Intellectual Standards. Coursework Example.

"Temperatures in some portions of the factory exceed 100 degrees, air circulation is limited, and there is no safe water for drinking." This statement violates the intellectual standards of accuracy and clarity. Its hard to verify the credibility and evidence of the information being provided. We are therefore tempted to ask such questions as which sections of the factory have extreme temperatures? Can we verify the state of air circulation in the facility? Are we convinced that the water is polluted? To correct the error in the statement, more information and evidence should be provided to allow the prospective reader or listener to be acutely aware of the state and conditions of the workplace.

The intellectual standards of Breadth have been violated in the statement, "Think about it: a little girl, the age of an average fifth-grader, working hours without a break.It's obscene, and it has to stop!" The author's argument is shallow because it looks at the incidence at a single point of view. Another point of view could have been, to seek and find out what drives the little girls into industrial labor. Could it be forced labor from their guardians or parents? Or how can the issue of child labor be addressed? This kind of reasoning shows, narrow-mindedness since it fails to consider alternative perspective viewpoints. The error can be eliminated by offering at least three standpoints.

"..we can demand that Cromwell obtain its logo merchandise only from garment companies with socially responsible labor practices, and we can refuse to wear or purchase any Cromwell clothing until the college switches to an acceptable apparel supplier." The concluding statement seems illogical and should be left out because it conflicts the initial statement which gives a clear standpoint of the demands. The statement is misleading and contradicts the intellectual standards of depth in critical thinking.

"And I call upon you to boycott all Cromwell's apparel-not to wear any sweatshirts or T-shirts you may already have, and to purchase anymore-until we see a positive change." This phrase does not meet the intellectual standards of fairness because it is manipulative and does not take into account the credibility of the assumptions being made and their implications. This can be fixed by avoiding statements of prejudice and faulty inferences.

Fallacies

"Knowing that we now know, if we continue to wear and buy Cromwell logo apparel, we become accomplices in the abusive employment practices of Transterra Textiles." The speaker uses appeals of peer pressure in trying to draw the students into the standpoint. This violates the fallacy of emotive language which can be fixed by avoiding the use of collective pronouns in making generalizations.

The standard practice and generalization fallacies have been broken in the first paragraph of the essay where the speaker uses the phrase "Friends I know that many of you saw the article." The speaker assumes that the entire audience has a habit of reading articles while in reality, this is not the case. The phrase "I know that many of you saw the article," should be left out to fix the problem in the statement.

The phrase, "we have a choice to do what we can in support of global economic justice, or become the oppressor." is a false analogy and a post hoc. There is little significance in the similarity between to directly link the two statements of the sentence. This kind of reasoning is irrational and shallow because there is a possibility the two statements are unrelated due to many other factors.