Critical thinking for Students (6 page)
Read Critical thinking for Students Online
Authors: Roy van den Brink-Budgen
Here’s an exercise to practise the finding of assumptions:
Find as many assumptions as you can in this argument. Use the negative test to check each one. (You can find some analysis to help you on p.113.)
Doing gymnastics in schools results in thousands of injuries to students a year. PE teachers need to be trained better in order to reduce the risk of injury to students as a result of doing gymnastics.
At the end of Chapter 3 we had looked at arguments with more than one reason and more than one conclusion. We had worked out how to show the structure of these arguments. We’re now going to start adding in some more possible parts and features of argument.
Look at the next example:
We are increasingly being told that the use of suncreams will protect our skin from the sun. However, there is a lot of evidence that suncreams might not work as well as they are supposed to. So we should be even more careful to ensure that we don’t expose our skin to the sun for very long.
The argument is a very simple one. The second sentence provides the reason for the conclusion in the third sentence. So what is the significance of the first sentence? As you can see, it’s referring to a claim that goes against the direction of the argument itself. This gives us the clue as to the significance of this first sentence. Another word for ‘against’ is ‘counter’ as in ‘counter-terrorism’.
This first sentence is an example of what is called a
counter-claim
: it is a claim that goes against the main direction of the argument. So why is it there? It’s because on occasions someone might choose to give the direction of the other side of the argument in order to lead us into their own argument. It can provide a context. ‘Some people say this, but …’ It can even have the function of giving emphasis to an argument. ‘Some people say this, but I’m going to show why they’re wrong.’ It’s a familiar method of arguing.
Sometimes the counter-claim is more developed.
Suncreams with a high SPF (sun protection factor) such as 50+ are seen as providing very effective protection against being burned by the sun. Thus it is recommended that people should make sure that they use suncreams with an SPF of at least 50 (and preferably 70+) if they (and especially their young children) are out in the sun. However, this recommendation is a problem. Many suncreams have SPFs which are not accurate. In addition, people tend to put too little suncream on anyway, seriously reducing its effect.
What we now have is much more than a counter-claim being given. If you look at the first two sentences, they form an argument. The first sentence is the reason for the conclusion in the second. So instead of a counter-claim, we have a developed counter-argument. The author’s actual argument comes after this. The conclusion is the third sentence supported by the two reasons that follow.
It’s worth noting the use of the word ‘however’. This often marks where an author is about to start their own argument having given a counter-position (claim or argument). This might also be marked by ‘but’ or ‘on the other hand’ or ‘alternatively’.
In both examples, the author sets up the counter-position in order to knock it down. In many ways the counter-position is given to provide emphasis on its weakness. ‘Here is a position; here are very good reasons why it should not be accepted.’ Because of this, if there is a counter-position given, it will normally appear at the start of a short argument. It works better that way, given the way in which an author seeks to knock it down. In a longer argument, it could appear later but even then it will appear only to be knocked down.
We’ll return to counter-claims and counter-arguments later when we’re looking at both evaluation and production of arguments.
As we have seen, a very common feature of arguments is the use of evidence, which is used to support the conclusion(s). The way in which this is used, however, can vary. We’ve already seen examples of where evidence has been used as a reason. Here’s one we looked at in Chapter 3.
The use of sunbeds to get a tan should be banned. More than 10,000 people a year in the UK are developing malignant melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, with sunbeds being one of the main causes.
We saw this as a simple piece of argument in which the conclusion (first sentence) is drawn from one reason (second sentence). In this example, the reason was no more than a piece of evidence (or, as we discussed, two pieces of evidence).
But what’s happening in this next example?
Suncreams are often given inaccurate SPFs (four popular suncreams labelled as SPF15 were actually shown to provide an SPF of only 9 to 12), so people shouldn’t think that they are necessarily protected from sunburn when they use them.
In this argument, the author is arguing that, since suncreams are often given inaccurate SPFs, people shouldn’t think that using them will necessarily protect them. So what’s the function of the specific evidence/examples given in the brackets?
It obviously provides some support for the claim that suncreams are often given inaccurate SPFs. It isn’t a separate reason but is it a necessary part of the reasoning? The answer is clearly no: it strengthens the force of the reason but is not necessary for the reasoning. So here we have an example where an evidence-claim is not being used as a reason but acts merely to support a wider evidence-claim.
You will have seen that we’ve used both ‘evidence’ and ‘example’ in looking at the content of arguments. Is there a difference between the two? The answer is both yes and no. Let’s see how.
Examples are straightforwardly a type of evidence. To try to hold the line between them, as if examples are not evidence, is a fool’s errand. Now you’ll find some fools in the world of Critical Thinking (as in other worlds), but we don’t want to run their errands for them.
Let’s say that we wanted to use evidence on health care in southern African nations to argue about the way in which what’s spent on health care is a crucial aspect of people’s health. Let’s say that, in this argument, you gave evidence on Swaziland as a country with a poor health record and poor levels of spending. What’s the difference between the evidence on southern African nations and that on Swaziland? Only that of the scope of the two. Evidence on Swaziland is, if you like, an example of the wider evidence. But then so too is the example of southern African states an example of evidence on all of Africa. And, of course, evidence on Africa is an example of evidence on all countries. So, as you can see, the distinction between the two keeps slipping through our fingers.
Sometimes examples can be used as reasons; sometimes evidence can be used as reasons; sometimes they can both support reasons. It all depends on how they’re being used.
The destruction of much of the European Jewish populations in the Holocaust demonstrates how easy it can be for ordinary people (shopworkers, teachers, clerks, postal workers, and so on) to carry out unbelievable cruelties against others. We must seek to educate people about the Holocaust so that nothing like it can ever happen again.
In this argument, we have evidence on the Holocaust used to draw a conclusion about ‘nothing like it’. Within the evidence there are examples given. At two levels, then, we have examples. The second is pretty obvious – examples of ‘ordinary people’ are given. The first is the use of the evidence of the Holocaust itself. It could be seen as an example of ‘unbelievable cruelties’. In this argument the evidence of the Holocaust is used as the reason for the conclusion. The examples of ordinary people are not used as a reason, but to give emphasis. (How can a postal worker shoot pregnant women, smash a child’s head against a wall, kick an old person to death?)
You can see how this same argument could go through a number of layers and yet still be arguing for the same thing.
The destruction of much of the Polish Jewish people (including those in Warsaw, Krakow, and Lodz) in the Holocaust demonstrates how easy it can be for ordinary people (shopworkers, teachers, clerks, postal workers, and so on) to carry out unbelievable cruelties against others. We must seek to educate people about the Holocaust so that nothing like it can ever happen again.
The destruction of so many Jewish families in the Holocaust demonstrates how easy it can be for ordinary people (shopworkers, teachers, clerks, postal workers, and so on) to carry out unbelievable cruelties against others. We must seek to educate people about the Holocaust so that nothing like it can ever happen again.
The death of Anne Frank in the Holocaust is of course a well-known example of the tragedy of this event. Though she is only one example amongst millions of others, we could write this argument using her story as a reason.
The death of Anne Frank shows how ordinary people can carry out unbelievable cruelties against others. Though she was only a defenceless girl, she suffered hugely in the camps where she was taken. We must seek to educate people about the Holocaust so that nothing like it can ever happen again.
As we can see, arguments can use evidence (including examples) in all sorts of ways. In fact, a very high proportion of arguments have a combination of evidence (including examples) and inference.
Having spent a little time looking at the role of evidence in arguments, we’re now going to look in some detail at how we might evaluate this evidence.
We have spent some time peering into arguments, asking questions like, ‘What’s going on here?’ It’s time now to move beyond these questions and to start to ask the question, ‘
Should
this be going on?’
We’ve looked at lots of examples where the author is saying here are my reasons for arguing this. These examples might look as if they’re an equation in which R+R = C. But most examples you’ll come across (and use) won’t be like an equation.
In a recent UK survey, 61 per cent of the people who took part in it said that they were not prepared to pay for the upkeep of the Royal Family. Therefore most people in the UK are not prepared to pay for the upkeep of the Royal Family.
In this example, the reason (the evidence-claim) is not equivalent to the inference drawn from it. You can see that the shift from 61 per cent of people who took part in the recent UK survey to ‘most people in the UK’ is quite a jump. It might well be that the survey was a very good indicator of the attitude of people on this subject. However, for various reasons, it might not. Perhaps the survey wasn’t accurate. We’ll return to this general point below.