine rack, or some other place, and find what you take to be the most preposterous claim you've read or heard this week (outside of this class). State the claim; and identify the source.
8. The more shocking or bizarre the claim, the more apt you should be to demand more and better evidence for it.
a. true
b. false
9. Which is more improbable, a claim that Martians are attacking Earth, or a claim that Martians are attacking Earth and that the next U.S. president will be a woman? Say why.
10. Suppose the following paragraph had appeared in a news story on the web pages of the Washington Post, the major daily newspaper of Washington, D.C. Do you have any comments? What reasons do you have for your comments? (No, you don't get any more precise directions than this. You will be graded on your depth of insight in regard to the course material as it applies here.)
A man who had been in a coma for six weeks was saved yesterday by exorcism from a demon trying to kill him. A doctor and two psychics drove the demon out of the man and into a rat, which began shrieking until it was burned to death, at which point the man stood up and began to talk normally.
■ 11. As he was standing in the grocery store checkout line, your neighbor read in a magazine (he doesn't remember which one) that farmers in West Virginia reported encountering visitors from outer space. Your neighbor asks you where he can go to find out if anybody has ever really seen extraterrestrials. Which of the following would be the most reliable source of information to recommend to your neighbor?
a. A bestseller called Space Creatures Terrorized My Baby!
b. Your uncle who has many friends in West Virginia who are farmers.
c. A U.S. army radar screen operator.
d. A catholic priest who recently wrote an article in Scientific American magazine titled "Is There Life beyond Earth?”
e. A scriptwriter for the movie E. T.
12. Rank the following three headlines in order from most to least bizarre. Defend your ranking.
■ 13. Explain the point of this famous quotation by the philosopher George Santayana: "Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect.”
14. Rank the following sources of information in terms of their believability or credibility in regard to whether the U.S. banking system is becoming less stable. You may need to go to outside sources to learn more about them.
a. Weekly World News (weekly supermarket tabloid)
b. Radio Baghdad (radio station in Iraq run by the Iraqi government)
c. The San Francisco Chronicle (daily newspaper)
d. The Nation (magazine of political analysis)
e. Huffington Post (political news website)
Put the letter of the most credible source first or highest on your list.
15. Scientists generally believe that (i) there are no fire-breathing dragons or abominable snowmen and that (ii) there are no ghosts.
Scientists believe this despite many reports by people claiming to have seen these unusual beings. Scientists believe one of the two much more strongly. Which one, i or ii? Why? Write a short essay explaining and defending your answer. The terms can use some clarification. Make the following assumptions. The abominable snowman is called "Bigfoot” or "Yeti” in other parts of the world. A dragon is an exotic flesh-and-blood animal that looks somewhat like a dinosaur but has special physical abilities such as the ability to fly and the ability to direct a stream of flame outward from its mouth. By the word ghost we mean the soul of a dead person that appears to the rest of us in bodily form except that it cannot be photographed and can be semitransparent.
16. Which is more improbable? (1) a claim that France will attack Canada someday next year, or (2) a claim that France will attack Canada someday next year, and that the next U.S. president will be a man.
17. You receive a telephone call on your answering machine. The speaker says he is from the online fraud department of your bank’s credit card division and that there has been some trouble with your account. You are instructed to call the bank toll-free at 888-278-6424. When you phone that number, you are told that someone has charged your card for $18,550 for a new motorcycle, and you are asked if you accept this charge. When you say you do not, you are told that because of this suspicious activity you will need to be assigned a new credit card number and will be given new cards free of charge. In order to verify your identity, you are asked to supply your home address, your social security number, your card number, and your online password. But for an extra $6 per month you can purchase insurance against identity fraud. At this point, what should a critical thinker do?
18. You are trying to decide which computer would be best for your church to buy for keeping all its records. Rank all of the following that you might go to for advice in terms of their credibility, and include a few sentences defending your ranking.
a. A computer column that appears in an online computer magazine.
b. Your sister who has been a bookkeeper for her local church in Miami for four years.
c. Your next-door neighbor who has built two computers so far as a hobby.
d. A salesperson at a computer store.
19. On which issues below is James Shoch more or less credible as a source for you in your decisions on these issues? That is, if he were to give you his advice, how trustworthy and knowledgeable do you guess it would it be? Give a 200 word or less defense of your ranking of Shoch’s advice on these issues.
James Shoch is a professor in the Government Department at a state university in Northern California. His specialty is contemporary American political parties. He has a Ph.D. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and taught previously at Dartmouth College. He is the author of the books Trading Blows: Party Competition and U.S. Trade Policy in a Globalizing Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2000) and is a co-editor of What's Left of the Left: Democrats and Social Democrats in Challenging Times (Duke University Press, 2011). He has published eleven articles in academic journals on American economic, trade, and industrial policy. Over twenty-five years ago he was a political director of the activist organization Democratic Socialists of America. He has spent parts of summers in France, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Turkey, China, and Thailand. His food column in the online culinary page Eating without Guilt has over a thousand readers per month. Last year he was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award at his university, an award given to only one person per year.
a. Whether Americans prefer Swedish-style food to Greek-style food.
b. The extent to which the Walmart Corporation influences the balance of trade in the U. S.
c. Whether the twenty-first century’s global climate change will have more effect on the climate of North America or South America.
d. Has the Democratic Party moved to the left since the election of Barack Obama?
e. What is a good, cheap Italian restaurant to eat at near M.I.T. next week?
f. Whether a syllabus in a French History course should require weekly testing of the previously assigned readings.
g. Which candidate should you vote for in your congressional district in Los Angeles?
20. After moving into a new apartment, you notice that on weekends occasionally your electric lights flicker or slowly dim and then get brighter. You check very carefully for wiring problems and find no problems. Why wouldn’t it be OK then to conclude that your apartment is haunted?
■ 21. Discuss the quality of this argument:
The prostitute said she enjoyed having sex with Mayor Smith, so Mayor Smith did have sex with the prostitute.
22. Which of these is least likely to be fake news?
a. Non-news.
b. A mistake made accidentally by the New York Times newspaper.
c. Disinformation presented in the blog “Challenge to the Right” as if it were news.
d. An intentional misrepresentation of a situation.
e. A known falsehood about a situation that is presented by a blog in order to seem to be an objective truth.
23. Your instructor has selected five posts on Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp or YouTube. (a) Rank them in order from most trustworthy to least trustworthy. (b) For which would you choose "Like"? (c) You can distinguish junk information from real information, so indicate why you ranked the posts as you did. (d) Indicate what additional information you would get before accepting various claims that were made in the posts.
24. (a) Create your own false news story that is likely to be convincing to others. (b) Your teacher might insert it among other news stories, then ask other class members to find the one that you created.
2 The criminal trial of Amy Boycott began yesterday on the border of Illinois and Indiana, making headlines in both states. This interpretation applies charity by removing the inconsistency, and it applies fidelity by not interpreting the sentence in a way that could not have been intended (as far as you can tell from the evidence available).
3 I'm not very animated today. This gives the sentence a charitable reading without saying something that wasn’t meant.
4 No, because a cane is a walking stick.
8 Answer (a). The better evidence is required to overcome the initial obstacle of the claim's being so improbable
11 Answer (d). The article by the priest promises to provide solid information, unlike the sensational book about terrorizing someone's baby. There is no reason to believe that being a priest would unduly influence the author's opinions on this topic. The source of the priest's article, a reputable scientific journal, adds credibility to the priest's comments on this topic. Regarding (b), West Virginia is a big state, so your uncle is not likely to be able to put your neighbor in contact with the right farmers. Even if your uncle could, the information would be valuable only if the farmers said the whole story was false; but if the farmers said the story was true, your neighbor shouldn't accept the story so easily. Such extraordinary claims require extraordinarily good evidence—better evidence than a few stories from the farmers. If their story were backed up by independent investigators from the military and the universities, the story would be much more likely to be true. Regarding (c), the U.S. Army radar operator is likely to have heard stories about other radar operators encountering unidentified objects on their radar screens, but nobody can look at a blip on a radar screen and tell whether it is coming from E.T. So, the best bet is the priest.
13 You can keep your body of beliefs from getting penetrated by a lot of false ideas if you are skeptical and demand decent evidence before accepting the belief.
21 It would be a mistake to say that on the basis of the information in the premises the Mayor did have sex with the prostitute. It would also be a mistake to say that on the basis of the information in the premises the Mayor did not have sex with the prostitute. A better answer would be that the premises give some evidence that the Mayor had sex with the prostitute, but it's not strong evidence because the prostitute might be lying. Better evidence would be some independent evidence such as a witness having seen the Mayor coming out of the prostitute's home at 3:00 pm when he claimed to be elsewhere. Other useful evidence would be that the prostitute has been caught lying about some of her other statements.