Review for Final Exam

Bring Final Exam Review Sheet (here under Readings and Handouts)

The reading for the final exam is here under Readings and Handouts

Wacky Warrant Workshop stories handout here (under Readings and Handouts)

To guide your reading:

Note: some of these stories are made up—make sure that you know which ones are!

Note: I have included a couple of stories that touch on politics and other highly-opinionated issues. The purpose of the class is not to debate the issues but rather to analyze how the arguments are structured.

Note: Several of the stories are satirical, meaning that they are made up in order to make a joke.

In class, we will focus on the “hard parts” of the arguments. For each story (and for the three-part letter-to-the-editor exchange at the end), try to list:

1. Any implicit or explicit context you can glean about the author personally, the circumstances of writing, or the intended audience.
2. Any warrants you can identify.
   In the case of a joke, this would include the background that is necessary to get the joke.
   In the case of an offensive statement, it would include the values or reasons that would cause some people to be offended and some not to be.

3. Where possible, try to fit the warrants into an evidence-warrant-claim chain. Even the joke stories are trying to make a more serious point. So when we dissect the satires, we can talk about the apparent (that is, the surface-level) argument, but we can also talk about the underlying serious argument. This is another way of trying to identify implicit context and implicit warrants.

Reader Ch. 7 (Olson, Towards Meaning)

Reading worksheet due

Worksheet here under Readings and Handouts.

#TLUBulldogs Ch. 3 (Rodriguez, In and Out of Plato’s Cave): 47-61 (Note: this is not the FREX reader, but rather the book you read over the summer).

To guide your reading:

You were assigned this reading over the summer. Can you identify any differences in how you read it or what you get from it now as opposed to then? Any new insights?

Rodriguez divides his story into “mini-chapters.” Based on the subheadings, how do the mini-chapters fit into the Plato’s Cave allegory?

I think that one of the most important things in the chapter is that Rodriguez describes how his later realizations made him understand his own past in a new way. How does he “re-understand” things in light of his realizations?

Although he includes a great deal of personal background (explicit context!), Rodriguez is also making an argument about the ultimate purpose of education. What does he say it can do or achieve? How is this shown by his own story?

Reader Ch. 12 (Ruge-Jones, Faith Asking Questions)

To guide your reading: (note that the chapter continues all the way to p. 139)

Throughout this series, the recurring question will be, how do the questions, evidence, “rules”, etc. in this discipline compare to rules in other disciplines? What differences are there between, for example, the chapter by a theologian and the chapter by a mathematician?

Ruge-Jones’ argument in this chapter can be characterized as one of definition. He is trying to persuade you to adopt his definitions or understandings of several terms: theology, faith, God. In doing this, he brings up other definitions or understandings of these terms in order to reject them. What are the competing definitions of these terms in the chapter?

The way Ruge-Jones argues is especially interesting. Consider that the target audience he is trying to persuade is not people uninterested in God, but people who believe the very definitions he is rejecting. How does Ruge-Jones shape his evidence or reasoning to appeal to that audience? In class, we will try to do several evidence-warrant-claim chains to see how they work.

The chapter ends with a “case study” about the example of how theology and science relate as disciplines. What relationships does he describe?