Steven Chung: student's choosing #3

In one of our class periods, Dr. Redick told the class a very interesting story, one out of his vast collection of entertaining adventures in his extraordinary life.  He presented this story to engage our minds in thinking of how we should and shouldn't support claims and arguments when writing our papers.  He stated the importance of how our support should logically make sense so that the reader can clearly understand how the argument is directly supported in relation to our support claims.

The story Dr. Redick told the class was about one of his times in Hawaii when his buddy told him (actually it was kind of like sign language because he didn't talk) about magic mushrooms on the other side of the mountain or valley--something like that.  He talked about how the mushrooms grew on cow shit but that wasn't wear they got their "power".  He said they got their "power" from somewhere outer space and the power particles would somehow travel back to earth and enter the mushrooms' spores.  He argued that that these mushrooms had this power, and that this power is what allowed it to travel through space to the source of power and come back to earth.  This obviously didn't make any logical sense whatsoever; it was clearly a circular argument where the support was completely invalid.  But that was the point--when we state a claim we have to have valid evidence that clearly supports the claim.

I understood what Dr. Redick was trying to say and I thought his example was hilarious.  That story stook in my head and I thought it was very interesting so that is why I am choosing to write a blog about it.

-Steven Chung