Chapter 4 Critical Thinking PDF

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Chapter 4 Critical Thinking (Manias, 12/2017, p. 73)

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth—more than ruin—more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.” (Manias, 12/2017, p. 73)

The Problem with Money Mike and Kim have been married for about a year. They fell in love at first sight at a high school graduation party, and married a few months later after a brief courtship. Both believed they were soul mates destined for one another. But life so far has not been “happily ever after.” The first year was difficult in many ways. Neither of them entered the marriage with much money, and neither knew much about how to handle finances. Their parents were not happy with their decision to marry so young and so quickly and have not been very supportive emotionally or financially. Kim and Mike have both been working full-time while attending the local college. They each receive a little financial aid, but it comes with the stipulation that they remain full-time students.

The newlyweds live in a one-bedroom apartment in a trendy new complex across town from the college. Their combined incomes are barely enough to cover the rent, a lease payment on a new fire-red Camaro convertible (also love at first sight), tuition, books, and basic living expenses. But the small apartment came unfurnished, so the couple has felt compelled to rely on credit cards to buy the new furniture they needed. Borrowed money also paid for some of the wedding costs, a honeymoon cruise to the Bahamas, and for many other expenses (eating out regularly, Mike’s golf hobby, Kim’s computer equipment, clothes for work and school, etc.). Needless to say, they now find themselves drowning in debt. Kim pays the bills but has been finding it harder and harder just to make the minimum monthly payments.

Key Terms

Logic

The branch of philosophy that deals with the principles of good thinking and reasoning processes. Argument A series of statements that work together to establish the truth of some point. Critical thinking The active and systematic process of communication, problem solving, evaluation, analysis, synthesis, and reflection, both individually and in community, to foster understanding, support sound decision making, and guide action. Fallacy An illogical argument, often appearing logical at first glance, involving a statement or statements that in one way or another deceive or mislead. Critical thinking model:

Identification Research Analysis Application Decision-making Evaluation Reflection

This month Kim was dismayed to discover that they owe almost $2,000 to the IRS, due in eight weeks. She still had not fully paid off the money they borrowed for Christmas, and she could not see where they would get the money for taxes. As their financial situation has worsened, the tension level in their marriage has increased. Lately the two have been fighting more, and they have been too stressed out from school, work, and financial worries to have much romantic time. It’s as if an invisible wall has started to form between them. Tonight confronting this issue becomes unavoidable. Kim told Mike that she could not make the minimum payments again this month and that she did not know how they would be able to pay their taxes. Mutually frustrated and afraid, the couple did not handle the discussion very well. Although they both wanted to find a way out of this financial nightmare, they also found themselves blaming each other for the mess they were in. The conversation became an argument, which spiraled into a full-blown verbal fight. Regrettable statements were made rashly, feelings were hurt, and the wall between them only grew more formidable. Later, crying alone in her bedroom, Kim realized that they had not come up with a single strategy to improve their financial situation.

Chief Learning Outcome To be able to identify, evaluate, and apply key components in logical reasoning, including the critical thinking model. (Manias, 12/2017, pp. 7374)

Logic and Critical Thinking

“Man’s greatness lies in the power of thought.”

—Pascal

Have you ever found yourself in a situation like this, in which you started out trying to solve a problem but ended up trying to win a fight? Have you ever found yourself in a dilemma that required a well-thought-out answer, and you just couldn’t figure out where to start? Have you ever heard someone make a point that you knew had to be wrong, but you couldn’t quite put your finger on why it was wrong? If you can relate to any or all of these statements, then you will find this chapter on logic and critical thinking enlightening.

Chief Learning Outcome To apply critical thinking skills and logical reasoning in making ethical arguments that avoid fallacious reasoning.

As you have learned, ethics is the branch of philosophy that studies questions about moral right and wrong. Logic is one of the other subfields of philosophy. In logic, people search for the best ways to think and reason because some ways of thinking work better and are more effective than others. Ethics and logic are separate academic disciplines, so this chapter does not directly focus on ethics or on a particular ethical issue. But logic is a primary tool of philosophy. Philosophers attempt to use logic to find answers to life’s important and complex questions. More specifically, in ethics, we try to use logical thinking processes to find answers to important moral questions. One common misconception about the use of logic and arguments in ethics is that the main goal is to win arguments. It is not. Ideally, our main goal is to find truth, or at least the best answers we can find for our problems. But the search for truth doesn’t always seem to be the central goal of argument, does it? Sometimes we grow afraid that we might lose an argument and some prestige or power in the process. So we start focusing more on winning the argument than on finding the best possible answers. We make emotional statements rather than logical ones. We attack the other person instead of focusing on the problem at hand. We may find ourselves trying to manipulate, coerce, and even trick the other person into agreeing with us. This is not the purpose of arguments in ethics. Again, the central aim should be to find truth, and you can’t have it both ways. If one’s main goal is to win arguments, then the search for truth has to take a backseat. You may “win” the argument while knowing somewhere inside that your position was not right. On the other hand, winning arguments isn’t all that important if you are compelled to find truth. You find yourself listening to the points of view of others not to disprove them or defeat them but to learn from them. Sometimes you have to admit that your opinion on a question makes less logical sense than another opinion, so you change your mind. You probably find yourself talking less and listening more. This search for truth involves a process sometimes referred to as critical thinking. You have probably heard that phrase used in many of your academic courses, and it is an easier concept to understand than to do. Critical thinking is the active and systematic process of communication,

problem solving, evaluation, analysis, synthesis, and reflection, both individually and in community, to foster understanding, support sound decision-making, and guide action. Or to oversimplify the process a bit, one dimension of critical thinking is logical problem solving.

“Between truth and the search for truth, I opt for the second.”

—Bernard Berensen

When we do it well, this process is self-critical and self-adjusting. Reflective experience helps improve the critical thinking process, and critical thinking itself helps the person who uses it make better decisions. Critical thinking involves logic, but it is more than logic. It can include using stories, common sense, and perception as well. Critical thinking brings together our best skills and achievements to resolve problems. (Manias, 12/2017, pp. 74-76)

Arguments Logic and good reasoning are the keys that make this decision-making process work. The foundation of logic is an argument, a group of statements that work together to establish the truth of some point. Notice that an argument in logic is not what you might have first suspected. Many of us grew up with the assumption that arguments were emotional things. In arguments, we heard people yelling and sounding angry. Sometimes they called others hurtful names and lost their tempers. This is not how arguments should sound in logic. As you’ll see, emotionalism and name-calling are often telling signs that a person is not thinking and arguing logically at all. In logic, an argument is a way of proving, establishing, or testing truth. Done correctly, it shouldn’t be emotional at all. Consider these examples.

All planets are spheres. The Earth is a planet. Therefore, the Earth is a sphere.

Dishonesty is unethical. That mechanic lied to me about what needed to be fixed on my car. Therefore, the mechanic’s actions were unethical. Humans have a moral responsibility to be good stewards of the Earth we live on. Polluting the Earth’s natural resources is poor stewardship. Therefore, polluting the Earth’s natural resources is morally wrong. Or consider this statement that Kim might make to Mike in their financial discussion. “People who spend more money than they make will eventually face financial difficulties. We have been spending more than we have made ever since we got married. Therefore, it’s not surprising that we are facing financial difficulties now.”

“No fact can be real and no statement can be true unless it has sufficient reason why it should be thus and not otherwise.”

—Gottfried Wilhelm Von Liebnitz

The Three Parts of Arguments The first part of an argument is the premises. The premises are the reasons and evidence that are cited, directly or indirectly, to support the conclusion. The premises can include facts, perceptions, opinions, principles, rules, proverbs, advice, precedents, traditions, and any other factors that could help strengthen people’s confidence in an argument’s conclusion. Because premises make claims about the world around us and are meant to provide reasons to accept a conclusion, our chief concern is whether they are true. If the premises are true, then one condition for a good argument is satisfied. If the premises are false or cannot be proven true, then the argument in which they appear is dubious. Consider the premises from the preceding examples.

Are all planets, in fact, spherical? Is it true that the Earth is a planet? What reasons and evidence can be cited to back up those statements? Can we defend logically that all people should be honest? Is this just a statement of personal preference or cultural beliefs, or is it a universal principle? Is it an absolute principle, or would we allow for some situations in which lying might be permissible? If we would allow for certain exceptions, is a mechanic’s lying to a customer one of those? Is environmental pollution always a matter of poor stewardship of the planet? What about quality of life issues? If a certain amount of pollution were required to maintain a high quality of life for our society, would that justify the pollution?

“He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; he who dares not is a slave.”

—William Drummond

As you can already see determining whether the premises of an argument are true or false is not always a simple task. This process may require research and deep, analytical thinking. But there is really no shortcut if we stick to our goal of finding the truth. The second part of an argument is the structure, which refers to the nature of the logical relationship between the premises and the claim the argument purports to establish. It is obviously important that the premises of an argument are true, but it is just as essential that the statements have a logical connection with each other. Whole textbooks are written on the subject of argument structure, a subject that we cannot adequately explore here. There are, nevertheless, some general principles. The main principle is that statements in the premises should directly connect with the point the argument is meant to establish. Consider these examples of poor structure.

All planets are spheres. An orange is a sphere. Therefore, an orange is a planet. People should tell the truth. You have some flaws. Therefore, to be honest, I have to point out all of your flaws. People should be good stewards of the planet we live on. Mice live on the planet, too. Therefore, mice have a moral obligation not to pollute the planet.

Well, you get the point. Notice that in these examples, the premises are true. But the arguments still sound silly because the structure is flawed. The premises are not related in a way that makes logical sense. The third crucial element of any argument is the conclusion. It is the point that the premises were designed to support or demonstrate. An essential step is to be clear about what the conclusion is before any other parts of the argument are evaluated because the conclusion defines the argument. One must know where the argument is going before the other parts—the premises and structure—make sense at all. That is why both in conversation and in reading it is important to ask, “Where is this going?” or “What is the point?” The conclusion is often identified in our language by the beginning word “thus” or “therefore” or “finally.” Only when the conclusion, the real point of the argument, is clear, can the other parts of the argument be identified and evaluated given their purpose in supporting the conclusion. However, if there is no conclusion, or if it cannot be identified, then there is no argument in the first place.

“Ignorance never settles a question.”

—Unknown

Types of Arguments All arguments are either deductive or inductive. There are many different kinds of arguments in both of these categories, but a full exploration of each kind of argument is beyond the scope of this chapter. Regardless of the specific kind of argument, all genuine arguments are deductive or inductive. The principal differences between deductive and inductive arguments can be summed up as form and force. We’ll begin with a discussion of form because the form of the argument determines its rational force. The form of an argument refers to an argument’s structure. Deductive arguments have very rigid and formal structures—similar to mathematical equations. If an argument is deductive the premises and conclusion must interrelate. That is, the premises must be relevant to the other premises in the argument as well as the conclusion. When the premises and conclusion have such a relationship we say that the conclusion “follows from” the premises, or that the premises “entail” the conclusion. When deductive arguments are properly structured, they are truth preserving. If we put true premises into the argument it will yield a true conclusion. The fact that deductive arguments are truth preserving determines their force, as we’ll shortly see.

“I was there to follow orders, not to think.”

—John Dean, Watergate testimony

There are numerous basic truth-preserving deductive argument structures, but a classic Aristotelian form is called a syllogism. Syllogisms consist of two statements (premises) followed by a conclusion. Syllogisms must always consist of two premises and a conclusion; the pattern is very determinate. A common form of syllogism reasons from a rule statement, expressing a general proposition about how things are or should be, and a fact statement, asserting a state of affairs, to some particular conclusion. Consider the examples below:

Note the interrelationship between statements A, B, and C. Does that structure allow us any conclusion but the one the argument draws? Clearly not. This is what entailment is all about. If the premises of the syllogism are true, the conclusion must be true, too. Inductive arguments, on the other hand, do not have formulaic structures to which they must conform (although there are some common patterns). For example, premises in inductive arguments need not interconnect like deductive premises. Rather, inductive premises need only relate to the conclusion. In other words, it doesn’t matter in inductive arguments whether the premises are relevant to each other, just that they are relevant to the conclusion. Since inductive arguments lack the rigid formality of deductive arguments, inductive arguments are not truth

preserving, nor do they entail their conclusions. That is, it is possible for conclusion of an inductive argument to be false even if all the premises are true. At best, inductive conclusions are probably or likely to be true. A common form of inductive argument is what we call enumerative induction. Enumerative inductive arguments tend to reason from specific examples to more general conclusions; that is, given a number of specific instances or facts, we reason that further instances are likely to be “more of the same.” Consider:

(General)

Given the premises, chances are that if we were to look at other planets, they would be spherical (i.e., more of the same). But must it be the case that all planets are spherical? Maybe not. So the conclusion is probably true, but not “entailed” by the premises. The differences in form result in a difference in rational force or the degree to which one is rationally compelled to accept an argument’s conclusion. If a deductive argument has proper structure and true premises, the conclusion is guaranteed to be true because of the truthpreserving nature of deductive structures. That is, the conclusion is certain and reason demands that we accept its truth. Notice, though, that the argument must have proper structure and true premises to have this force; deductive arguments either prove their point or they don’t. There is no in-between. If the argument proves its point, though, we would be irrational to reject it. Inductive arguments have less force (or are weaker) because inductive argument patterns are not truth-preserving. At best, inductive arguments provide us with good reason to think that a conclusion is probable or likely to be true. So remember these key differences between deductive arguments and inductive arguments. With deductive arguments, the conclusion follows from the premises. There can only be one possible conclusion. But inductive arguments can only be probably or likely true, never guaranteed. Deductive arguments have a rigid, truth-preserving structure while inductive arguments can take a wide variety of forms.1 Note, though, that we don’t just want to learn to identify types of arguments. We also want to be able to assess them. Since arguments claim to establish truth, we need criteria to see whether deductive or inductive arguments do so successfully. Unsurprisingly, the criteria used to evaluate deductive arguments differ from the criteria used to assess inductive arguments. After all, they have different structures—so we need the right tool for the right job. The following section focuses on the logical standards arguments must meet to establish their conclusion.

Evaluating Arguments

Deductive Arguments

When evaluating deductive arguments, two central concepts are important:

Validity refers to the argument’s logical structure. A deductive argument is valid when the structure is logically correct. In other words, the premises are logically connected so that the conclusion necessarily follows. If the structure of the deductive argument is not logi...