SUNY Geneseo Department of Mathematics
Monday, November 15
INTD 105 17
Fall 2021
Prof. Doug Baldwin
(No.)
Friday we used whether college students should be allowed to keep pets in dormitories as an example to try writing brief arguments about.
Here are some example paragraphs to critique and workshop:
“The mental health advantages make a compelling case for allowing college students to keep pets at college. As the UK Mental Health Organization points out, pets can reduce anxiety, which has been identified by the Harvard Health Blog as a major problem for many college students. Pets can also help their owners meet new people, one of the coping strategies recommended by the Harvard Health Blog. Increased pet ownership among college students would therefore help to reduce the psychological burdens those students feel these days.”
Some felt that the sources should be summarized in more detail, and more in our own words.
Revising the paragraph to add this detail makes it more necessary to include some wording to help readers recognize when the conclusion is about to be stated, and how it follows from all the evidence provided. The result was this:
“The mental health advantages make a compelling case for allowing college students to keep pets at college. For example, the Harvard Health Blog notes that an increasing number of college students, up to 63% today, face anxiety stemming from loneliness and lack of self-care. As the UK Mental Health Organization points out, pets can provide companionship, add structure to their owners’ days, increase physical activity, and boost self-confidence, all things that reduce anxiety. Pets can also help their owners meet new people, one of the coping strategies recommended by the Harvard Health Blog. From this evidence, it appears that allowing college students to have pets may fight the increasing physical and psychological burdens that college students face today.”
The final sentence of this paragraph is worded rather tentatively (e.g., “it appears…,” “may fight…”). Whether this is a good strategy depends on the surrounding paragraphs. If this one is part of an argument for keeping pets, more definite language would be nice. But if it’s leading up to opposing views, or even an argument against its position, then the tentative language is a good idea.
“Although everyone likes pets, the health considerations make it unwise to keep pets in college dormitories. As described by Medical News Today, domestic animals carry a number of diseases that they can pass on to humans. In crowded facilities such as dormitories, which already encourage the spread of disease person-to-person, adding another source of contagion makes no sense. And, as Medical News Today further points out, disease transmission is not the only health hazard presented by pets: bites and scratches also endanger humans and other animals. So while it’s sad, it’s better in the interests of health not to allow college students to keep pets in dormitories.”
This needs more evidence, especially a source for the “dormitories spread disease” claim.
An introduction and conclusion that engage in more depth with the evidence would be good.
The opening sentence makes an untrue claim (not “everyone” likes pets), which risks making the author seem less credible.
Logical fallacies, i.e., errors of logic that are commonly used by mistake, or deliberately used to mislead an audience.
Look at the descriptions and examples of 4 or 5 of the fallacies at
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html
Pick ones that seem interesting to you for whatever reason, and be prepared to say a little bit about them in class Wednesday.