300 Unit 7 Critical reasoning: Advanced Level
thinking on your part. But they are also a bit
of a luxury because they guide you in your
analysis and evaluation. When you are
confronted with real arguments – on
television, in print, or just conversation – you
have to know what questions to ask, as well as
how to answer them.
Many of the questions above are worth
remembering because they, or questions very
like them, will be relevant to most arguments,
not just to this one. You will almost always
need to ask questions such as: What is the
main conclusion? Are there any missing
premises (assumptions)? Are there
contradictions? Are the reasons strong enough
to support the conclusion? What use does the
author make of persuasive language, emotion,
or popular appeal?serious weakness. Either way, the right
evaluation of the argument is that it falls
short of its purpose.
10 The observation may be considered
fairly damaging. The historical
argument is an important part of the
author’s case: she is using the fact that
the Games were originally in Greece to
support the conclusion that they should
always be in Greece. If someone objects
that the original Games were located in
the region from which all the athletes
came, and that this is no longer the
case, that would be grounds for arguing
that circumstances have significantly
changed. However, the objection is not
a fatal one. There are still defences that
could be made: for example, the age of
air travel has made the world a much
smaller place. It probably takes less
time to fly from Sydney to Athens than
it took to travel from Sparta to Athens
in ancient times. Therefore the place
where the athletes come from is not
really relevant to the case for a single
permanent site.Critical questions
Questions like the ones you have been
answering provide a useful way of focusing on
the key features of an argument, which is why
such questions are included in thinking skills
examination papers. The questions were quite
tough, and required some serious criticalFind an argument in a recent newspaper, or
on the internet, and make a copy of it. Using
some or all of the questions you were asked
in this chapter, produce a list of questions
based on the text you have chosen.
You can then either answer the questions
yourself or exchange texts with a fellow
student and answer each other’s.End-of-chapter assignment