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Claims: The Key Elements of Reasoning This chapter begins our in-depth exploration
of how to use reasoning more effectively in order to make us smart thinkers.
As suggested in chapter 1, learning to use reasoning better requires that we be more
aware of what we are already doing.
We need to learn some basic terms and concepts with which to talk and think about reasoning.
The aim of this chapter is to improve our awareness of how we are actually doing reasoning.
The focus in this chapter is on claims.
In the next chapter we look at the process of linking claims together to form reasoning.
There are three main areas that we will cover in this chapter:
1 We will look at language, since reasoning is a way of manipulating and using words and
statements.
Language allows us to make claims about the world.
Claims are the key component of reasoning.
2 We need to understand more about the significant properties of these claims which affect how
we use them in reasoning.
3 We see how claims function differently, as premises or as conclusions, depending on
how we link them together.
The conclusion is what you are arguing for or explaining.
The premises are how you get to your conclusion.
{{pause}} Understanding language
A basic look at language Every time we argue or explain something,
we use language—regardless of whether we are thinking to ourselves or communicating
with others.
As children, we learn to use language so 'naturally' that we tend to take its use for granted.
In fact, there are many subtleties and complexities in language.
Knowing something about these can help our reasoning by giving us more conscious control
over the material (language) with which we are reasoning.
There are four distinct 'levels' of language-use that build together to create 'language' as
we know it.
The first level is a word—for example, 'student' or 'reasoning'—which is the basic unit of
language.
Words have meanings, usually more than one, and often multiple meanings are 'denotative'
(that is, what the word explicitly says) or 'connotative' (the more subtle, 'hidden' meanings
of words).
We will see, through this book, that definitions of words are important but, for the moment,
we are just interested in words insofar as they can form statements.
{{pause}} When we put some words together, we get the
second level of language: a statement, such as 'there are several hundred students who
have studied smart thinking at Curtin University'.
We probably think of statements as being the same
things as sentences, but they are not.
In the following example we can see how one sentence can be made up of more than one statement:
'We use reasoning everyday of our lives, but most of us have no formal training, and the
more practice and the more training, the better we will be at it'.
The first statement is 'We use reasoning everyday of our lives'; the next is 'most of us have
no formal training [in reasoning]'; the third is 'the more practice and the more training,
the better we will be at it [reasoning]'. {{pause}}
The third level of language-use is the text, which is made up of any group of statements,
such as the sentence above.
Now, usually, the texts we encounter are much longer than just a few statements (for example,
this book is a text, as is a newspaper article).
But, remembering that we are talking about something different to 'natural' things we
read and hear, we define a text as a group of statements that is of any length, so long
as there is more than one statement and these statements
are related to one another in some way.
Texts are not just lists of statements; they are groups of connected statements.
In the example of a multi-statement sentence from the previous paragraph, as well as in
single statements, words like 'but' or 'and', and punctuation like commas and semi-colons,
are not included in the statements.
They act both to distinguish one statement from another and, at the same time, to join
together the various statements to make a text.
Practical communication via texts depends on the way these words connect the statements.
{{pause}}
Finally, the last level of language-use is the context, which consists of all the elements
outside a particular text that make it meaningful.
Contexts cannot be 'seen' in the way, say, that the text you are now reading can be.
A context for this book would include (at least) the purposes and goals of its author
and readers, the assumptions about the meanings of words and ideas that lie behind it, and
other texts that, though absent, are implicitly connected with what is being written and read
here.
For example, a student who reads this book as the textbook for the Open Learning Australia
unit Applied Reasoning has a very different context to someone who is just browsing through
it, casually looking for quick ideas about critical
thinking.
{{pause}} Assumptions are a primary component of context.
Assumptions are those ideas or values that we 'take for granted' and do not question.
To be smart thinkers we must recognise the assumptions that surround us (including our
own) and that influence every argument and explanation.
Reasoning involves making connections between our ideas about the world, expressing them
as linked claims, and constructing a text to express that knowledge.
Obviously this reasoning is a conscious process, but it also draws upon
a background of implicit or assumed connections and structures.
As we grow up and learn about our environment (from parents, school, and so on), all sorts
of connections are made for us and become embedded in our minds, so that we do not even
realise we are relying on these structures when we think.
For example: {{pause}}
In the nineteenth century, Australian children were often warned that the 'black bogeyman'
would get them if they were naughty.
This apparently mild threat created an association in children's minds between 'Blacks' (indigenous
Australians) and something dangerous.
Is it any wonder, then, that when these children grew into adults they continued to act and
think about indigenous Australians in extremely racist ways?
What makes assumptions dangerous is not their content (unlike the previous example, the
content of assumptions may actually be correct) but, rather, that they are not consciously
considered and tested to see if they are correct.
What matters first is to be conscious of the assumption so we can ask 'is this true?'.
Smart thinkers must be capable of understanding how each of these four levels of language
use relates to one another, and of how to write good statements, link them together
to make a text, and consider the contextual factors that bear upon their text.
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