190 Unit 4 Applied critical thinking
• A critical evaluation means deciding
whether the claims and assumptions made
in an argument are warranted.
• It means identifying any flaws in the
reasoning.
• It means assessing the strength of the
support that the reasons, if true, give to
the conclusion.
• It means distinguishing between the
rhetoric and the reasoning in the text.Summary
have to reject the argument as a whole, and it
certainly doesn’t mean we have to reject its
conclusion. Most people find the practice of
taking PED totally unacceptable and are in full
agreement with its prohibition. Most people
also consider it to be cheating and believe that
it harms the health of athletes.
But the converse is also true. Just because we
agree with the author’s main conclusion of an
argument does not mean we have to approve
of the reasoning. As critical thinkers we need to
be able to evaluate an argument objectively
whether we agree with it or not. In fact,
agreeing with the author can often make the
job of evaluation more difficult because we are
likely to be making the same assumptions and
wanting the same outcome.meteorite or dramatic upheaval in
the climate. This would mean that
they did not undergo a gradual
disappearance lasting many centuries
or millennia, but that they were
wiped out practically overnight. The
fact that they died out so quickly also
means that there could only have
been one cause of their extinction,
not many as was once assumed; and
that whatever the cause was, it was
immense and final.3 Choose one of the two arguments studied
in the chapter. Summarise the critical
comments that were made, and respond to
them with your own observations. Finally,
give an overall evaluation of the argument,
saying how successfully or unsuccessfully
it supports its conclusion(s).Answers and comments are on page 325.1 Look at the following response to the
argument ‘Time to get tough’, and critically
evaluate the reasoning it employs.
You call people like me woolly-
minded liberals, but look what you are
arguing for: denying anyone who has
committed a crime a chance to earn a
living, however hard they may try to
go straight and start afresh. As well as
being inhumane, that will have the
opposite effect from what you want.
You’ll just end up with streets full of
ex-cons who can’t get work and are
driven back to violent crime, and even
more victims to feel sorry for.2 Consider the following short argument, on
a very different topic. Is it sound? If not,
identify what is wrong with it.
The dinosaurs obviously became
extinct because of a single
catastrophic event such as a largeEnd-of-chapter assignments