The Benefit and Manner of Asking the Right Questions
\1. Contrast a world where no critical thinking is needed with the world we live in.
\2. Understand the role of experts in forming our beliefs and conclusions.
\3. Clarify the meaning of critical thinking.
\4. Distinguish between weak-sense and strong-sense critical thinking.
\5. Integrate the role of values with critical thinking.
\6. Identify techniques for using critical thinking as a conversation stimulus.
What Are the Issue and the Conclusion?
\1. Distinguish between types of issues.
\2. Discover the issue and conclusion.
\3. Integrate identification of the issue and conclusion into your own writing.
What Are the Reasons?
\1. Recognize the role of reasons and evidence in an argument.
\2. Comprehend the attributes of an argument.
\3. Distinguish between reasons and conclusions.
What Words or Phrases Are Ambiguous?
\1. Demonstrate an awareness of the multiple meaning of most words.
\2. Provide illustrations of the importance of discovering the precise intended meaning of a word prior to critically evaluating an argument.
\3. Demonstrate how to explain that the ambiguity needs to be clarified.
What Are the Value and Descriptive Assumptions?
\1. Explain the importance of locating the assumptions implicit in an
argument.
\2. Identify value assumptions in an argument.
\3. Distinguish between value and descriptive assumptions.
\4. Develop an appreciation of typical value conflict.
\5. Apply the clues for locating descriptive conclusions.
Are There Any Fallacies in the Reasoning?
\1. Practice the discovery of fallacies by evaluating assumptions.
\2. Become familiar with several important logical fallacies.
Answering our first four questions has been a necessary beginning to the evaluation process; we now move to questions requiring us to make judgments more directly and explicitly about the worth or the quality of the reasoning. Our task now is to separate the fool’s gold from the genuine gold. We want to isolate the best reasons—those that we want to treat most seriously.
Your first step at this stage of the evaluation process is to examine the reasoning structure to determine whether the communicator’s reasoning has depended on false or highly doubtful assumptions or has “tricked” you through either a mistake in logic or some form of deceptive reasoning.
In other words, this chapter is simply an additional component of the previous chapter’s discussion of descriptive and prescriptive assumptions.
Thus, we have adopted the strategy of emphasizing self-questioning strategies
Thus, we provide you with the names of fallacies as we identify the deceptive reasoning processes and encourage you to learn the names of the common fallacies described at the end of the chapter.
The Worth of Personal Experience, Case Examples, Testimonials, and Statements of Authority as Evidence
\1. Appreciate the fact/opinion distinction as a way of evaluating the sources of evidence.
\2. Acquire awareness of alternative sources of evidence and their worth as evidence for conclusions.
In this chapter and Chapter 8, we continue our focus on evaluation as we learn to ask critical questions about various kinds of evidence communicators use to strengthen their reasoning
Evidence is stronger when it gets closer to fact and farther away from mere opinion Evidence results from the systematic collection and organization of facts.
Evidence results from the systematic collection and organization of facts.
facts come in various strengths or probabilities
Opinions are often contrasted with facts “Look, don’t ask me why I say such things. They are simply my opinions.” An opinion might be the initial step in a productive conversation, but in the absence of reasons and evidence for its logic and accuracy, it is simply a mere opinion.
So where do we locate the factual claims that will move us away from mere opinions
As a critical thinker you need to be alert to the potential problems that can weaken evidence drawn from these sources.
Before we judge the persuasiveness of a communication, we need to
know which factual claims are most dependable. How do we determine dependability? We ask questions like the following:
What is your proof? How do you know that’s true?
Where’s the evidence? Why do you believe that?
Are you sure that’s true? Can you prove it?
There are three instances in which we will be most inclined to agree with a factual claim
\1. when the claim appears to be undisputed common knowledge, such as the claim “weight lifting increases muscular body mass”;
\2. when the claim is the conclusion from a well-reasoned argument; and
\3. when the claim is adequately supported by reasons that are well supported.
Our concern in this chapter is the third instance. Determining the adequacy of evidence requires us to ask, “How good is the evidence?” To answer this question, we must first ask, “What do we mean by evidence?”
In this chapter and in Chapter 8, we examine the kinds of questions we can ask of each type of evidence to help us decide its quality. Kinds of evidence examined in this chapter are personal experiences, case examples, testimonials, and appeals to authority.
Hasty Generalization
How Good Is the Evidence: Personal Observation and Research Studies?
\1. Acquire awareness of the role and dangers of personal observation as a source of evidence.
\2. Develop understanding of the problems associated with using research studies as evidence.
\1. Recognize the danger of biased and unknowable statistics.
\2. Increase understanding of the importance of alternative forms of averages.
\3. Become aware of the dangers of measurement errors.
\4. Recognize that a person using a statistic may conclude something quite different from what the statistic itself suggests.
You should not be very impressed by the above reasoning. The argument
might deceive us with statistics
What Significant Information Is Omitted?
\1. Recognize the inevitability of missing information in an argument.
\2. Develop the habit of asking questions to illuminate missing information.
What Reasonable Conclusions Are Possible?
\1. Become aware of the dangers of dichotomous thinking.
\2. Develop grey thinking rather than black-and-white thinking.
Speed Bumps Interfering with Your Critical Thinking
\1. Analyze the multiple obstacles to critical thinking.
\2. Identify the dangers of the social discomfort of asking critical questions, fast thinking, belief perseverance, answering the wrong question, egocentrism, and wishful thinking.
Diane K. Lofstrom Miniel, University of Nevada, Reno; Clarissa M. Uttley, Plymouth State University; John Saunders, Huntingdon College; Joshua Hayden, Cum berland University; and Leslie St. Martin, College of the Canyons.