CCO101 (Thinking and Reasoning) (TMA and GBA)

Thinking and Reasoning is a module that teaches us about how to write a well argued report. In the first two lessons, we were introduced to the terms 'claims', 'reason', and 'premise'(reasons for a single claim). To make a well structured sentence, one must first understand the content and requirement of the essay. Thus, in our TMA, we were given a passage to discuss about the good and bad of fighter drones and the consequences if such a destructive power lands into the wrong hands. We were tasked to identify the main point that the writer is trying to present and evaluate her claims in the passage if we agree with her reasoning. The below hyperlink is the content we were given to evaluate.

Drones are not all bad – but what if Isis starts using them?

In the initial phase of my writing, I had to develop an argument map which aided me in my development of my report. I first started out with what the author thought about her report and expanded into three points to write about her passage. From these three points, she stated her reasons about her thoughts on these claims which was used to convince her reader of her claims. 

The above image would be how I presented my argument map. A note to self would be not to take too much time on the argument map to prevent confusing yourself. Another point I to note during my time when writing was to not change the content too much that made the essay look illogical. In my essay, I have committed such a mistake when I tried to change the authors overall claim to much that it went out of point. What I wrote of the overall claim 'her overall claim is to convince the readers on the benefits of drones.' should rather be 'drones are beneficial' which could also made my points more reasonable and fluid.

And another mistake would be to write more succinctly than vaguely. Something that I commonly did throughout the passage which made me lose quite a sum of marks due to the incoherence of my writing. 

Next, would be on our third lesson which is pseudoscience (Science that can be falsified) and conspiracy theories. As some might be familiar with astrology, the vaccination-autism relations, these are all backed up by any science although it can be proven false. In other words, theories that can be interpreted in numerous ways that would lead to no conclusion. In our GBA, we were tasked to develop a conspiracy theory as well as a how these conspiracy theory shows similar traits. 

Our group has developed a conspiracy theory about Brexit being planned in order to achieve a hyperpower state. As history indicated that Britain was once the dominant power, we think that Brexit was done in order to achieve their past glory since most of the European Union state was leeching from their economy. For the development of the conspiracy, there is not much difficulties that we ran into but it was the second part where we were tasked to show similarities of the conspiracy theory being similar to pseudoscience that we had encountered problem. 

Firstly, our group was tasked to evaluate another group's conspiracy theory in order to identify traits of pseudoscience. However, we ran into the trouble of disagreeing with the logic of the said conspiracy theory. Thus, if we see a problem with their argument in the theory, we are unable to progress with our work. Thankfully, the feedback on our GBA was mostly on our definition of pseudoscience rather than our traits.

All in all, thinking and reasoning is basically philosophy which teaches us about how to write logically and being sceptical about the information that is presented to us. Through three lessons into the course, this module has already taught me how to write better and think deeper. Although there are more modules in the future that will be teaching us about such deeper thinking, I think having this module as an introductory course is beneficial to prepare us in the future when we are working as I can see myself writing reports after reports.