Publishing Public Argument

To get to my project 3 final click here.

To get to my interpretation, click here.

Reflection of Project 3

In this post I will be reflecting on writing project 3 by answering several questions.

• What was specifically revised from one draft to another?

From my fist draft to my final draft, I changed my focus from more central to the causes to the actual topic of quantum consciousness instead. In the final draft grammar and spelling mistakes were changed.

• How did you reconsider your thesis or organization?

I reconsidered my thesis to focus more on the actual topic instead of straying off and talking about something else. For my organization, I found myself dividing my sections and appropriately connecting them.

• What led to these changes?

After reading the peer review and then returning and reading my paper again, I realized that a lot of the things that the reviewer acknowledged were problematic with the continuity of the paper.

• How do these changes affect your credibility as an author?

I don't think these changes affected my credibility that much because I didn't add anything that added or took away from my credibility.

• How will these changes better address the audience or venue?

These changes will better address the audience by talking about the actual debate instead of diverting the discussion to something else. I also think that these changes will also fit more with the venue due to the fact that articles on slate tend to focus more on the actual debate instead of going off on a tangent.

• How did you reconsider sentence structure?

Before I actually sat down and wrote my paper, I thought about how I wanted my paper to sound and thought about the certain sentence structures. I decided to take on simple sentence structures to keep my audience engaged and interested.

• How did these changes assist your audience in understand your purpose?

I think that these changes helped my audience understand my purpose by keeping them interested and engage in the text. This allows for them to understand things a lot easier and process the information I give them better because they are small tidbits at a time.

• Did you ever reconsider the conventions of the particular genre in which you are writing?

Before I actually started writing, I wrote down all of the conventions I needed to use so I did not need to return and go back and reconsider them.

• How does the process of reflection help you reconsider your identity?

I think that after reflecting on my writing, I see myself to be really a heavy planner and that can be seen in the previous questions that show that I like to plan out before I actually start writing.

Reflection on Project 3 Draft

In this post I will be providing links to the commentary I have done on other peoples project drafts. I will also be answering questions about my draft and my process for drafting.

Swearingen, Johnathan, "Quantum-Physics" uploaded 22 February 2008 via deviantart.com. Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 3.0 License.

I review both Lawrence's and Isaak's drafts.

1) The only person to review my draft was Victoria Snapp.

2) I found Victoria's comments on my article to be quite helpful specifically the discussion about my purpose. I found that after looking back over my article it did seem to be more focused around the difficulty of scientific interaction instead of the quantum consciousness debate. The vast majority of what she commented on was what I was hoping for like appealing to a larger audience with the humor. She comments a lot on the humor in my paper which I hoped is what would draw people in and keep them interested in it, which she was.

3) The section that I need the most work on is the purpose section. I will take care of this by either adding another section about the debate itself or possibly adding more on the debate at hand in one of the paragraphs. I also think that I need to stay focused on the the topic and not go off on tangents about useless information and jokes.

4) I wasn't able to attend any meetings because the times that I would be able to go were taken by the time I got around to RSVPing, however after looking at the peer reviews of my article I feel very good about the direction of my paper.  I think that there is a little bit more content I need to add but the vast majority of my argument is complete. It seems that it is very humor driven which is what I wanted so possibly looking a bit more at how to revise the humor or focus it on the topic and not stray away from it.

Draft of Public Argument

In this post I have included a link to my draft of a public argument and have also indicated what I need people to look over.

The link is HERE

I would like feedback on how clear my argument is. This genre tends to be medium length but is intended to be easy to read, engaging and all around fun.  So if you are not interested in the topic or if the writing itself seems really dry let me know and I'll try to fix it. I am also beginning to upload graphic onto the project so there is a possibility that it may be better after the graphics have been put on. As always thank you very much.

Project 3 Outline

In this post I have provided a link to my outline for my public speech.

Here is the outline

My Rhetorical Action Plan

In this post I will be discussing my audience through a series of 5 questions. I will then be discussing my genre and providing links to various examples. To conclude this post I will be discussing possible actions and reactions against my type of writing.

Setaou, Hervé "Dying (plasma) Star" September 5, 2015 via Flickr. Creative commons license.

Audience

• My audience probably does not know much about the topic of quantum consciousness but I am essentially using this topic as a jumping off point for talking about what caused this problem. They may be more people who know about the more quantum aspect of the controversy but other than that it is not assumed that they have any superior knowledge on the subject.
• My audience will generally be well educated and will most likely be interested in physics. In addition they will probably be into various forms of humor.
• I think the most effective form of arguing will be through logic and pathos. These two combined keep the reader interested as well as informed making it easy for people to absorb the argument.
• I think that graphs will not  be as useful as maybe more interesting pictures or funny cartoons because there are plenty of funny cartoons that touch on the cause and might be better at conveying the message than words.
• Hopefully my audience is listening to my argument because it points out flaws in the way that we approach science nowadays. I do not know what my argument would motivate my audience to do but I hope it encourages them to think about science as a process and collaboration not just a single person coming up with entire theories.

Genre

Opinion Pieces

Scary Politics

Make Peer Review More Public

• The function of this genre is to argue an authors point in a funny and exciting way
• This genre is generally used on Slate.com as a means of arguing a point for an author.
• This genre mainly utilizes logos and pathos to convey its message.
• This genre generally has some form of picture or a fun, exciting graphic of some kind that catches the readers attention.
• This genre generally has a more informal, funny tone to it and that is what I want to use. 

Straight up Facts

Social Stingers

The Sad Truth About Zonkeys and Ligers

• The function of this genre is to convey lots of facts at once to the audience that it being considered.
• This genre is often used in more academic magazines as well as newspapers, online journals and online blogging.
• The main rhetorical appeal for this genre is logos due to the large amount of fact being presented and backed up scientific research.
• This genre generally sports a more logical graphic like graphs and charts and analytical pictures.
• This genre uses definitely an informal tone which is accompanied by a rather academic undertone.

Positive Reactions

The positive reactions that I want to come from my argument are:

1. General awareness of how science is take: giant collaboration.
2. Understanding that there needs to be more conversations between various fields of science and not just retained to one subject.
3. Attempting to find ways to solve the issue of cross-disciplinary communication.

Negative Reactions

Some of the expected negative reactions that might come from this argument are:

1. Disagreement that there needs to be more communication between various fields of science. 
2. An even more polarized scientific community where each branch keeps to itself.
3. Blaming one field in particular for the problems of miscommunication between the fields.

Analyzing My Genre

In this post I will be giving 5 different examples of my genre and provide concise answers to several questions.

Scary Politics

Make Peer Review Public

Do Science and Religion Conflict

Religious Rants in the Classroom

Doubt Denies Denial

Social Context

• These genres are typically set on the internet specifically slate.com.

• The subject of these types of genres tend to be science; however anything can be the subject of this type of genre.

• Science writers and commentators use this genre as a way to commentate on science.  In addition to this many different writers and commentators use this genre.

• This genre is used when someone is commentating on something. It is typically used as a light-hearted commentary that easily gets across the message without being too serious.

Rhetorical Patterns of the Genre

• Pictures and commentary are the main parts of this type of genre. Also included in this type of genre are jokes and general information and contextualization of the subject at hand are useful.

• There tends to be a general trend of starting with some simple facts and logos appeals, then appealing to the ethos. This tends to be the general trend with pathos added throughout the piece to add humor and light-heartedness. These threes appeals tend to be spread quite equally however it seems as though the logical side and emotional side are weighted much more heavily than the ethical side.

• The way this genre starts is usually through contextualization of the issue and then continues onto the authors opinion on the issue. After that there is usually a picture and then some snarky comment and the author concludes the piece by giving a possible solution or not even a solution just more snarky commentary.

•  The sentences in these articles share a similar brevity and straightforwardness. In addition to this the sentences seem to be somewhat snarky in the good way.

• This type of genre uses a lot of technical language incorporated with lots of soft language. There is a very strange combination of both academic and technical language with humorous language.

Patterns in the Social Context

• This genre includes mainly people who have some what of a technical background in the subject that the article is about and people who are interested in the subject. It excludes people who have no clue about what the author is talking about or are not that well educated.

• This genre encourages readers to get a joy out of reading the article while at the same time taking away a new knowledge of the subject.

• The people who use this genre tend to have the assumption that the audience they are talking to are fairly well educated and have a liking for humor, even if it may be a little off sometimes.

• This genre treats knowledge and humor as most important in the article. It does this for rhetorical strategies as well as keeping the audience engaged. This genre favors formality the least because it focuses so heavily on keeping the audience engaged and excited about reading.

Considering Types

In this post I will be figuring out which of the types of arguments I will be using and why I chose that particular type.

Garcia, Javier, "Broken Text" Uploaded 19 Dec 2005 via flickr.com, Attribution noncommercial 2.0 Generic.

For my argument type I think that I will use is the causal argument because it fits best with the purpose I am trying to propose. I chose this because I think knowing where and how the debate started is helpful in finding a solution to the problem. I do not know of any possible solutions to this problem besides not getting into fights with other disciplines so I do not think that a proposal argument will be helpful here. There are also no current solutions to this debate there for both the evaluative and refutation types, there is nothing to evaluate or refute. Finally the position type is not helpful for the same reason that the evaluative and refutation types are not helpful. This leaves me with just arguing about what caused this argument, which is actually exactly what this type of debate needs added to it as opposed to just the arguments by both the neuroscience and physics fields.

Analyzing purpose

In this article I have created a Coggle that examines the purpose of my argument and will also examine the audience that will likely take action for my purpose.

Kisiel, Elliot, "Purpose", Screenshot of my screen 3 November 2015
 

For my audience I think that there is a vast number of people in the science community who would be interested in my piece and would be likely to take action. Slate.com is a great place for this because it combines both novice people who are interested in science as well as people who are scientist. Slate.com has a large amount of people who are scientist and who visit the science portion of their website.

Analyzing Context

In this post I will be answering questions concerning the context of the argument I am involved in.

Lumu, "The Unofficial Context Logo" uploaded 22 April 2009 via wikipedia.com, Attribution-sharealike 3.0 unported.

• What are the key perspectives of the debate you are studying?

Two of the major perspectives involved in this debate are the physics perspective and the neurological perspective. The physics perspective argument claims that the argument that quantum consciousness is nonexistent, while the neuroscience perspective argues that there are vibrations that cause consciousness.

• What are the major points of contention or disagreement?

The major points of contention between the two perspectives is that one argues that there is such thing as quantum particles creating quantum consciousness while the other claims that things like that do not exist.

• What are possible points of agreement?

Possible points of agreement are that there are quantum vibrations in the brain. This is possibly the only thing that the two perspective agree on.

• What are the ideological differences?

The ideological differences is that one of the perspectives is centered around the brain and what happens inside of the brain while the others focus mainly on the physical particles not their implementation on the brain. 

• What actions do the perspectives ask their audience take?

Both sides want their audiences to agree with their position. For the neuroscientists they do this by asking their audience to specifically research what the possibility of quantum mechanics on the brain could mean for the future of consciousness. For physicist, who are more recluse ask their audience to recognize that there is no such thing as quantum consciousness.

• What perspectives are useful in supporting your own argument?

I think the perspectives that are most useful in supporting my arguments are the physics perspectives because they tend to be the ones reacting to the perspectives of the neuroscientists.

• What perspectives will be your greatest threat?

The most dangerous perspectives for me will be the perspectives of the neuroscientist because they often try to make the physicist look as though they are incredible and crazy.