Critical Thinking
        Philosophy

DRAFT - 01/04/2007 - Copyright - Chris Storer

Reasoning

Reasoning involves making connections among ideas.

Analysis is reasoning that takes an idea and splits it up into parts based on a structural relation that is common between each of the parts and the whole. Thus, a forest may be analyzed into the many trees found in it, or into the various types of plants that are there, or into the various types of life forms, etc.

Synthesis is reasoning that assembles an idea out of a collection of individuals that have been found independently but come to be understood as sharing in some common structural relationship. Thus, we meet a bunch of people and find they all live nearby and we develop the idea of a neighborhood, or community, or town or state, etc.

Two forms of reasoning that combine both analysis and synthesis are argument and explanation. Each is a response to an issue, but they differ based on the issues to which each is a response. If the issue is a conflict over the truth or falsity of an idea, the response as an attempt to resolve the conflict is called an argument. If the issue is about the cause of some state of affairs, the response as an attempt to resolve this conflict is called an explanation.

Since both argument and explanation are types of reasoning, the conjunctions and conjunctive phrases that form grammatical connections between the statements which express the ideas being connected are often similar. Their different meanings must be interpreted by understanding their context. That context is formed by the nature of the issue under consideration.

For example, consider the sentence:

"John will be in town tonight because he wants to see Mary."

This may be interpreted as an explanation or as an argument but if we have a bit more context to clarify the issue, the sentence becomes unambiguous.

If it were proceeded by, "What makes you think John will be in town tonight?" it becomes clear that the truth of the claim is at issue, and that the "because" is a premise indicator in an argument.

However, if it were proceeded by, "Why will John be in town tonight?" it is clear that there is no question about his planning to be there. Rather, the issue is a curiosity about what is going to cause this state of affairs to come about; the "because" is a reason indicator in an explanation.

EXPLANATIONS

People often distinguish between various types of explanations since their motivations for raising the issues can differ. For example:

The "physical explanation" for an accident might be that the breaks failed, but the "behavioral explanation" might be that the driver was driving aggressively and following too close. The issue we are interested in in the first case is mostly about how we can take control of that type of situation. Most of science is a search for such explanations so we can build bridges, grow food, communicate over distances, etc.

In the second case, we are more interested in assigning responsibility for events. These issues seek the motivations for behavior that we believe people and animals can control with proper values or training. Such behaviors are motivated by values, emotions, desires, fears, hates, etc., or by the habits established by such motivations.

In the first case we are looking for causes grounded in universal causal laws while in the second, the focus is on the individual peculiarities that explain a particular event.

A third type of explanation is a bit more complex, but generally very important in human problem solving. This is "functional explanation." Generally, as we seek to solve problems, while their is an immediate problem we face, we want our solutions to contain a generality that will avoid recurrence of the problem. Thus, if I slip and fall coming down my front steps in the rain, I could fix the problem by drying off the steps, but then, the next time it rains, the steps will be slippery again. A better solution would be to change the surface of the steps into a rough texture that will remain rough in a rain storm. I might get a paint I can mix sand with to paint the steps. Thus, a functional explanation of the sanded paint would be the imbedded design of a non-slip surface. The issue is a question of universal causation designed to solve a recurrent problem. Only artifacts have functional explanations and they involve the designed connections between the structure of the thing and the problem it seeks to solve. The functional explanation of a carburetor lies in the problem the engineers face in achieving a properly mixed ratio of fuel and oxygen to create controlled combustion in a gas engine.

 

DRAFT - 01/04/2007 - Copyright - Chris Storer