Page 76 - Smart Thinking: Skills for Critical Understanding and Writing, 2nd Ed

MORE EFFECTIVE REASONING I: BETTER CLAIMS 63

author of the claim is convinced that it is well founded, if the author were to
propose that 'citizens of Singapore enjoy considerable freedom' without carefully
arguing or explaining what was meant, the audience might well refuse to accept the
claim. Equally, people often believe claims about which there is considerable doubt.
For example, most Australians would not think twice before accepting that 'citizens
of Australia enjoy considerable freedom' was a true claim. In doing so, they would
draw on existing knowledge (as in the first example). But, obviously, when we
consider the 'negative freedom' definition, we might think that the claim was more
doubtful. Such doubts might readily spring to mind for indigenous Australian
people, whose capacity to enjoy the positive freedoms of Australian citizenship is
seriously constrained by inequities in, for example, housing, health, and employ-
ment.
At some point, of course, we have to use claims that, since we are giving no
argument or other support for them, are presented as self-evidently true, or that are
so widely accepted to be true (by our audience) that they do not require further
justification. We must also rely on the fact that, as authors, we are presumed by our
audience to have some knowledge about our subject and can thus be 'trusted' to
make acceptable claims. (Obviously certain authors—experts, renowned scholars,
and so on—can rely on this trust a good deal more than others; such trust is clearly
a contextual component of the overall text.) In this way, we are ourselves involved
in creating the context in which our reasoning exists.
But we need to consider many other contextual factors so that, in the end
result, our self-evident claims do indeed turn out to be acceptable to our
audience. We must, in effect, judge in advance the likelihood that someone
reading or hearing our reasoning will 'doubt' that a claim is true. If it is possible
that this situation will occur, then we must counter this 'doubt' in advance.
While the basis for our judgment must include attention to the claim itself, we
can only argue and explain the claim effectively if we also judge its acceptability
in relation to our audience. Finally, more pragmatic issues emerge from a
consideration of context: what is expected of your particular argument in terms
of length and scope. For example, it is unreasonable (according to most social
conventions) to expect most arguments and explanations to contain the level of
detail that, for example, we find in lengthy scholarly work. We can adjust our
reasoning accordingly by thinking about its context as well as what it actually
contains (the text).

Exercise 5.2

Which of the following claims would be regarded as self-evidently true by a
general adult audience? In each case, explain your answer:
a. Communism has failed.
b. Television was introduced to Australia in 1956.
c. Australia is a democracy.
d. We should legalise marijuana.