Page 138 - Smart Thinking: Skills for Critical Understanding and Writing, 2nd Ed

PLANNING AND CREATING YOUR REASONING 12 5

• Do the premises cover all the aspects of the conclusion?
• Are these premises well formed, with particular reference to the internal
connections which they make?
• Are they well founded (if not, then what support can they be given)?
• Are enough reasons given to meet the requirements for breadth?
• Are they expanded sufficiently to give depth to the argument/explanation?
• Is each idea in the conclusion referred to in some way in these premises?
• Are the premises grouped together properly?
Just one example would be to state the following reason:
The Olympic games are now very expensive to organise.

This might break down, on further analysis, into claims such as:
2. There are more sports, more athletes, and more coaches than ever
before.
3. Hosting all these events and people is very costly.
4. Non-sport costs, associated with security and entertainment, are now
much more prominent.
(There are, of course, many more possible premises.)
Third, think about the analytical relationships between the premises and the
conclusion (as seen in the diagram). Here, we can think about the sort of reasoning
that is being used:
• Do the premises show the cause of an effect? (If so, are differences or
similarities clearly stated?)
• Do they state some generalisation that provides the knowledge we need about
a specific conclusion? (If so, is the specific case really a member of the
general category?)
• Do the premises draw together specific cases so as to make a generalisation?
(If so, are these specific cases representative of the general category?)
• Is it an analogical relationship, in which similarities between the events
described in the premises and the conclusion provide the answers we are
seeking? (If so, are the events consistent with one another?)
• Is it simply reasoning from terms, with the claim simply establishing the
particular meaning of the conclusion? (If so, are we making it clear?)

In each case, remember that these questions unlock relationships. We can analyse
events by thinking about 'What is the cause of X?' or 'What effects does X cause?'; we
can think about the way that many cases of X might prompt us to generalise, or about
how X might only be explicable as a specific case of some general rule.
Continuing the previous example, the premises concerning cost are about the
cause of the increased commercialism of the games. Because of the need for money
to fund the games (a result of these costs), there is no way they could be staged
without corporate funding. Good reasoning would involve checking to see if it
really is the case that increased costs is the only factor; in doing so, we might find