Page 37 - Smart Thinking: Skills for Critical Understanding and Writing, 2nd Ed

24 SMART THINKING: SKILLS FOR CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING & WRITING
2 There is considerable philosophical argument concerning the notion of truth. Some
philosophers might wish to substitute words such as 'valid' or 'sound' in this test of a
claim, but for the practical purposes of this book, 'truth' will suffice. In particular,
however, we should recognise that value claims (described a little later in this chapter)
cannot really be true or false, but they can be judged in terms of whether or not they
are reasonable.
3 We cannot simply interchange conclusions and premises as we like and still be confi-
dent of being correct. It would, for example, be incorrect to say that 'because you
should wash your car, your car is dirty'. We need to think much more carefully about the
relationships we are asserting to be true when we decide just what exactly our premises
and conclusions are. For example, the following would be good reasoning: 'I know that
if you are told to wash your car, then it is more than likely that the car is dirty; I have
just heard someone tell you to wash your car; therefore I can infer that your car is dirty
(otherwise that person would not have told you to wash it)'. We should note here, too,
that giving premises to explain a known conclusion is contextually different from giving
premises to establish by argument the soundness of an unknown or doubtful conclu-
sion. The term 'conclusion' here merely indicates the logical function of the claim we
are explaining, and not its importance or significance. In an explanation, and from the
point of view of our audience, our premises and how they explain the conclusion are
more important than the conclusion itself.
4 Because group and individual decisions carry with them the requirement that we be
able to justify and explain our decisions to others, decision making also involves
reasoning.