I would like to make it clear why we spend so much time getting the Issues and the Conclusions correct and why we spend time to find out all of the Reasons for each Conclusion.
First, why do we have to find out all of the Reasons?
It takes a lot of work to identify all of the Reasons even from a short essay.
What`s the point?
This is an excellent question. (see ARQ page7 "Who Cares?")
Critical Thinking takes a lot of time and effort so we should save our time and only use our Critical Thinking skills on issues that we think are important to us, right?
However, in a Critical Thinking class, we want to use these examples to improve our Critical Thinking skills even if normally, we would not be interested in the issue in the essay.
With practice, we become better and faster at identifying Reasons.
Thus, when we are faced with an issue that we care about, we can quickly identify all of the Reasons in an argument. Without being able to identify all of the Reasons, we will not be able to determine the worth of a Conclusion. (ARQ page 29)
Next, let me explain why we spend so much time getting the Issues and the Conclusions correct.
What do I mean by "correct"?
In the class, I said that some of the Issues and Conclusions that you wrote were too general and some were too specific.
How can you know if you are being too general or too specific?
If you are being too specific, you are focusing on only part of the writers argument. After you think you have found the Issue and the Conclusion, look at the essay again. Are there large parts of the essay that are not covered by the Issue and Conclusion? If this is true then your Issue and Conclusion are probably too specific. Try to make it more general so that they include the entire essay.
If you are being too general, you are making the Issue and Conclusion wider in scope than the author intended. Try to make your Issue and Conclusion more specific until it just fits what the author has written.
This is not always easy. You will find that you might have to discard many tentative Issues and Conclusions until you find the ones that fit the best with what the author has written.
Let me give you an example where I had trouble finding the Issue and Conclusion in an editorial from a newspaper.
Go to this editorial about welfare programs
When I first read this editorial I identified the Issue as "Who receives the most government aid?" and the Conclusion as "The middle class receives the most government aid"
I identified three Reasons.
1) The poorest are receiving less aid now (36%) than in 1979 (54%) (from The Times study)
2) The middle 60% received a higher percentage of their income from the government than the poorest. (CBPP study)
3) More aid goes to rural areas (where middle class people live) than to urban areas(where the poorest people live). (from the Times study)
My reasoning map for this argument looked like this:
Here is where I found The Issue, Conclusion and the Reasons:
At first, I thought I had done a really good job.
But then I looked at the article again.
How about the first 3 paragraphs?
They had no connection to my Issue or Conclusion.
Perhaps I made my Issue and Conclusion too specific?
How did I change my Issue and Conclusion?
I decided to make them more general so that the entire article fits into the reasoning map.
Once again, I had to find the Conclusion.
Let`s use the clues from ARQ pages 22-24.
Clue No. 1: Ask what the issue is.
I don`t know the Issue. Go to the next clue.
Clue No 2: Look for indicator words.
I can`t find any.
Clue No. 3: Look in likely locations.
I looked at the beginning but did not find it.
At the end, I saw something that looked like a Conclusion but it was not really clear.
"The disparity is stark. The very people rising in anger against government aid are, in many cases, the ones who benefit most from it. If public policy is to be based on facts, not fantasy, that's a place to start."
Maybe the Conclusion is "The middle class should be angry at themselves. The middle class should not be angry at the poor."
But this is far too general.
My next try was "The middle class should be angry at themselves for receiving so much government aid. The middle class should not be angry at the poor."
This is better but I`m not so happy with it.
Why is receiving government aid bad?
This is not explained in the article.
In this case we have to look at the context in which it is written. (Clue No. 5: Check the context of the communication)
In America, currently, there is a big debate about the rising cost of welfare programs.
The USA owes a lot of money and it has to borrow more and more.
Most people agree that welfare programs cost too much.
So let me change the Conclusion to "The middle class should be angry at themselves the rising cost of government aid. The middle class should not be angry at the poor."
This is a lot better. However, it seems too emotional.
Does the writer really want the middle class to be "angry"?
Finally, I changed the Conclusion to "The middle class are to blame for the rising cost of government aid"
Thus the Issue is "Who should we blame for the rising cost of government aid?"
Now I can change the reasoning map.
This looks a lot more like a correct reasoning map!
However, we are still missing some parts.
I can add the information from the first three paragraphs to the reasoning map.
In the second paragraph, I found an objection to the Conclusion.
It is "The poorest people are drug addicts"
In the third paragraph, I found a rebuttal to that objection.
It is "A Florida case study showed that the poorest use drugs less than the general population"
Here is my completed reasoning map for the argument in this article!
The objection is in red and the rebuttal is in orange.
Now, I`m happy with this reasoning map.
All of the points made in the article fit easily into the reasoning map because I defined the Issue and the Conclusion without being too general or too specific!
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