62 SMART THINKING: SKILLS FOR CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING & WRITING
way for reasoning to proceed if we did not make these assumptions of self-
evidence.
Arguments begin with claims that are more acceptable (that is, well founded
without the need for argument) and move onwards to claims that are less
acceptable (that is, most in need of an argument to justify them). An explanation
may end with a well-known claim as its conclusion but should begin with the more
readily accepted explanatory premises. Not only must the starting claims be well
founded as far as we are concerned, but we also need to be reasonably sure our
audience will concur with us. Some claims, perhaps even just one, will need to be
presented as self-evidently well founded. But many other claims will only become
effective when properly founded by something we do to support them, showing
our audience why and how they are well founded. Let us then look at the ways in
which we might do this. First of all we will consider why it is that some claims can
appear, on their own, as well founded, and then examine two ways in which we can
present extra information to our audience to support those claims that cannot
stand on their own.
Claims whose truthfulness is not in question
An example of a claim that we might expect to use self-evidently is 'The earth orbits
the sun'. But, if we are to be sure that the claims in our arguments and explanations
are well founded in the context of their audience, we cannot simply assume that
they are self-evident. For example, a group of young children would, probably, need
to be convinced that the earth orbited the sun since, just on the basis of their
observation, the sun goes around the earth. But, we can assume, a group of adults
would not require any such convincing: they will have already come to accept that
'the earth orbits the sun' is a true claim.
The difficulty, of course, is that apart from some obvious claims, such as the
example just used, most claims are in doubt to some degree or another, or for
some audience or another. And there is another category of claim that poses an
even more difficult problem: claims whose truthfulness is not in doubt, but
should bel Here is an example of this dual dilemma. If someone claimed,
without giving a foundation, that 'citizens of Singapore enjoy considerable
freedom', then many Australians (and Singaporeans) might doubt the truth of
this claim. In doing so, they would be drawing on existing (that is, contextual)
knowledge of, say, the limitations of free speech in Singapore, the many
restrictions on what one can and cannot do, and the fact that Singapore has
always been governed by the same political party since gaining independence
from the United Kingdom.
To establish the truth of the claim, its author would have to somehow overcome
the audience's initial scepticism. Such a claim might well be true if we understand
that freedom can mean both freedom to do some positive act (that is, the freedom
to voice critical opinions of the government) and freedom from some negative
circumstance (that is, freedom from hunger and poverty). Hence, although the