A Look Back at Group Communication

For this blog, I decided to look back to the book that we read at the beginning of the semester: The Essential Guide to Group Communication. Specifically what we read on page 46 in chapter three: The Process of Decision Making in Groups and Teams.

There are EIGHT parts to making decisions in groups:
1 Identify the problem
2 Conduct research
3 Establish guidelines and criteria
4 Generate alternatives
5 Evaluate alternatives
6 Select the best alternative
7 Implement the solution
8 Evaluate the Results

By knowing how to effectively make group decisions, groups includes companies and organizations.

The following website gives the advantages and disadvantages to groups making decisions.
http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Gr-Int/Group-Decision-Making.html
Knowing the best and most effective way to make decisions in a group will prove advantageous to everyone as a whole. It makes planing and work smoother at real companies or in small-scale organizations.

Decision Making individually or in a group is key to communicating what is happening to everyone.

Class Assignments

Our second writing assignment was interesting to research and write about for our class. By looking at social organizations we were able to address how groups communicate with non-supporters and supporters. By looking at how the organization communicates we can better understand how groups of all kinds get their message across to people. Reasoning, objective, and argument validate the groups efforts in every way. Without knowledge of how to do these things groups would be unable to move forward and successfully become well known or do some good for those they are trying to help out.

For our second assignment my group chose to discuss PETA. The PETA group was easy to analyze because of the amount of information readily available online. This helped us understand PETA better as well as be able to analyze how PETA works. Communication is key for all social organizations to rely their message to the unaware. PETA does so through controversial ads and using the faces of famous people to get awareness up.

Valid and Invalid Forms

These type of arguments use words like: all, some, or no. These words are used to reason valid arguments.

There were many ways of doing so. The two I will be discussing is:
- The direct way of reasoning with all

The valid argument goes like this:
All cows moo. Larry is a cow. So Larry moos.
The invalid argument goes like this:
All cows moo. Larry moos. So Larry is a cow.

These arguments were hard to understand but I enjoyed reading the examples because that’s how I was able to understand it. The chapter uses diagrams to prove the validity of the arguments. Checking the validity means making sure the parts of the diagram of over lap and it draws a picture that gets the point across to the person trying to understand the argument.

http://www.thinkingshop.com/Clarion/logic/images/AProp-4-6.jpg

The above would be what an argument daigram that would be used to check the validity.

Necessary and Sufficient Conditions

On page 124, in chapter 6, necessary and sufficient conditions are explained. It is for when two claims are equivalent to each other.

For a contrapositive argument, the following has to happen:
1.) If A is necessary for B that means If not A, the not B is true.
2.) If A is sufficient for B that means If A then B is true.

This confused me at first but I by looking at examples like the following it is more comprehensible.
1.) If you do not pass the driver’s test, you do not have a license.
2.) If you are 21, you can legally drink alcohol.

This type of condition depends solely on whether or not the first part of the argument is true or false. If the first part is true therefore the second part is true. If the first part is false therefore the second part is false.

Refuting an Argument

I am going to discuss how to refute arguments directly. In the book, in chapter seven on page 149, it states that to do so the following has to occur:

• Show that at least one of the premises is dubious.
• Show that the argument isn’t valid or strong.
• Show that the conclusion is false.

An example of this action would be like the following:
It’s useless to drive the freeway. The freeway is always busy. The fastest way to use the freeways is by using the carpool lane but you need two people at least in the car. Therefore, when driving only short distances use the side streets.

This argument can be refuting by pointing out that freeways are not always busy. The argument is not very strong because its premises and conclusion are weak. The conclusion itself is false. Because of all of these factors the argument can easily be refuted.

Reasoning with “OR” claims

Here is my example:
The family decided it was either going to have a party in their backyard for the last summer celebration or have a bonfire on the beach depending on how warm it was. But because the beach was 30 minutes away and the weather was the coolest it had been all summer, the family decided to have their last summer celebration at home.

By reasoning with “OR”, the argument is valid because there is no way the premise to be true and the conclusion false. The premise was the first sentence about where the party should occur. The conclusion stated that the party would be celebrated in their backyard.

No matter how many “or”s are in the argument, only one may be the right conclusion. A reader must narrow down all the possibilities to get the correct conclusion. By determining which ones are most valid, it makes it easier to find the conclusion.