20 SMART THINKING: SKILLS FOR CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING & WRITING
Exercise 2.7
Make up four short examples of reasoning using the following claims. Make sure
that you practise using the same claim as the conclusion in one example and as
a premise in another.- The road is wet.
- You need to drive more carefully.
- You should pay attention to what you are doing.
- Verity has just come home soaking wet.
- There was a rainstorm a few minutes ago.
More on conclusions
So, when we reason, we first of all have to decide which is the claim we are trying
to argue for or explain. This claim is the conclusion. It is not a summary, but a new
statement altogether, which may be linked to the premises but goes beyond them
to give some further information, the 'truth' of which becomes clearer because of
the premises given. The conclusion is a claim in its own right, and not merely a
restatement of the claims already made as premises.
The selection of a conclusion is dependent on the purpose of our overall
argument or explanation. First, we can use claims about the future as conclusions.
These sorts of conclusions are required when we are making a prediction, as in 'In
the future, the world will be much warmer [c] because of the effects of industrial
pollution [p]'. Predictions are always doubtful since the events they predict have
not yet happened, and thus their truth can never be established except as a
prediction. Hence they require supporting argument to make them acceptable. We
can also use claims about the past or the present to establish what is the case. Often
there are doubts about what has happened or is happening (for example, in a
criminal investigation), and argument can be used to support our conclusions on
these matters.
Second, we can use as a conclusion any claim that makes an appeal for people
(whether an individual or group) to act in a certain manner, as in the argument that
'We should reduce the production of carbon monoxide [c] because this action will
reduce the rate of global warming [p]'. Such arguments, the conclusions of which are
appeals to action, are designed to convince people to do something. Sometimes the
action required is for us to think differently, as in an argument that demands that 'You
should not think highly of governments that are reluctant to stop global warming [c]
since these governments are risking the future prosperity of all humanity [p]'.^4
Conclusions such as those just discussed require arguments to convince audiences
to accept them. In both cases, it is the conclusion that is in doubt (remember that
claims are statements that may or may not be true). But other conclusions, often
about events happening in the past, are not in doubt, but still involve reasoning that
explains why the conclusion can be made. In the sentence 'We now have a problem