2.8 Reasons 61
meaning of a claim. It is also difficult to see
how a genuine question – with no obvious
answer – could be grounds for a conclusion.
What about conclusions? Could the
conclusion of an argument be a genuine
question or command? This is a more
debatable point. Obviously there are plenty
of examples where people give reasons for
demanding something. Take the following
well-known example:
[8] Shoot her! She’s a spy.It makes perfectly good sense to call this an
argument to justify an order. On the other
hand, it also makes sense to interpret the
conclusion of [8] as a claim: for example, ‘She
should be shot’ or ‘You must shoot her’. The
question is whether you want to call ‘Shoot
her!’ a genuine command, or just a way of
asserting something. Since both
interpretations are equally defensible, you
must make up your own mind.Summary
• There are two senses of the word ‘reason’,
depending on whether it is found in an
argument in support of the conclusion, or
in an explanation.
• However, the boundary between argument
and explanation is often blurred, making
interpretation quite difficult at times.Note: it should be becoming more and more
evident as you progress through this book that
not all critical thinking questions have plainly
right or wrong answers. Being critical takes
judgement. What matters in many cases is being
able to back up your judgements with reasons of
your own. In a critical thinking assignment, the
same credit may be given for two quite different
answers, if both are equally well argued.On that interpretation [7] consists of two
reasons and an implied (implicit) conclusion.
In standard form:
[7a] R1 The accused was at her desk in
the office at 3 p.m. but no one
reported seeing her again until
after 4.
R2 That was plenty of time to get to
the scene of the crime and back.
C (implied) The accused had the
opportunity to commit the crime.In practice many arguments are left
unfinished in this way. Sometimes it makes
for a more persuasive case if the audience,
rather than the author, is left to draw the
conclusion. Two questions that are frequently
set in critical thinking assignments are:
What conclusion can be drawn, reliably, from
such-and-such a claim, or claims?Or:
How reliable (or safe) would it be to draw
such-and-such a conclusion?You might like to discuss the second question
with reference to the implicit conclusion
in [7a].
Are reasons always claims?
In a word, yes. This does not mean that reasons
are always grammatical statements (declarative
sentences). As we saw in Chapter 2.1, a claim
can be made using a rhetorical question or
even an imperative sentence. For instance, the
prosecutor could have asked the jury:
‘Did anyone see the accused at her desk
between 3 and 4 p.m.?’and mean it as a claim. It would be very hard,
if not impossible, to think of a reason or
premise, however it is expressed
grammatically, that does not have the