198 Unit 4 Applied critical thinking
As pointed out in earlier chapters, there are
often alternative ways of interpreting many
natural-language arguments, and your analysis
may have differed in some ways from the one
above. This is not a problem, provided you have
correctly identified the conclusion, and the
main reasons. Also, the depth of analysis that
you give may depend on how long you have to
do it in. Here, with unlimited time, we can
thoroughly dissect the reasoning, and examine
its structure in detail. In an exam, where you
may have no more than half an hour to answer
all three of the questions, you will need to pare
your analysis down to the key points.
The key points are the conclusion, obviously,
and the two main premises that tail-walking
appears to be learned (IC1) and that it appears
to be fun (IC2). These are the backbone of the
argument. If these three elements are not
identified in your analysis of the text, read the
passage again with the above comments in
mind. Whilst some arguments leave themselves
open to more than one interpretation, in this
passage it is difficult to see any other obvious
direction for the argument.
A final point: some of you may have noted
in your analysis that the evidence that is cited
is not ‘direct’ evidence (see Chapter 4.3,
page 145). The observations and inferences
are attributed to Dr Mike Bossley. However,
the conclusion is the author’s. We will see the
significance of this shortly when we turn to
evaluating the argument.(b) Evaluation
Once you have identified the conclusion and
the main strands of reasoning, it is very much
clearer what evaluative points apply. The
basic critical questions are:
• whether the reasons (evidence,
observations) really do justify the
conclusions
• if so, whether the reasons are credible.The order in which you deal with these
questions is a matter of preference. As aand is thought to have learned the trick there.
As stated in paragraph 3, tail-walking is rare in
the wild but more common in captivity; and in
paragraph 4 we learn: ‘It appears that [Billie]
has passed this trick onto others in the pod’.
What we have therefore is a sub-argument
supporting the major premise in paragraph 1
that dolphins ‘are learning to walk on water’.
The second major premise is that – according
to Dr Bossley – the dolphins seem to be
performing the trick for fun. The reasoning for
this claim is that there is no other obvious
benefit, such as foraging for food. Dr Bossley is
quoted as inferring from this that it is
recreational, ‘like human dancing or
gymnastics’.
The reasoning to these two intermediate
conclusions is untidy, in the sense that they
are mixed up together. That is how it often is
in ordinary-language arguments. In a more
standard argument you would find the two
sub-arguments separated from each other.
Your job, therefore, was to identify and extract
the underlying argument. You could have
done this either descriptively, as above, or in
standard form, for example:
R1 Tail-walking (TW) has been observed to
be spreading among Port River dolphins.
R2 TW is rare in the wild, but more common
in captivity.
R3 One of the dolphins is thought to have
learned TW while in captivity.IC1 A growing number of dolphins seem to
be learning to walk on water.
R4 TW seems to have no practical purpose.IC2 It seems to be for fun (like human
dancing, gymnastics).IC3 TW is evidence of intelligence and
similarity to humans.
C TW is evidence that dolphins deserve
status of ‘non-human persons’.(IC3 and C could be one main conclusion.)