Critical Thinking And Application In Management: A reflective journal.

(A beauty pageant can be describe as a show or exhibition that judge the qualities in the participants. So from the definitions itself, is it a good thing to judge or be judge by other? In my opinion, I personally think that beauty pageant is a good idea but I cant deny that there are some people out there who might disagree with my opinion.In this composition, I will elaborate one by one why I think beauty contest is a good idea.) INTRODUCTION

Personally I am pro beauty pageant because from it, the participant emerges from the competition with a skill  sets that set them above other people.Entering a pageant takes a lot of hard work, and the ambition to be a winner. It is a long hard journey to reach the top but the benefit of competing and the advantages accumulate to a person's life resume.From helping individual with their self esteem to sharpening their communication skill, beauty contest opens a lot of new door of possibility for their contestant.CONCLUSION

(Among the benefit of beauty pageants are they helped individuals in building self confidence.)P1
 Members of the beauty pageant have been trained and staffed by professionals who understands strictness of the process. Backstage, they are attentive, helpful, encouraging and supportive of every contestant as they move through the different level of the pageant. (When something went wrong the support team are always there to lend a hand and sometimes being a shoulder to cry on. Their mission is to help develop the participant self-esteem because building self confidence itself is one of the most important objectives of the beauty contest industry.)SUPPORTING STATEMENT

Nowadays we live in an age where people are using other alternatives to communicate such as short messaging service (SMS) or by posting updates on twitter and Facebook.(Today's generations are lacking in having the ability of articulate their thoughts into written and spoken words due to technology and the decreasing quality face to face communication with another human being.)P2
(According to Rhonda Shapert, the author of the book "Winning Through Pageantry" and an expert pageant coach, she have helped many contestant in developing their communication skill and stated it is a necessary ability because the winner of the pageant are subjected to press interviews through their reign, and with an excellent communication skill provided they will have no problem in doing so.) REFERENCE TO AUTHORITY

Just like anything else there are a few cons in participating in a beauty contest.(Contestant preparation for beauty pageant is expensive.Participants are responsible for paying their own entrance fee, clothing cost, professional coaching cost, photograph cost, hair preparation cost and make up cost.)APOV
But it is all worthed because once you are in a beauty contest you are being recognized with that recognition itself help the individuals throughout their career. Being in a pageant indicates success and achievement, and those are the two criteria that employers look for when evaluating for a job.

(In a nutshell, beauty pageant are not only about the crowns and sashes. They helped in awarding scholarships worth of thousands of dollars to entrants in all levels of pageantry and that is just some of the perks you can get from participating in it. Other benefit as aforementioned like tremendously help in building up self-esteem and personal developments of individuals while sharpening up their communication skill so they can be a role model for the younger generations to follow and look up to.) SUMMARY.

I must say this question does make me thing a lot about myself. After quite some time of consideration, I finally come to conclusion to pick someone who is rather outside the norm. Most people probably picked anime or superhero character. I don't know why but I really am attracted to pick some one on the other side of the justice line hence my choice of fictional character, he have been referred as the Clown Prince of Crime, The Harlequin of Hate and The Aces of Knaves. Does it ring any bells?

"Madness is the emergency exit. You can just step outside, and close the door on all those dreadful things that happened. You can lock them away... forever."
―Joker

Yes, he is none other than the super villain and the archenemy of Batman, The Joker. He is a master criminal with a clown like appearance. He is a vicious, calculating, psychopath killer, who murders people for his own amusement. He have been responsible for numerous tragedies in Batman's life, including the paralysis of Barbara Gordon a.k.a Batgirl/Oracle, The murder of Jason Todd a.k.a Robin and Jim Gordon's second wife Sarah Essen.

Before his criminal career, The Joker was just an average Joe leading a normal life with his family. But due to an unfortunate event, his pregnant wife was kidnapped and then murdered by the criminal in order to force him into committing a crime, and as he tried to escape he was confronted by the dark knight and during the commotion he plummets into a vat of chemicals. When he resurfaces he appearance have turn into bleached chalk white skin, ruby red lips and emerald green hair.These events, coupled with his other misfortunate events that day, drive the engineer through the massive personality shifts that results in the birth of The Joker.

His power and ability are hand to hand combat. this have been proven so many times during his encounter with Batman. He have proven to be very skilled in the are of martial art as well,this being proven when beating the Batman once in a fight without "cheating". Over the years it has been shown that although Batman might be stronger, The Joker is faster and more agile.

I can’t help but to laugh when I watch this video, it makes me realize how easy I am to make an assumption and ending up making an ass out of myself. But I digress, in today's lecture, I learned about the second part of chapter three which is ‘assumption’. In critical thinking an assumption can be defined as a statement that doesn't state explicitly but which underlie an argument.


Assumptions in unstated belief can be categorized into two - value assumption and reality assumption. Value assumption is people's belief of what is good or bad, right or wrong, what should or should not be accepted, while reality assumption are people's beliefs of what is true or false. By understanding both of this value I can see that different values form the basis of many arguments and that conflicts are more often based on different value priorities.


I've learn that in value assumption there is a time where I will be facing a value conflict. A value conflict is when one value assumption clashes with another value assumption. For instances death penalty for drug trafficker, some might think it is the right to do because by sentencing them to death penalty they could save other people's life from being snared into drugs abuse while other might oppose to the idea because for them it is not in their hand to take someone else's life.


Ideological assumption happened when we combine value assumption with reality assumption. What is true and acceptable during that time might not be the same after a long time. We used to accept that women were too sensitive and emotional to do a hard task when the time asked for it but nowadays woman are treated equally.


To sum things up, an assumption refers to anything that is taken for granted in the presentation of an argument. Usually an assumption is implicit so sometimes what we believe in depends on how we perceive things. Every one of us carries a different value and each entitled his own opinion. Thus, forming the basis of many arguments and since assumption is not explicitly stated we need to be able to read between the lines to dissect the arguments.

In the previous lesson we have learned about the basic of argument. An argument consists of a main proposition, at least two premises to support it and last but not least a conclusion to close things up. There are also the topics on how to detect an implicit premises and conclusion by reconstructing it with the use of interrogative, rhetorical and leading questions. Last but not least, the challenges that we have to face in explaining to the target audience to achieve a greater degree of success in building a good argument.

Today we learned about the role of supporting statements. A supporting statement is used to make the audience believe and understand the idea that you are trying to convey. It can be statements that lead to, or support or convince us to agree with the conclusion and it can be some statements that we use to help the reader/listener to understand and "believe in" the premises that we are trying to develop.

There are five things that we can do to make people assured with our premises. They are definition, supporting arguments, evidence, reference to authority and anecdote. First of all is definition, a definition is a statement that stipulates how to use a word or phrase. There are 4 types of definitions:-

1. Lexical definition (the words and phrases are defined in the way they are generally used in the language - e.g. definition taken from the dictionary)
2. Précising definition (in précising definition by further describe a "vague" word or phrase by adding examples or illustration)
3. Stipulative definition (by creating a new word/phrase to describe a concept - or uses an existing word or phrase in a new way)
4. Persuasive or tendentious definition (a really bad way to convey a definition, discouraged from using it. It is a definition that is created in an effort to persuade the audience to agree with the point of view by using emotional appeal or slanted term)


Second is, supporting statement or contributing argument. Supporting statements are used to elaborate further a premise with more descriptions and elaborations are added to it. While supporting statement has its conclusion the same statement as the premise being supported but such statements are often not stated.


Then there is evidence, it can be a statistical studies, historical information, physical evidence, observations, experiments and/ or eyewitness accounts. Evidence can never be an argument itself. The reliability of the evidence is determined by how dependable a person believes it to be. We can challenge the evidence methodology of study, the accuracy of the information, the manner in which the physical evidence was collected, and the eyesight or motivation of an eyewitness. Something like in the TV series CSI when they collect evidence, they make sure that evidence can’t be thrown back at them by the DA.


Next we have reference of authority, by reference of authority I do mean your family members, (unless they are well recognize for their achievements) it means that by using someone who we believes to be more likely to come with an accurate evaluation of evidence than we are ourselves. It doesn't have to be confined by people with expertise in scientific, medical, or other scholarly fields. It can be anything or anyone that we accept as somehow able to reach a more accurate evaluation. Even in the strongest cases, just like evidence, a reference of authority can’t stand on its own as an argument.


But in order for someone to be acknowledged as an authority, the person must have the following criteria. They must have an in depth knowledge about that topic, be it personal experience or demonstrated performance and they need to have qualifications such as university degrees, peer recognition, awards and honours or professional membership. (Although nowadays we can’t depend much on the title due to how people can just buy the title without earning it. Instead we look upon his/her achievements)


Last but not least we can support our statements by filling them in with anecdotes. A short story can go a long way in helping the readers or listeners to appreciate your hypothesis. The relative strength of an explanation or anecdote is usually a function of its clarity and applicability to support the statements.


To boil it down, an argument is a series of statements used to persuade someone of something in it and there are premises to make the argument strong and a conclusion to tie up any loose end but a supporting statement can help in making the premises and conclusion even concrete. They are used to lead or convince us with the conclusion by helping us understand and believed in the premises that are being developed. Supporting statements can be in a variety of forms, from definition all the way to anecdote to help us achieve clarity and understanding in the hypothesis or the given proposition.

Today's lesson, we learned about arguments. When we talk about arguments, my mind straight wonder about two people debating about a topic which is quite true since according to dictionary.com, an argument is a discussion involving differing points of view; debate. But, when it comes to critical thinking, an argument is defined as an act of presenting a reason to support a point of view, which precisely can be interpreted as a set of a statement, one of which is intended to be supported by others.

Before we go deeper into the topic, the lecturer explained to us about statement. It is the basic of argument. An argument must have a supporting statement to it, premises and last but not least a conclusion. A statement or proposition is a declarative sentence believed to be true and presented as an argument for consideration by the target audience. A simple statement conveys exactly one idea.

Like everything else, a statement has its own terms and conditions so that it would be a legit claim. First, the sentences must make a declaration and second, the audience or the receiver must be capable of determining whether the statement is true or false for a proposition to be established. You don't even have to know whether the answer to the claim is but with some research, you know that the statement can determine to be true or false.

We have covered the definitions of arguments and statements but how can we differentiate an argument with non-arguments and a claim with a general statement? To know the difference between a statement and a noise (non statements that are meant to confuse us into making a flawed inference) are by spotting the essence of the arguments named the premises and the conclusion. While in order for you to be able to separate arguments and non arguments, you need to know how to find the main message and what the author want you to believe while non argument have no attention to persuade you about something.

Digging deeper into the chapter, we learn about the main components in an argument. An argument must have a main idea about which you are trying to persuade others therefore it is called conclusion. Reasoning should lead towards an end point which is the conclusion. The conclusion should relate closely to the author’s main claim.

Premise on the other hand is another type of statement that must be presented for the collection of statements to be an argument. Simply put it, premises are statements that directly support the conclusion. In an argument a conclusion is only supported by its premises, but each premise itself can be supported in a number of ways.

Moving on along with the chapter, we learn that sometime it can be very difficult to logically analyze someone’s intentions in convincing us about something or misleading us. To avoid this from happening, we should examine the arguments that the other party is trying to convey but sometimes it is difficult to do so due to extraneous material (arguments that are buried in mass of language and missing its indicator words). It is a mixture of arguments and extraneous material resulting a raw material.

One can avoid from drawing a wrong inference by reconstructing the arguments. A reconstruction is a process where you find the arguments and the dissecting it into their various parts. It involves a series of technique where you look for indicator words. By asking the 5WH (what, where, when, why, who and how) you can find the arguments from the masses of languages.

And then there is the implicit conclusion and implicit premises. Implicit conclusion and premises is when the conclusion or the premises is not stated outright and the arguer gathers that you will know it. Sometimes you even have to fill in the implicit premises yourself. If you think that is difficult, there is another aspect of reconstruction that is mind boggling called "questioning"

There are certain forms of question that can take on the role of premises or conclusion in an argument. These questions are called interrogative question and rhetorical question. Interrogative question are questions intended to dig some information from you while rhetorical question are questions intended to get you to agree with them or to manipulate you to do something. There is another type of question called leading question, it is a question that are intended to incline you to answer in a certain way.

There are a few challenges in developing an argument, among them are the problem to identify the main idea, the problem of supporting it with a concrete reasoning and last but not least the problem in making the target audience understand what you are trying to convey. By countering this challenge we can achieve a greater degree of success in building a good argument.

To be concise, an argument consists of a main claim, premises to support the proposition and a conclusion to tie up any loose end. Sometimes we can get lost in interpreting the given claim from raw material, therefore we need to reconstruct it back by finding the implicit conclusion or premises and by using questions to determine the key point of the claim. A conclusion and premises also can be found by questions such as interrogative questions, rhetorical questions and last but not least a leading question.

I end this journal with a funny skit about argument. I hope this will at least relieved the burden of cramming too much information. I wonder if anyone could find the main idea of this skit.

In the video above, it starts with an introduction of critical thinking. It is a bit similar to my first lecture class, but more enjoyable and easy on the eye rather than power point slides. But
I digress; a critical thinker is someone who cultivates attitudes of curiosity and eagerness to widen their perspective with their knowledge. They are willing to do the work required to keep themselves properly informed about a subject.


They recognize that explanation must actually explain and be testable for serious consideration. The legitimate theories must clearly defines the circumstances which when they concede defeat. They embrace skepticism  By skepticism it doesn't mean that they are indiscriminate rejection of idea but doubting and suspending their judgement about claims in which they are presented so they don't fully accept claim which might not be justified without examining the reasoning, possible assumptions and biases behind them..

The qualities of a critical thinker are someone who can handle uncertainty, prefers to be aware of their areas of ignorance, and they can wait for valid evidence or evidence based answers. Someone who has an intellectual independence is willing to explore and open to new possibilities. A particular someone who is willing and able to discover and solve problem by himself.

On the contrary, wishful thinkers are those who like to gather only the data that agrees with them and supports their conclusion. They refuse to hear the other side opinion to avoid being confused, flustered and angry. They find that new information is something that is threatening and tedious. When they believe in something, they stick to it and thinking that they got their fact straight.

They are prone to make a conclusion before evidence, they like to make conclusion first and then only the evidence that support their conclusion. They rely completely on their memory and they are lazy to do researches to avoid difficulties or being rejected. They are people who rather stay in the comfort of what they already believed and refrain themselves from researching other points of view to avoid being uncomfortable and scared. Wishful thinker finds that ignorance is comforting hence they rather stay in denial.

Someone who believes something that they can see and rely on one person testimony. They use their own personal bias as statement of an argument. Relying on their feelings or instinct as facts is one of the criteria of a wishful thinker. They make their decision under the worst situation and can be influenced by them. They tend to make generalization, judgement and conclusion based on their own or others personal experience.

They believed in extraordinary claims without questions and they see clarity as a threat to their sense of power and importance. They tend to have their reality all fogged up and blurred to avoid being small and insignificant. Facts that make them feel better and powerful tend to get their favor. Emotional and moving testimony is the most convincing to them. Wishful thinkers tend to believe opinions and beliefs because they feel that their opinions are a lot better than the facts.

In a nutshell these are a few of the qualities of critical thinker and wishful thinker. I learned a lot about them and I can see that I have both qualities and thanks to these videos I know I can improve myself more and be the better person who can apply what they learn in their daily life. I hope after this I can see things more clearly and control myself from being a wishful thinker.