Critical Thinking - Conclusions, Reasons, Evidence

hello this is the first in a sequence of videos to help with critical thinking and this video is going to be all about conclusions reasons and evidence it's really important to know exactly what we mean by conclusions reasons and evidence because these are the basic parts of any argument and it's really important to be able to identify them before you start thinking about whether the argument is any good so first of all what do you mean by the conclusion of an argument well the key thing to understand is that the conclusion is the main point of any argument the idea is that the author of an argument is trying to persuade you to believe something so they've got some opinion which they want to justify and the opinion which they're sitting down to try and justify is going to be the conclusion of their argument it's where they want to end up the destination of their argument so the conclusion of an argument is the main point that the author is making for which presumably there should be lots of good reasons okay so the conclusion is the thing that the author is trying to justify or maybe even prove now it's important to know that the conclusion could come anywhere within the argument it could be the beginning in the middle or at the end so we're not talking about a kind of summarizing statement or summarizing paragraph they are encouraged to put at the end of essays the conclusion isn't a summary a way of saying quickly what you've said already the conclusion is the main idea the main point which an author is trying to justify so a conclusion in the critical thinking sense is very different from a summary okay now let's think about reasons what are reasons well reasons are the things that support the conclusion so they're what an author says in order to try to justify the thing that they believe and they want you to believe and obviously in most cases the reasons had better be less controversial than the conclusion the reasons are supposed to persuade people to believe their conclusion so hopefully the reasons would be things that people are sort of prepared to accept already and then if they're going to accept those then that should persuade them that they should also accept the author's conclusion finally evidence what evidence should also support a conclusion so to some extent it's like a reason but evidence should be strictly factual so when we think of a statement of evidence we're thinking of something that's given as a fact that people shouldn't really be questioning it's just something that we know or something that we found out but possibly by doing an experiment it's something that we know is true we know has happened and from that we're going to go on and build a case a reasoned case for some conclusion and tellingly evidence really often involves statistics numbers or generally it's just the outcome of something that somebody has measured or some research that they've got it done okay so let's look at some examples of arguments and see if we can identify the conclusions of the reasons and the evidence if there is any so my first example is to do with offices and office culture here's the argument says that employers are now so concerned to remove any distraction that might reduce the productivity of their workforce that they're trying to ban office romances it's hard to imagine a more ill-conceived proposal it will make employees resent their bosses and make being at work even more unpleasant it seems quite likely that such a ban will lower the productivity of the workforce fewer people finding partners at work could even have an undesirable effect on marriage and birth rates okay so at this point you might like to pause the video and have a think about that passage and try to decide what's the conclusion what's the main point that the author wants you to accept okay well the conclusion is that it's hard to imagine a more ill-conceived proposal that's what the author wants you to believe that it's a stupid idea to ban office romances and several reasons are given to support that conclusion several reasons are given to try to persuade you that it's a stupid idea to get rid of office romances first of all that it will make employees resent their bosses and make being a work even more unpleasant secondly that possibly or probably such a ban will lower the productivity of the workforce and finally that fewer people finding partners at work could even have an undesirable effect on marriage and birth rates okay now supposing you weren't sure which of these statements was the conclusion and which were the reasons there's something that you can do to help you decide if we pick out a pair of statements and we're not sure which one is the reason and which one is the conclusion what we can do is to put the word therefore in between and see how it sounds so let's try it this way around it's hard to imagine more ill-conceived proposal than banning office romances therefore it will make employees resent their bosses and make being at work even more unpleasant okay well hopefully you can see there there doesn't really make a lot of sense but if we swap the two statements around and say it again it will make employees resent their bosses and make being at work even more unpleasant therefore it's hard to imagine a more ill-conceived proposal than banning office romances I hope you'll agree that it makes a lot more sense that way around and that shows that the first statement is a reason and the second statement is a conclusion so if we go back to the original argument we can make sure that the statement identified as the conclusion is the conclusion by reading out each of the reasons and seeing if it makes sense so I can say it will make employees resent their bosses and make being at work even more unpleasant therefore it's hard to imagine a more ill-conceived proposal I can also say it seems quite likely that such a band will lower the productivity of the workforce therefore it's hard to imagine a more ill-conceived proposal than banning office romances and finally I can say fewer people finding partners at work could even have an undesirable effect on marriage and birth rates therefore it's hard to imagine a more ill-conceived proposal okay so if we play around with the statements in the argument trying out to see which way round they fit it should be possible to reassure ourselves that the statement identified as the conclusion is the conclusion it's hard to imagine what ill-conceived proposal alright that just leaves one question about this argument what's that thing at the beginning well this is what I call scene setting it doesn't really play a role in the argument it doesn't help to justify anything it's not evidence for anything it's not the conclusion it's just setting up the argument and explaining where the author's coming from okay really the author's saying what what employers are doing and then the author gets on with their argument and says what they think this is a dumb idea okay let's look at another example now and this one's going to be to do with children and in particular the time of year at which they're born here's the argument parents should give their children the best chances in life so we should encourage parents to have babies in the autumn people born in the autumn have the longest life expectancy and the best chance of good health moreover they're the most likely to succeed in sport particularly football a study by the association of football statisticians believe me there is such a thing revealed that 40% of Englishmen in the Premier League were born in the autumn compared with just 15% in the summer okay again a be useful for you now to pause the video never think about which is the conclusion so pause the video and decide which statement is the conclusion okay the conclusion is that we should encourage parents to have babies in the autumn that's what the author is trying to persuade us he wants us to think that parents should have babies at that time of year and that's supported by several reasons they're telling us that parents should have babies then because they ought to give their children the best chances in life and people born in the autumn have the longest life expectancy and the best chance of good health and also they're the most likely to succeed in sport so here we've got the main conclusion which encourage parents to have babies in the autumn supported by these three reasons again we can test that that's right by putting in the word therefore and experimenting with different ways around by the way we call this doing they're there for tests so we can try to say we should encourage parents to have babies in the autumn therefore people born in the autumn have the longest life expectancy and the best chance of good health but does that make sense I don't think so let's try it the other way around people born in the autumn have the longest life expectancy and the best chance of good health therefore we should encourage parents to have babies in the autumn hopefully you'll agree that that does make sense and that shows that the first statement is the reason and the bottom statement is the conclusion the conclusion is which encourage parents to have babies in the autumn okay so let's go back to the argument we just need to decide about this bit at the bottom okay well not surprisingly perhaps this is a piece of evidence because the association of football statisticians they've gone away and does some research and they've come up with a fact that 40% of Englishmen in the Premier League are born in the autumn compared with just 15% in the summer that's a fact you could dispute whether maybe the statisticians have done their calculation incorrectly but on the whole it's not something that's open to debate it's just something that's hopefully true it's not really a question of opinion unlike the things higher up the page which I've labeled as reasons this is just something that's a basic given fact and telling me of course there are some statistics here and as I said evidence often involves statistics it's the outcome of some research okay so what we've managed to do here is to label each part of the argument and decide what its function is we've worked out the main conclusion that's what we're supposed to accept we've worked out what the reasons for that are we've also seen what the evidence is and now we could carry on and decide what we think about these reasons do we agree with them if we agree with them do they support the main conclusion and we could ask questions like that so whenever you get an argument to look at it's really helpful to identify the conclusions of reasons and all the different parts of it as a preliminary as a first step towards evaluating the argument and thinking about whether it fits together whether it actually works okay let's look at one more argument and this one's going to be about lying politicians and this is a picture of President Richard Nixon president who is very famous for having lied hopefully you may have heard of the Watergate scandal and if you haven't you should possibly look it up so here's the last argument people are always complaining that politicians are liars but it's voters not politicians who are to blame for politicians lies voters like politicians who tell them everything will get better if their party wins the electorate doesn't vote for honest politicians who have mitt the negative consequences of their views voters encourage politicians to lie okay so again why don't you pause the video now and have a think about what the conclusion of this argument is so do that pause the video and have a think okay well this one was a bit harder I think this time the conclusion is that it's voters not politicians who are to blame for politicians lies and that's supported by various reasons supported by the claim that voters like politicians who tell them everything will get better and by the acclaim that the electorate doesn't vote for honest politicians so those are both reasons which support the idea that it's voters rather than politicians who are to blame the both suggest that voters are rather causing or tempting politicians to lie and so therefore its voters fault hopefully you recognize that the thing at the start is a piece of scene setting that's just telling us some background some context it's what other people say what they think and then the author of this comes in with their view but this time we have something that we haven't seen before at the end and this is something that in critical thinking we would call an intermediate conclusion and that's because it's something that's supported by a reason and it goes on to support the main conclusion so it's partly a reason and it's a conclusion now let's look at this in more detail because we didn't have an intermediate conclusion in the previous arguments what you can do is you can order the statements of their argument in a chain like this voters like politicians who tell them everything will get better if their party wins so therefore voters encourage politicians to now and therefore its voters not politicians who are to blame for politicians lies now what we've got here is a chain where the first step is a reason the thing at the beginning is our basic reason that's the starting point and that leads eventually to the main conclusion it's voters not politicians who are to blame for politicians lies and the thing in between is this intermediate conclusion it's intermediate because it's in the middle it's a conclusion because it follows from it's supported by this statement that voters like politician who lie to them and it's intermediate because it's supports it goes on to support the overall main conclusion its voters not politicians here to blame so this was an example of an argument which had a change structure some reasons that led to one conclusion the intermediate envision which then led on to a further conclusion its voters not politicians who are to blame so hopefully that gives you the sense that arguments can sometimes have more complicated structure and obviously you'd expect that the longer the argument the more complex the structure because as well as just having reasons and a conclusion we can have other things like an intermediate conclusion and later on you'll see that there are various other types of thing that you can have within arguments other types of argument element other than conclusions and reasons and evidence okay well that's near the end of this video before I stop I just want to point out one thing the task of identifying reasons and conclusions is often a lot easier than those examples suggested because a lot of the time the reasons and the conclusion are marked out with particular words that tell you you're about to hear a conclusion we are about to hear a reason for example there various words that tell you you're about to hear a conclusion we've already come across one therefore tells you you're about to hear a conclusion but also there are some more words that do this so thus hence it follows that and there are other phrases too these are all words phrases that tell you you're about to hear a conclusion so when you see one you know you're about to have a conclusion and there are lots of Reason indicators as well here perhaps the most common ones because since and heirs those are all words that tell you you're about to hear a reason here's something that's meant to show you something else so often when you're reading an argument the task of identifying the parts is made a lot easier and actually when you're writing arguments hope you would use these words to make the structure of your own argument really clear okay that is the end of this video thank you very much for watching and I look forward to making the next video for you soon

Channel: MrNichollTV

Views: 19,418

Rating: 4.7991633 out of 5

Keywords: Critical Thinking, Argument Elements, OCR, Conclusions, Reasons, Evidence, Arguments

Id: LklGDw0OGzw

Length: 17min 56sec (1076 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 11 2013