Week 7 Discussion — Fair Point or Fallacy? — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

A fact about a speaker can be a fair reason to check what they say, or it can be a way to avoid their reasons altogether. A feeling or a crowd can ride alongside good reasons, or it can replace them. Both lines are hard to draw in a real case, which is why the course keys only clear passages and leaves cases like these to discussion.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: The running question asks whether the campus library should stay open around the clock during finals week (illustrative). A student senator who works paid overnight shifts at the library writes a letter in favor, giving reasons about quiet, safe study space. A critic replies: "Of course she wants the library open all night; she gets paid for those shifts." Argue whether the critic's reply is a circumstantial attack on the person, a fair point about how much weight to give her testimony, or partly both. Say in words where the reply would sit on an argument map of her letter, and what the critic would have to do to answer her reasons.

Option B: Choose one message from your own life that leaned on a feeling or a head count: an ad, a fundraising appeal, a sign, a review, or a team or club notice (no politicians, parties, campaigns, or news outlets, and no one's real name). Name the feeling or the number it offered, and argue whether that appeal replaced the reasons or rode alongside good reasons. Say what evidence would have to be there for the appeal to be fair.

There is no single right answer here about where a fair point ends and a fallacy begins. What the course settles is the test; the real work is applying it to a hard case and defending your judgment with reasons. Pick the option you actually care about, and make your case.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• For Option A, state the senator's reasons fairly in one sentence, run the relevance test on the critic's reply, and say in words where the reply sits on a map of her letter. For Option B, describe the message in your own words, name the feeling or the number it offered, and say what evidence it offered or left out.
• Say in one sentence whether the reply or the appeal replaces reasons, rides alongside them, or does some of each, and what would settle it.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (fallacy, false premise, fallacy of relevance, attack on the person, circumstantial attack on the person, conflict of interest, testimony, straw man, appeal to fear, appeal to pity, appeal to popularity, red herring, appeal to authority) correctly.
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.
• Write from your own reasoning, in your own words, and keep real people's names and live political questions out of your examples.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: offer the strongest case against a classmate's judgment, check whether they stated the other side's reasons fairly, or ask what evidence would make an appeal fair. "Nice post!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option A. The senator's reasons are that students need a quiet, safe place late at night and the library is the only one large enough. The critic's reply says nothing about those reasons; even if she is paid for the shifts, that does not bear on whether students need the space. So, offered as a refutation, the reply is a circumstantial attack, and on her map it is an arrow that lands on no box. Still, her pay is a fair reason to check her claims about need against someone with no stake, such as a survey of students.

Notice how it states her reasons first, runs the relevance test, and then separates the fair point about testimony from the fallacy. That is the bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com