202 Unit 4 Applied critical thinking
doesn’t really leave that option. Either highly
intelligent animals deserve to be treated like
humans, or they don’t. Even if you wanted to
dilute it by adding words to the effect of ‘.... in
some ways but not others’, or ‘to some extent’,
that would be a challenge to the statement as
it stands.
We saw in the previous commentary, under
the subheading ‘Clarification’, that you need
to state very plainly what your conclusion is
before you set out to defend it. You need to do
this for yourself as well as for your readers.
Whether you were supporting or challenging
the quotation, you should have made it clear
how you understood it: for example, what
‘high levels’ would include, and what ‘treated
like humans’ means.(iii) Did your reasoning really support your
conclusion?
Stating your own conclusion clearly and
explicitly is important. You can start by stating
it, or leave it until the end. Or you can repeat it
in more than one place, for emphasis. But
merely stating it is not the end of the matter.
The reasoning that you give for the conclusion
really must support it. It is very easy, partway
through your response, to waver, or give way
to doubts that you haven’t really got such a
good case after all. The solution is to plan
thoroughly what you are going to say – and
why – before you start to write. For instance: ‘I
support the statement because: R1, R2, R3.. .’
Each of these should be a substantial reason, or
item of evidence. If you don’t have at least two
or three effective reasons in mind before you
begin, you may regret the line you have
chosen.(iv) Did you develop some of your reasons?
More important than having lots of separate
reasons is the development you give to your
reasons – to some of them at least. A major
premise in your argument may need evidence
to support it – in other words, a sub-argument.
Development may also take the form ofthe text less as a full-blown argument, and
more as a thought-provoking discussion,
perhaps deliberately going too far just to liven
up the animal rights debate.
There is a danger when applying critical
thinking to real-life texts in assuming that any
contentious piece of writing or speech must be
understood as an all-out argument. There are
other ways of making a case, and a quasi-
argument may be one of them. But there is a
danger as well in applying the principle of
charity too liberally. You should not use it to
let every author ‘off the hook’. If, after careful
and critical assessment, you really think that
the author is in the business of arguing for a
conclusion, and persuading the reader that it
is right, then you must judge it accordingly,
even if that means rejecting it.(c) Further argument
The commentary for this part of the activity
will inevitably be lighter than for the first two.
That is because it is your turn to produce the
argument. The authors of this book cannot
anticipate what your argument will be. We
can, however, give some guidelines for you to
use in assessing yourself. The guidelines take
the form of questions, and provide a checklist
of advice for answering questions of this type.(i) What did you take the task, or instruction, to be?
Note that you were asked to produce an
argument to support or challenge the
quotation. You were not asked to discuss the
topic in an even-handed way, without reaching
any particular conclusion of your own. You
were asked to argue for the statement or
against it: to take sides. Did you do that? If
not, you missed the point of the question.(ii) What did you make of the statement: ‘Animals
that show high levels of intelligence deserve to
be treated like humans’?
Some statements may allow us say: ‘This is
neither right nor wrong,’ and to give a balance
of arguments for each side. But this statement