180 Unit 4 Applied critical thinking
Try building up a more detailed map of the
argument ‘Time to get tough’, showing how,
in your view, the different parts of the
reasoning lead to the conclusion.Activity
Commentary
Notice that the task is to represent your view of
the way the argument is structured. This does
not mean that any analysis of the passage is as
good as any other, but it does mean that there
is some room for interpretation by the reader.
A suggested map of the argument follows.
Don’t worry if you have taken a slightly
different route to the conclusion, or
summarised the claims a bit differently. So
long as you have correctly understood the
direction of the argument and its final
conclusion, then the exercise has served its
purpose.Mapping the structure
The previous diagram gives only the roughest
outline of the argument. It is like a route map
with just the main towns shown. It does not
give any of the reasoning that leads from one
to the next.
‘Mapping’ is a good word to use, because it
suggests another very useful way of
representing the steps in an argument. If you
enquire how to get from one place to another,
people will often give you a string of directions:
for example, ‘Go up to the traffic lights and
turn right. Stay on that road through a couple
of bends, past the big hotel on the left. Take
the third exit from the roundabout and the
immediate fork to the left.. .’ It can all be very
confusing; and it is very easy to miss a turning
or take the wrong one, after which you quickly
lose any sense of where you are.
A simple map like the one below is much
more helpful: it gives you an overall picture of
how the journey looks, how the roads
connect, how they relate to each other and the
surroundings, and so on.