Review Sheet for C228 Midterm Examination
Format: The midterm examination will take place in class on Wednesday, October 20, 2010. You will have
50 minutes to take the test. The exam will be handed out at 12:20 p.m. and all tests must be turned in at
1:10 p.m. The test consists of 40 multiple-choice questions. The exam will cover the essay by Douglas
Ehninger, all material covered in the lectures, and the handout on micro-structural fallacies in
argumentation and advocacy. Questions concerning specific fallacies will do one of three things: provide a
definition of a fallacy and ask you to identify it by name, give you the name of a fallacy and ask you to
identify its definition, or give you specific examples of arguments that contain fallacies and ask you to
identify the fallacy. Class on Friday, October 15th will be dedicated to reviewing for the examination.
Important concepts from Ehninger essay:
Components of “coercive” correction and of the argumentative method, limitations of the argumentative
method, advantages of the argumentative method.
Important concepts from the lectures:
exigence, contingency, audience; three forms of grammatical control (mand, proposition, question); the VModel of argument; definitions of and the relationships between propositions of fact, value, and policy; the
difference between stable and vital knowledge and the functions that they serve in public advocacy; the
types of definitions; topoi of fact claims (location, quantity, state); the five types of evidence (examples or
illustrations, physical objects, statistics, testimony, common knowledge) and the tests for evaluating the
strength of evidence; the definition of reasoning, the difference between empirical demonstration and
reasoning, differences between inductive and deductive arguments, the different degrees of confidence
one can have in reasoned conclusions (plausibility, possibility, probability, certainty); patterns of inference
(analogical, signal, and causal reasoning) including different types of analogies (literal or parallel case,
judicial, a fortiori, figurative or metaphorical), topics of analogical reasoning (sameness and difference),
purposes for which analogical inferences are typically used, tests of analogical reasoning; different types of
signal reasoning (ratio ascendi and ratio cognoscendi) and the general purposes to which they are put, the
tests for signal reasoning; cause-effect reasoning, purposes for which it is employed, tests to evaluate its
argumentative strength; informal fallacies (including when an informal fallacy might be a valid and
appropriate form of argument—this will be revealed in class on October 18th … don’t miss it!).