Read Critical thinking for Students Online
Authors: Roy van den Brink-Budgen
There are times when the ‘if … then’ form of arguing is used in looking at the meaning and significance of words. Here’s an example:
If we define poverty as the absence of want, then we have a problem. Because we then need to define what we mean by ‘want’.
This way of using the hypothetical is often used, as here, to highlight a problem with the way in which terms are used. You can see this particular argument heading off in the same direction as it started.
… Because we then need to define what we mean by ‘want’. If we take it to mean no more than physical wants such as food, water, and shelter, then there are further problems…
Sometimes we find someone using this hypothetical approach to the meaning of a term to emphasise the significance of the Shakespearian question, ‘What’s in a name?’ In the next example, we find a French proposal to pay classes of students money (up to €10,000 per group), in order to achieve class attendance and performance targets. It was started in October 2009 in some schools in Paris. The scheme was introduced to combat increasing levels of high school dropout. It was criticised for, as one group put it, ‘buying’ students, and, as another put it, for being ‘a perversion of the school mission’.
The head of the greater Paris district where it was being introduced is M.
Jean-Michel
Blanquer. He defended it in an interesting way:
If we had called it a scholarship everyone would have been on board.
This raises an important point. ‘Scholarships’ are seen as a good thing: students get money in recognition of either past or predicted performance. They are a reward for being gifted and/or talented. ‘Buying’ students is seen as going against what education is meant to be about. You can see how this example shows that the choice of a word can change the nature of an argument.
Usefully for us, M. Blanquer ends with another hypothetical:
If it doesn’t work, we will try something else.
Perhaps like calling the payments ‘scholarships’? Interestingly, a scheme in New York which offered up to $1000 per student for passing exams was given the title ‘Rewarding Achievement’. This has been seen as successful, and perhaps part of its success is the name itself. One of the people behind the scheme spoke of wanting to ‘democratize’ success – another good word.
We have seen that the use of a word or term can change the way in which an argument is perceived. In 2009, the people of the UK were promised a ‘barbecue summer’ by the Met Office (the organisation that forecasts the weather). Though the summer turned out be warmer than average, it was also wetter. But what exactly is a ‘barbecue summer’? One where you have more barbecues than average (whatever that is)? Here’s another example. It’s from James, of Manchester, commenting on the
Daily Mail
website:
Every other person you meet is a public bureaucrat.
The term ‘bureaucrat’ is normally a term of abuse. We have in particular the term ‘faceless bureaucrats’. Though the term has a neutral meaning – an official in a government department – (unlike ‘scrounger’ or ‘waster’ or ‘hero’), it is one that is often used to condemn the employment of people who are not in the private sector. (So James’s word ‘public’ is unnecessary: an example of a tautology.) Interestingly, on the same day on the same website, we find Noah, from Bolton (a popular place for contributors!), clarifying the content of the term ‘bureaucrat’ for people like James from Manchester:
(These are people) like nurses, primary school teachers, bin men, doctors…
So Critical Thinking requires us to look at how words are used. An argument can depend on a particular meaning of a term (normally assumed, but sometimes explained, and sometimes considered in a hypothetical way).
To see how this can be important, consider how we might define ‘cheating’. To help you, here’s the start of an argument:
‘Cheating’ can be seen as attempting to achieve something you wouldn’t be able to achieve without doing it. But, if this is the definition, then there are lots of everyday things that fall within it…
This discussion of definitions takes us to a small but useful area of Critical Thinking:
looking at what are called necessary and sufficient conditions. There are four permutations here.
Something can be necessary, but not sufficient.
It is a necessary condition of being able to vote in public elections in the UK that one is aged 18 or over.
With this example, we can see that being aged 18 or over is an essential requirement of being able to vote in parliamentary and local elections. But it is not sufficient. Whether or not they’re 18 or over, someone in prison is not allowed to vote. Neither is the monarch. Neither is someone who is not entered on the current Register of Electors.
Something can be sufficient but not necessary.
If you are the eldest son of the monarch in the UK, then you are heir to the throne.
Being the eldest son of the monarch is enough to make you heir to the throne. But this sufficient condition is not necessary. You could be heir to the throne if your parental monarch had no sons and you are the eldest daughter. If the monarch has no children, then their eldest brother is the heir, and so on.
Something can be both necessary and sufficient.
With breakfast cereals by Nestlé, only packets that have a green flash across them show that ‘they are nothing but whole grain’.
So, without the green flash, they will not be just whole grain. But since packets with the green flash are whole grain, the green flash is both necessary and sufficient to show this.
Another example of a condition being both necessary and sufficient is:
Having a valid ticket for the UK National Lottery showing all six winning numbers for the relevant week and winning at least a share of the jackpot.
Something can be neither necessary nor sufficient.
Having a degree in law does not guarantee that you can be a solicitor in the UK.
Having a degree in law is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for being a solicitor. People can become solicitors with a degree in other subjects, provided they have done an additional course in law. People with a degree in law cannot automatically become solicitors.
Living a long life is neither essential nor a guarantee for achieving greatness.
There are many examples of people having achieved greatness in short lives. Good examples are the amazing Mozart (dead at 35); the sublime John Keats (dead as young as 25); the brilliant Alexander the Great (dead, with an empire sorted, at 32); Jesus (dead at around 33, having changed the world).
Living to a ripe old age might bring all sorts of things but it doesn’t have to bring greatness. Annie Butler had been the second-oldest woman in Britain until she died in 2009 aged 112. She might well have brought all sorts of delights to the world, but will not be remembered for achieving ‘greatness’.
So why should we fret about looking at necessary and sufficient conditions? Because it can be a very useful way of looking at the significance of some claims.
Child poverty has been particularly high in the UK because of a combination of factors, including a high number of children living with lone parents and the relatively low percentage of lone parents who work. (‘What will it take to end child poverty?’ The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2006)
We’ve already briefly met the problem of defining poverty (when we were looking at hypothetical reasoning above). Here it is again. What is a necessary condition of a child being seen as being in poverty? (Level of income certainly, but is that all? Is it also to do with the school they attend, the diet that they have, and so on?) What is a sufficient condition? The Joseph Rowntree Foundation takes it as being a child that is in a household in which the income is less than 60 per cent of median income (median income is that of the person/household in the middle of the distribution of income).
Using the necessary and sufficient condition approach can, then, point us to ask useful questions. Try it out with a hefty word like ‘democracy’. Here are two widely differing positions:
North Korea has a constitution which is described as ‘democratic’. According to the Constitution, it is based on universal suffrage (all of those 17 or over have the vote) and secret ballot.
North Korea is rated the least democratic in the world (187th out of 187) by the Economist Intelligence Unit democracy index. It scores 0.86 out of a possible 10.00, including a score of 0.00 for civil liberties and the same for the electoral system.
So what is a necessary condition of a democracy? (Or, more usefully, what are necessary conditions?) Is there a sufficient condition?
Anyway, you might be interested to know that Sweden is rated the best democracy in the world (or, if you like, the most democratic, with an astonishing score of 9.88, followed by Norway, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Denmark). The UK languishes at 21st, primarily because of the low levels of voting and involvement with political parties (a score for this of 5.00, lower than Iraq’s 6.67).
Thinking about ‘democracy’ takes us nicely on to another feature of some arguments. This is the use of
principles
. We met these briefly in Chapter 1 and you might remember that we described them as general statements of what ought to be done or ought to happen. We saw that ‘cheating in sport can never be justified’ was an example.
Principles can be used as a reason in an argument; they can also be argued for (being then the conclusion of an argument). They can, like any other claim, be assumed. And this point about being like any other claim is an important one.
They are, at one level, a very significant claim. There’s a big difference in significance between saying ‘we should treat all people with respect’ and ‘Eating certain sweets can make Ruby hyperactive’. The first claim has a universal application; the second applies only to Ruby. But beyond this significance, there is the point that both claims can operate equally as a reason in an argument.
We should treat all people with respect. Therefore people convicted of even very serious offences should be respected in the same way as those who have not.
Eating certain sweets can make Ruby hyperactive. Therefore we should ensure that Ruby isn’t given these sweets.
Returning to the issue of a ban on cheating as a principle, we can see it being used as a reason in the following argument. It introduces a counter-argument that cheating in sport shouldn’t be seen as unacceptable and also looks at a
tu quoque
defence of it. But it rejects this defence and, using the principle as a reason, concludes that we should seek to stop it.
Some people say that we should regard cheating in sport as nothing more than something we have to live with. It’s just like everything else. People cheat by not paying their tax, by driving too fast, by using their mobile phone in an exam. But just because people cheat in everyday life doesn’t mean that we should put up with it in sport. The number of sports in which cheating is being discovered is growing all the time. There are some that everyone hears about, such as athletics and cycling. But these are because we can prove cheating by testing for various substances such as steroids. There are plenty of examples where you can’t find cheats by looking in a test tube. There are footballers diving; there are cricketers deliberating losing a game because there are bets on that they will; there are nods and winks going on in horse racing. Just because cheating goes on in many different forms doesn’t make it right. Cheating is always wrong, whatever the sport, whatever the method used, whatever the reason for it. There must be a determined effort to stop it as much as we can.
In the next example, the author argues against the principle, seeking to use a
tu
quoque
position that, since cheating goes on in all walks of life, it isn’t necessarily wrong in sport.
Though cheating is often seen as wrong, there are many examples in everyday life which show that people don’t see it like this. As
The New York Times
put it, ‘College students take Ritalin to improve their academic performance. Musicians take beta-blockers to improve their onstage performance.
Middle-aged
men take Viagra to improve their sexual performance. Shy people take Paxil to improve their social performance. The difference is that if athletes want to get performance-enhancing drugs they go to the black market. If the rest of us want performance-enhancing drugs, we go to our family doctor’. So to say that all these things are wrong is to take up a very odd position. In this way, we can see that cheating, whether in sport or in other contexts, isn’t always wrong.
One of the things to remember with principles is that they are very demanding reasons. They don’t allow for exceptions (except any mentioned in the principle), whereas other types of claim aren’t so exclusive. Perhaps we can show that Ruby’s hyperactivity has not got anything to do with eating sweets: perhaps she behaves like this because that’s what people expect. (There are all sorts of
post hoc
issues going on here.) But you can’t start moving from ‘poverty shouldn’t ever be tolerated’ to ‘perhaps we can allow lazy people to be poor because they deserve it’. A principle remains a reason, with potentially massive significance. Thus it allows no contradiction.
In the following argument, the principle is not stated: it is assumed.
It has been shown very clearly that fish can feel pain in the same way that all other animals can. It is obvious then that fishing of whatever sort cannot be allowed.
The assumed principle is that ‘it is wrong to inflict pain on all animals’. This principle sits at the centre of this argument, allowing no exceptions. We can’t say ‘except for catching fish and then putting them back’. We certainly couldn’t say ‘except for satisfying our need for Omega-3’ (unless we get it from fish that have died from natural causes). The power of a principle in an argument, allowing only for consistency, is clear.
We’ve reached the lofty heights of principles, and been taken above the clouds. Unfortunately, it’s time now to descend. And not just to descend to where we were before, but to go down to a world of possible liars and fraudsters.