Undergraduate / Applying to Rutgers Fall 09; 'vibrant and vivacious community' [11]

Think also about how you will use (or even might be able to use) everything you have learned from your business experience to contribute to the university. For instance, perhaps you have developed contacts in the wider environmental movement you could use to advance the causes of on-campus environmental groups. Or maybe you can use your marketing skills to promote the agenda of campus groups whose policies you agree with. Running a business requires a lot of different skills, so at least some of them are bound to be relevant to the goals you hope to achieve as a student.

Undergraduate / Spinning my life events into academic potential - Letter of academic intent [12]

As I said, the essay works well if it is meant as a standalone piece. In your case, you have no choice but to mention your weakness as well as your strengths, as I assume the letter is meant to accomplish what you fear a standard application wouldn't as a result of that weakness. I'd say you have a good chance of getting in despite your grades. Your writing is strong, and your real-world experiences have clearly taught you a great deal. Good luck.

Undergraduate / Spinning my life events into academic potential - Letter of academic intent [12]

I agree with Simone -- this a very strong and well-written essay. Is it meant as a stand-alone letter, or is it part of a larger application? If the former, then you are in good shape. If the latter, then I wouldn't mention your past academic difficulties at all here. Usually, an application package offers students a chance to explain that sort of thing in a separate essay. This allows students to put themselves in as positive a light as possible in the other essays and letters they include. Writing about your academic troubles in high school in its own essay also allows you to go into specifics about the reasons for your low grades without getting off-topic, whereas here it would be inappropriate and weaken an essay that focuses, extremely effectively, on your experiences in the Middle East.

Essays / How can i decrible the graph [6]

"The graph shows the seasonal water consumption " You manage to misspell consumption throughout your essay, which, given as it is your topic, is a bit of a problem. You should probably go through your essay with a spellcheck, which will also catch many of the run-on words you have, too.

Writing Feedback / Help with a paragraph about marketing claims [7]

To improve on Kevin's already excellent advice: "All marketing claims should be capable of substantiation through the use of evidence. "

"substantiate" means "to establish by proof or competent evidence," which makes "substantiation through the use of evidence" redundant.

Writing Feedback / Socials Essay: Robespierre and Cromwell Which is a more effective leader? [7]

Your main problem is that you are comparing these two people in terms of the effectiveness of their leadership, yet you have not defined what constitutes effective leadership. You seem to be working from the position that Cromwell was better that Robespierre because he didn't kill as many people. I'm not entirely sure what that has to do with effective leadership, though. A stronger point may be found in the fact that Cromwell ruled until dying of natural causes, whereas Robespierre was overthrown. A leader who cannot hold on to power is presumably less effective than one who can, though even this more intuitive point won't hold up without some explanation of what you mean by leadership. So, decide what makes a "good" leader -- and by that I mean "good" in a practical rather than a moral sense. Then, you can provide details of Cromwell's and Robespierre's reigns that will allow you and the reader to evaluate them meaningfully.

Writing Feedback / Traveling in a group led by a tour guide give us a safe, useful and exciting excursion & save time [7]

When using list markers, such as "firstly", it is a good idea to use them for all of your points. Here, you have "firstly" and "finally," but skip "secondly." Worse, in place of "secondly" you've written "Another reason for my point is package tours help us save a lot of time. " You should generally try to avoid using references to "your point" in these sorts of essays. So, you could fix both problems in one shot by revising that sentence to "Secondly, package tours help us save a lot of time."

Faq, Help / Is there a website like this for essays in espańol? [8]

Rather than search for translation sites, trying searching for forums dedicated to helping people learn Spanish, especially ones that have a fair number of native Spanish speakers on them. Then, your brother could post his article, or at least portions of it, and request feedback from people who know the language well.

Essays / Louis Riel hero or villan question; He is a HERO! [4]

You might start by defining your key terms. In this case, what do you think it means to be a hero? A villain? Is it possible for a person to be both at once? Hint: It has been said that every villain is the hero of his own story. Which characteristics does Riel have that would put him into one or the other category? This should quickly lead to a thesis with plenty of supporting evidence you can use to craft a draft of your essay that you can then post here for more feedback.

Writing Feedback / War -- victor or no victor? [45]

I gather you received a grade that you found unsatisfactory? Was it for this essay, or another? If you would like to post the work you submitted, together with the professor's comments, perhaps we could give you some sort of helpful feedback, or at least some sympathetic commiseration. As it is, your rant, though crude, contains some amusing invective. I especially liked the shoelace remark and the sewage plant metaphor.

Poetry / William Blake Poetry Paper [23]

You might want to introduce the idea that Blake presumably viewed God as a creative force Himself, one who had made humans in His image. Thus, it is man's proper nature to take joy in his creative energies. Whereas, the Church of his time was desperately trying to force people to stay within the bounds of tradition, to view all pleasure as a sin, and generally to be as dull and unimaginative as possible. You sort of imply this throughout your essay, but stating it explicitly up front might unify your essay a bit more strongly.

Undergraduate / 'Economics in Chengdu' - Letter of motivation to University of Amsterdam [13]

However, the word "foreigner" is not in and of itself pejorative, as certain ethnic slurs are. If it has any innate negative connotations, they are only those that would attach to any word used to represent groups that, by definition, are always "other." As such, attempting to find a more politically correct term to replace it is probably an exercise in futility, as the negative feelings will merely transfer to the new term.

Writing Feedback / Test essay: Should children obey authority? [7]

And when you get a really broad prompt such as this one, narrow it down in your introduction. Obviously if students didn't follow any rules, there would be chaos. Just as obviously, mindless obedience to authority is hardly desirable in institutions such as schools, which seek to develop the mind. So, you have to provide a definition of authority that allows you to clearly argue for some sort of defensible middle ground.

Writing Feedback / "the disparity (gap) between rich and poor" - sample writing [4]

I like the way you focus on the difference in the two camps' views of wealth. The redistributionists subscribe to the notion of limited wealth, in which there is only so much wealth available, so that anyone who takes more than his fair share does so at the expense of others. This is the pre-industrial view of wealth, that tends to predominate in poorer nations (and helps to explain why those nations remain mired in poverty). The "anti-redistributionists," in contrast, take the libertarian view that wealth is created, and that it must be made before it can be seized by force, i.e. stolen and redistributed. If you side with the latter, as you seem to do, it raises an interesting question -- in what way is economic inequality a "problem?" You might therefore end by challenging the question, a time-honored approach to essays among thoughtful students.

Essays / My first essay-its on Thomas Hardy. [5]

If its your first essay, you should probably look closely at one or more of the main themes of one of his works, possibly showing how your chosen theme is developed by his use of dialect, light, and/or color, or else how it fits into the larger historical context in which he was writing. This will give you a more manageable topic for a three page essay.

Graduate / Statement of purpose for PhD in science Education [3]

The hardest thing about this type of writing is getting started, so just write down whatever you can think of that answers the prompt. You can worry about organizing it later (though you will eventually have to go through the steps Simone listed). For now, just try to get past the curse of the blank screen.

Writing Feedback / a pretty short story, Return of satan [5]

Some minor fixes for you:

"and argued that Satan was damned forever and he would never deserve to step back into heavens "

"Satan lit his handmade cigarette and smiled"

"But before God could speak , someone blew in a horn and called"

Grammar, Usage / Logical Fallacies (for debate and persuasive writing) [23]

Ah yes, we call such horribly uneducated people "Americans." After all, if one consults an American dictionary such as Merriam-Webster, one finds the following:

"1: to pass over or ignore a question by assuming it to be established or settled
2: to elicit a question logically as a reaction or response <the quarterback's injury begs the question of who will start in his place>"

So, in America, someone who uses the phrase "begging the question" in the sense you describe, is not in fact wrong, working from the premise that anyone who uses a word or phrase in a given sense may reasonably claim to be right if he shows that his usage is sanctioned by his country's main dictionary.

My personal favorite, though, is that "macaber" is now given as a correct pronunciation of "macabre" in the same dictionary. It sure is easier for a country to update its dictionary than to educate its people :-)

Grammar, Usage / Critical Thinking - to form well thought out and defensible arguments in papers [13]

I wouldn't have drawn such a clear distinction between synthetic and critical thinking. The most basic essay format in university used to be "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" after all, so I would tend to see breaking down and synthesizing as two different parts of the same process. Mostly, its a matter of creating a cohesive conceptual framework in which all the unit parts work together in harmony. You have to be able to break down your arguments into their component parts to be able to perform the comparison, but you also have to be able to combine parts from different issues to formulate new ideas on new issues. Put another way, you have to break down the thesis and the antithesis into their component parts before you can recombine them in a way that permits synthesis. Still, this is purely a matter of semantics -- we agree on the general point (that strong thinkers can both break concepts down and build them up), and I don't think we shall ever be at such a loss to find matters where we genuinely disagree that we need to invent causes of dispute :-)

Rogerian argumentation is certainly useful -- there is never anything wrong with trying to find common ground. Often though, that common ground is a rhetorical illusion. In this case, for instance, Obama has completely ignored the basic principles upon which his opponents have based their arguments, which of course lead to just as much disagreement over the issue of what can be done to "reduce unwanted pregnancy" as there is over abortion itself. Not to mention that, from a religious perspective, the very notion of "an unwanted pregnancy" tends to be problematic. Obama's approach does make him seem more reasonable to his own supporters, though, as well as to the majority of people who probably don't really care about the abortion issue that much one way or another. This makes it good politics, I suppose.

I would say the Rogerian approach comes in more useful when discussing issues that are not fundamentally a matter of principle, or where a solution can be cast as fitting two apparently opposed principles. For instance, on one thread here a student was writing on whether or not the government should fund students who want to go to college. I suggested he add an paragraph that pointed out that, as educated people tend to earn far more than uneducated people, over time the government would likely make back the money it spent on tuition in the form of increased tax revenue. Even the staunchest libertarian would have a hard time arguing against a government program that paid for itself. If one further pointed out the savings that could be expected from having a lower crime rate (and lowering the crime rate is one of the few legitimate functions of government from a libertarian viewpoint), then you have a case for the thesis that would appeal even to a group of people who would normally reflexively oppose it on principle. In this case, finding common ground can lead to a compromise position that will make most people on both sides happy.

Essays / Thesis statement about children with gay fathers - Need advice [8]

I haven't read the essay in question, but if the topic is children with gay fathers, then the obvious question for you to answer would be "how does having a gay father affect a child?" and/or "Is this good or bad for the child?"

Grammar, Usage / Logical Fallacies (for debate and persuasive writing) [23]

Here's a big one:

Equivocation: Using a word in two or more different senses in the same argument.

Example: Nothing is better than playing video games. Watching television is better than doing nothing. Ergo, watching television is better than playing video games.

The use of the word "nothing" is different in the two premises, and so cannot support the conclusion.

Equivocation also has a series of broader meanings, as discussed here: web.uvic.ca/psyc/bavelas/1988politic.pdf

Grammar, Usage / Critical Thinking - to form well thought out and defensible arguments in papers [13]

We have not been debating abortion. EF_Simone and I are both firmly on the same side of the abortion debate, in that we are both pro-choice. But a change of topic would not be amiss. Perhaps we can review the general critical thinking strategies that have come up throughout the debate.

1. Be aware of the premises behind what you hear and read. This was the original reason that abortion came up on this thread, as an example of their importance, and I think the debate has served its purpose in emphasing that point.

2. Practice debating both sides of the issue. I can see why you might have mistaken our discussion of abortion for a debate of the issue. In demonstrating the importance of a premise, I ended up showing how a case against abortion might be built up from a particular premise, even if it was one I did not agree with. Being able to do that is important. You haven't really critically analyzed the arguments against your point of view if you can't present them as strongly as if they were your own.

3. Avoid self-contradiction. This point came up in my last post, and the more I think about it the more important it seems me. In a way, critical thinking itself is nothing more than a quest to avoid self-contradiction. And I don't just mean that in the sense of managing to get out an argument for a topic such as abortion without saying two things that clearly can't be reconciled with each other. I mean rather that one should strive to ensure that all of ones' beliefs and values mesh with one another, across a range of issues, that any contradictory beliefs, conclusions, premises, or principles must be tracked down, examined, and either reconciled or abandoned.

Grammar, Usage / Logical Fallacies (for debate and persuasive writing) [23]

Simpson's paradox: This one is difficult for me to explain. Essentially, though, it involves an aggregate trend showing the reverse of either all or the majority of the trends it contains. Hopefully the example below will make my meaning clearer. If not, wikipedia might: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

Example: The most famous case involves the University of California, Berkeley, which was sued in 1973 for discriminating against women. The evidence seemed clear -- the university had admitted 44% of male applicants, and only 35% of female applicants. However, the university successfully defended itself by pointing out that, on a department by department basis, it had clearly discriminated, in the majority of the cases, against men (which, unlike discrimination against women, was apparently perfectly fine). And even the two departments that had admitted a higher percentage of male than female applicants had admitted more women than men (owing to their being a much higher number of female than male applicants).

The apparent paradox arises only if one assumes that men and women are the same and will therefore apply to each department in equal numbers, and that the departments themselves are the same size, and therefore accept roughly the same number of students. In such a case, it would be impossible for each department to discriminate against men, yet for the university to end up seeming to discriminate against women. However, this is not the case. For example, one department had 108 female applicants and 825 male applicants. It admitted 89 women (82% of of them) and 512 men (only 62% of them). Another department had 191 male applicants and 393 female applicants. This department actually did show a very small bias towards men. It admitted 53 men (28% of them) and 94 women (24% of them). However, if the university had consisted of only these two departments, then it would have admitted 565 of 1016 men (55.6%), and 183 of 501 women (36.5%). Thus, it would seem as if the university were heavily biased against women, when in fact one of the departments was showing a 20% bias for women, and the other only a 4% bias against them.

In fact, if it had admitted only women where possible, letting in all 108 candidates for the one department, and 147 for the other (leaving 493 male acceptances in one and 0 in the other), the university would only have just broken even (255 of 501 female candidates yielding a 51% overall acceptance rate, and 493 of 1016 male candidates yielding a 49% overall acceptance rate). It is easy to imagine a scenario in which even accepting all female candidates where possible would still leave the university in the position of seeming to discriminate against women. Even in this example, it would have taken only about twenty fewer female applicants to the first department to get such a result.

Grammar, Usage / Critical Thinking - to form well thought out and defensible arguments in papers [13]

Okay, to get my point about why the inherentness of life matters here, imagine a person's life as a line. The starting point of that life is conception. The end point is whenever the person dies. If that life has inherent value, value that is present by its very nature, then it must be present all along the line, from the very first point to the very last point. Otherwise, whatever value the life has is not inherent, its given to it by society. You can argue that the ability to survive outside the womb is a good point at which we should, as a society, invest it with that value. I don't disagree with you on that. But you can't do that if you believe that life has inherent value.

I think you have it backwards about paradoxes. Paradoxes can seem to exist as a matter of logic, but don't exist at all in nature. They merely seem to. By definition, a paradox cannot really exist, and always involves an error of logic or understanding. So, Xeno's paradoxes seem to make logical sense, but in fact involve a misunderstanding of mathematics. They are solved through calculus, as I recall. Avoiding self-contradiction is the key to critical thinking, and taking refuge in paradox is taking refuge in self-contradiction, in the refusal to think critically. The women-child entity cannot be both one person and two at the same time. Either a pregnant woman is one person or two. If she is two, then she can and (given the second person's reliance on her for survival) presumably does have ethical and potentially legal responsibilities to it. If she is one, then she may mutilate herself if she wishes. To understand that the notion of separateness is completely arbitrary, consider that, from the very beginning, an embryo (not even a fetus) is capable of surviving outside the mother's womb. It is not capable of surviving outside of a womb, but embryos can certainly be implanted in new wombs (much as infants cannot survive without a caregiver, though they can survive well enough without any particular caregiver). So the chosen point in the judges' decision has nothing to do with the fetus being able to survive without the mother, only to do with the fetus being able to survive without a mother, in a very narrow sense of what it means to be a mother. Taking a very broad definition of mother, even a two year old couldn't do this, so you begin to see how arbitrary the distinction is.

Out of curiosity, do you believe then that life has inherent value, and if so, how do you justify the concept of inherent value logically (not as regards human life or abortion per se, but in and of itself)?

Writing Feedback / People should read only those books which are real events& real person [10]

It's really difficult to make a determination on that without actually seeing the essay. In general, grounding your essay in concrete examples is an excellent policy. However, if you conveyed your points clearly and logically, then, as Simone indicated, your mark may not have suffered too much.

Undergraduate / 'Economics in Chengdu' - Letter of motivation to University of Amsterdam [13]

A few fixes for you:

"Since when I came back last summer, I started thinking about my studies after high-school." (Why do you hate commas? Commas are so cute and friendly. You should use them more often.)

"After a lot of searching and meditating, I`m now sure that the Economics and Business bachelor programme at the Universitet van Amsterdam (UvA) is the right choice for me. That is because I am now that I'm aware of the amazing reality we are livinglive in everyday."

You need to do something with the "first" and "second" structure you use in the next part of the essay. It's a bit choppy as it stands.

"During my stay, I met a lot of foreigners people who where there trying to start a new businesses . "

"While I was living in China I had many great experiences, but even now, a year later, thinking about me getting out of the school and watching that skyscraper growing so fast still gives me chills."

Letters / Fraternity Interest Letter [6]

Your letter is a bit vague. Try adding some specifics to make in more interesting. What qualities specifically do you associate with being a man? How did your role models teach you these?

Book Reports / King Lear naivety and inability to control his emotions (ENG4U class) [17]

Great job. Reading your essay has made me want to reread the play, so you've obviously done something right. You might want to consider deleting the first three sentences of your introduction, though, and moving your last sentence of that paragraph to the beginning of it.

Undergraduate / brief essay explaining your educational and career goals [7]

Hmmm . . . I see you've already handed this in, but here is another suggestion you might learn from:

"Being a member of Phi Theta Kappa has helped me grow as a person, develop my leadership skills, and most importantly, experience the opportunity to meet and work with many wonderful people."

Note that the verb "help" governs each item on the list "helped me grow, helped me develop, helped me experience" The original, though, had "helped me gave," which makes no sense.

Writing Feedback / ielts essay: should governments pay university course fees? [3]

This is better than your other essays, as it has a clear thesis with some decent reasons to back it up. You might also point out that people with university degrees generally earn much more than those without, hence pay more taxes. Over a student's lifetime, the government would tend to make back the tuition money anyway. Something that has clear social benefits with little to no net cost to the government is something most people can support. Hey, the government might even turn a profit, depending upon how the economy goes.

Essays / "The Great Depression changed the American governments views" - essay help [5]

Try Googling "Great Depression changing role government." Then run the same search in Google Books. Then read a lot, and write up your findings. Post the essay draft here for more feedback.

Writing Feedback / ielts essay - Useing animals for the benefit of the human beings [4]

Simone makes an excellent point -- you haven't presented any compelling arguments for your thesis. Making your case shouldn't be too difficult, though. We value humans more than other animals because we are human, and not some other species. Thus, given a choice between causing animal suffering and causing human suffering, we choose to do the former, out of loyalty to our own species. This is something that most people understand instinctively, and why, for instance, in a situation where one had to choose between saving a dog from a burning building or saving a person, one would choose the person (and would probably face criminal charges otherwise).

To put it in Simone's terms, it is more acceptable to experiment on a class of beings that you are not in than it is to experiment on a class of beings you are in, because ethical responsibility increases with kinship proximity. Helping out your father if he falls on hard times isn't so much admirable as expected. Helping out a cousin or close friend is more admirable, but still somewhat of a clear ethical duty. Helping out an acquaintance or complete stranger, though, is generally viewed with much more admiration, because no obligation to do so existed.

Trying to make a more specific distinction between animals and humans is probably a waste of time. For one thing, the difference between animals and humans varies dramatically depending on what species you look at. For another, it would take far more time than you would have on this sort of essay. Also, most people already understand the difference on a deep, emotional level, and don't need it explaining further. After all, the difference is what gives us the ability to conduct the tests on them in first place.

Grammar, Usage / Logical Fallacies (for debate and persuasive writing) [23]

And some more:

The sharpshooter effect: I don't know if this is a logical fallacy per se, so much as a dishonest research technique, but I feel it has a place here. In essence, this involves drawing grids that give you the results you want. It is much like shooting at a barn 100 times, then drawing a bullseye around the area with the highest concentration of bullets. Anyone who didn't know you had drawn the target after taking the shots might think you were a great sharpshooter.

Example: many studies about the dangers of nuclear power plants or electromagnetic fields suffer from this fallacy. For instance, in one study purporting to prove that electromagnetic fields caused cancer, researchers showed a grid drawn over a small town. Each square of the grid was then analyzed to see how much electromagnetic activity existed in the area, and how high the incidence of cancer was. Sure enough, the two or three areas with the highest EM activity also had the highest cancer rates. The research captured headlines around the world. However, other scientists were not so sure. They wondered if maybe the town had been chosen precisely because it was reporting a higher than usual rate of cancer, and if the researchers hadn't further drawn the grids where they thought they saw patterns. It turns out that, when the grid was extended across the entire state (using the original grid as a starting point), then on average, squares with higher than average EM fields tended, on average, to have lower cancer rates than normal, "proving" that EM fields protected against cancer. As it turned out, even drawing another grid over the original town, this time picking a random starting point, eliminated the correlation shown on the first grid. All the research had proved is that, if you pick a place where cancer rates are higher than normal (as some places will be, just by random chance) and then draw a grid that clusters them with EM producing power lines, then you can create exactly the result you are looking for.

argumentum ad misericordiam (appeal to pity): This is a variant on the appeal to emotion. One can appeal to fear, anger, or other emotions just as easily.

Example: Children are suffering in Africa. They are so young, and vulnerable, yet they sit there with flies landing on swollen lips as they clutch their protruding, malnourished bellies in hunger. We should send aid to their governments.

Perhaps we should. Then again, it might be that the governments in question will merely siphon the aid money into buying weapons to wage war against their neighbors, or that the aid will in fact reach the children, saving them, and allowing them to reproduce so that in twenty years their are twice as many starving children, and only half as many willing donors. The conclusion in the example is in no way supported by the description of the children, though of course it may actually be valid.

Example 2 (Appeal to anger): All of the hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi Arabian. We must declare war on Saudi Arabia.

That all of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia does not mean that the Saudi government supported the attack, or that war with Saudi Arabia would serve America's interests. As in the previous example, the conclusion might be right, but the fact given in support of it does not in and of itself constitute logical proof of it.

Grammar, Usage / Critical Thinking - to form well thought out and defensible arguments in papers [13]

Aye, they came down squarely on the side of human life not having inherent value. Their choice of the ability of the fetus to survive separately outside of the mother was an interesting arbitrary point for the justices to choose as the moment at which the fetus should be vested with rights. I assume few people discuss this aspect of the discussion because it is irrelevant to them -- if you believe that life is inherently valuable, then you believe that the judges were wrong, so it doesn't much matter what point after conception they picked. If you believe that life is not inherently valuable, then the judges were free to pick whichever arbitrary point they wanted. A point that is late enough in the pregnancy to allow a woman plenty of time to decide to get an abortion, but early enough that the prenatal images of the fetus aren't likely to make the idea of its destruction provoke a visceral reaction of disgust even in those who aren't particularly religious, seems like as good a one as any.

The women being free to decide what to do with their own bodies argument has always seemed to me to be something of a red herring. Society is based on liberty, not freedom, and liberty is freedom with responsibility. There are only so many ways a woman can get pregnant, and, outside of cases of rape, she is at liberty to avoid all of them. As to whether or not, having created a human life, she should then be free to dispose of it, that depends mostly on whether or not you believe that life to have an inherent value that would give the fetus the most fundamental of human rights -- the right to life. If you believe that it does, then it becomes very difficult to argue that a woman, having freely engaged in an act that created human life, has no responsibility to preserve it, merely because it cannot survive outside her body. This is much the same argument one would make against a woman who gave birth to a child, then let it starve because it could not feed itself and she found the expense of feeding it herself too inconvenient. Having freely accepted the responsibilities of motherhood, she has a responsibility to the infant, one that no one would think of denying.

And this once again demonstrates the importance of premises. If you begin with the premise that life has no inherent value, then the fetus is not fully human until some point determined by society (and indeed, even infants already born could in theory be properly slain, as was practiced in many ancient cultures). At that point, it makes a certain amount of sense to talk about abortion in terms of women's rights, and about women having control of their own bodies, because really, then there is no reason to see the fetus as anything other than a part of the woman's body until it is born (or some earlier point picked at random by society). If you believe life does have inherent value, then the language of choice and freedom is a perversion of the very concept of liberty. And so no meaningful dialogue between the two sides is possible. Maybe, just maybe, a dialogue could be opened about the premise itself, but any discussion about the matter at a higher level must inevitably break down into slogans and hardened ideological positions as the two camps keep talking in terms the other can never accept or understand.

By the way, I never meant to imply that the judges in Roe vs. Wade had not engaged in critical thinking. I was merely pointing out that the opinions of many people on both sides of the debate often don't line up. Think of how many pro-lifers have no problem with the death penalty, for instance, or how many pro-choicers embrace environmentalism on the grounds that nature is inherently valuable (though of course there are other, much better arguments, for many environmental positions).

Also, note that this is an excellent way to develop your critical thinking skills -- learn to be able to argue the stances you disagree with on an issue as well as you can argue those you agree with. Although I take a pro-choice position personally, as you can tell from the rest of this post, I could readily argue the pro-life case with some effectiveness.

Writing Feedback / ielts essay - Useing animals for the benefit of the human beings [4]

i think that is an interesting topic. Good luck. (Do you see how annoying and unhelpful that is?)

Writing Feedback / itels essay: should children learn foreign language from elementary school? [7]

Hey, I notice your comments on other people's threads have been short and noticeably unhelpful. Comments such as "good luck" will only get deleted (as indeed several of yours just have been), and so won't count against your thread-opening quota anyway. You expect people commenting on your thread to give you detailed, useful feedback, so you must do the same when commenting on other people's threads.

Grammar, Usage / Critical Thinking - to form well thought out and defensible arguments in papers [13]

In the case of abortion, the arguments hinge over a difference in premise, namely whether or not human life has inherent value. If you believe that it does, then that value has to be there from the very beginning, i.e. from conception, as it would be logically incongruous to argue that the "inherent" value somehow gets added at some other arbitrarily chosen point in human development. Once you believe that human life has inherent value, then, you are forced to believe also that the fetus is a human life with the same value as any fully developed human adult. Destroying that fetus then becomes murder, by just about any definition of the term, and is certainly immoral. If you do not believe that human life has inherent value, though, then there is no reason why you cannot place arbitrary limits on when a human being is granted rights, including the right to life.

The great irony is that most abortion rights advocates hold positions on other issues in which they will readily invoke the idea that human life is inherently valuable, whereas most pro-life supporters hold views on other issues that seem to indicate that they believe life is not inherently valuable. I've always found this fairly amusing, as it indicates to me that most of these people, on both sides of the debate, haven't really thought through their beliefs. The important thing to realize, though, is that the abortion debate is really a debate over premises, which is why it never gets resolved. The two sides build up two very different logical cases starting from two very different premises, and so end up talking past each other rather than to each other.

You are right, though in your suspicion that many of these premises boil down to matters of personal preference. In this case, though, I would say that the idea of "inherent value" is logically flawed -- something is only ever valuable to someone for some reason. This puts me firmly in the pro-choice camp, where, ironically enough, most of the people on my side of the debate would fiercely disagree with my premise, which is the only one that can support a logically coherent pro-choice stance. In many other cases, though, the stances we take are rooted in what sort of world we want to live in, and once you get down to matters of wanting and desire, you are looking at matters of personal preference, rather than logic, and can only hope to agree to disagree.

Grammar, Usage / Logical Fallacies (for debate and persuasive writing) [23]

Hmmm . . . Tyler, you have used the word "appose" when you meant to say "oppose." Clearly nothing you have to say on the issue of logical fallacies is correct.

Sorry, I couldn't resist :-)

This is an excellent thread, and you are to be commended for starting it. Your list of fallacies and your explanations of them are wonderful in every way, apart from your misuse of "appose."

Other fallacies:

The argument from authority: This occurs when the person arguing attempts to substitutes names of prominent supporters of a position in place of actual arguments. An example taken from another thread:

Nick94: "Scientists like Dr. Lee Spetner and Dr. Werner Gitt agree that mutation has never added information to the genetic code."

Look at those big "Dr."s! And in case you missed it, they're scientists! Of course, that these two people have degrees and agree on the truth of a statement does not make that statement actually true. In this case, it's doubly misleading, as there are far more "Dr."s out there, over 90% of scientists in biology, who disagree with them. More to the point, even if they had numbers on their side, the truth of an argument does not hinge upon popular support for it. At best, pointing out that over 90% of scientists believe that mutation can add to the genetic code is only a good reason for suggesting that someone go out and read the arguments those scientists have made. It should not be a substitute for those arguments, or used to refute objections to them.

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc (After this, therefore because of this): This argument mistakes correlation for causation. Causation is very, very difficult to prove, and correlation is very, very easy to notice, so this error comes up a lot.

Example: After guns were banned in 1990, violent crime dropped 5% from 1991-1995. Clearly, banning guns lowers crime rates.

Not really. The crime rate may have been going down for years before guns were banned, in which case the trend would merely have continued unchanged. If the crime rate had been dropping at a rate of 2% a year from 1985-1990, the statistics could even be taken as evidence that banning guns increases crime rates, though that would probably be to make a similar mistake in the other direction. More likely, there are a host of other factors that would have to be controlled for before one could make any assertion about the effects of gun control on crime.

The slippery slope argument: Also very common, this one is often used, quite sincerely and earnestly, by people who should know better. It consists of saying, essentially, that while X might be all right on its own, it might lead to Y, which would be unacceptable.

Example: Euthanasia for the terminally ill who request it may not seem so bad, but allowing this practice would eventually lead to families killing off elderly relatives whose health care costs are too high with the blessings of the medical establishment.

Letting people get away with murder under the pretense of carrying out euthanasia would be bad. This in no way addresses the question of whether genuinely euthanizing the terminally ill is good. In essence, it is a form of straw man argument, in that the arguer is substituting Y, which is much easier to argue against, for X, the thing that is actually being debated.

Well, this post is getting a tad long, so I'll leave it there for now. As to Eric's question, what you are describing isn't a fallacy so much as a lie. Such claims often rely on people's scientific ignorance combined with an argument from authority (DNA proves it, and everyone knows that DNA evidence is irrefutable). Statistics are often abused in this way, because so many people nowadays are largely innumerate. To educate yourself against this sort of statistical abuse, I recommend reading any or all of the works of John Allen Paulos.

Graduate / 'Traveling back in time' - Physician Assistant -- personal statament [8]

This is a very well-written essay. A couple of minor points you might want to consider, though:

"I recall the obstacles on the way and recognize that they have mirrored my own growth and achievements." Did the obstacles mirror your growth, or shape and accelerate it?

"Nonetheless, it has helped me to realize that caring for others provides the caregiver with an emotional payback in the sense of personal fulfillment and self-worth." "Nonetheless" seems like the wrong transition word here. Learning about the needs and desires of others isn't really apparently antithetical to the idea your sentence introduces.

Writing Feedback / People should read only those books which are real events& real person [10]

Well, the examples you use in such an essay are the proof of your points. If you write an essay in which you give an opinion that is not backed up by anything, then obviously your marks will suffer as a result. So, I'd include plenty of specific examples in making your point.