Read Online Critical thinking for Students by Roy van den Brink-Budgen - Free Book Online
Authors: Roy van den Brink-Budgen
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visible’ in the same way – that is, in the same situations (amount of light available, degree of wrinkled skin, and so on)? It could be, for example, that tiny wrinkles become less visible but deeper ones are not visibly affected. And what about the 25 who didn’t notice the difference? Why didn’t they?
The evidence is meant to operate as a reason for the inference given in the advert. Accordingly, you will probably have spotted an assumption here.
Of 97 women, 72 agreed that wrinkles were less visible. ( Less visible wrinkles will make you look years younger. ) Our age-rejection cream will make you look years younger.
That’s quite a big assumption and is itself open to questions of meaning. How much ‘less visible’? (Can it be quantified into a percentage?) How many ‘years younger’? (Two, three …?)
We’ve just looked at some very specific evidence (‘of 97 women …’). But often evidence can be presented in a much more general way.
The taller a man is, the higher his income is likely to be, and the better his promotion chances are.
This time there are no numbers, no percentages, nothing beyond the giving of a correlation between a man’s height and his income and promotion chances. So what sort of inference could be drawn from this sort of evidence?
The taller a man is, the higher his income is likely to be, and the better his promotion chances are. So employers discriminate against short men when it comes to pay and promotion/short men lack the confidence to further their careers/there needs to be a policy making heightism illegal.
We have reached an important point. Which of these inferences does the evidence-claim best support (if any)? We’ll introduce here a way of looking at this problem. This is to look at the process of inference in terms of a bank account.
We know that we can spend only what is in our bank account (ignoring loans, credit cards, gifts, and so on). If we spend more, then we are overdrawn. We have literally taken out of the account more than was in there. The link with inference is a simpleone. The claim(s) from which an inference is drawn represent(s) what is in the account. You can therefore infer (spend) no more than what the claim(s) permit(s).
Let’s return to the evidence on men’s height. We gave three possible inferences. Can we afford any of these? Interestingly, if this evidence is a general trend (which it seems to be), then something appears to be going on which needs explaining. You will again see, by the way, that explanations are never far away in Critical Thinking (whatever some might say or write). Without an explanation, we don’t really know what’s going on here. So what inference we can afford depends on what explanation we put into the account. Without it, there’s not enough in there to go straight from the evidence to an inference. Let’s see why.
The taller a man is, the higher his income is likely to be, and the better his promotion chances are. So employers discriminate against short men when it comes to pay and promotion.
The inference has taken too much out of the account: transaction declined. Quite simply, we don’t know from just the evidence why taller men do better. To make this inference, we need to add something into the account.
The taller a man is, the higher his income is likely to be, and the better his promotion chances are. Employers see shorter men as being less competent at their job. So employers discriminate against short men when it comes to pay and promotion.
Has this addition to the account given us enough to spend on the inference? It’s certainly taken us away from being as overdrawn as we before. But there’s still a worry that the case hasn’t been fully established. We know that taller men earn and get promoted more, and that the author claims that employers see shorter men as being less competent but (yes, there’s a pronounced but) we don’t
The evidence is meant to operate as a reason for the inference given in the advert. Accordingly, you will probably have spotted an assumption here.
Of 97 women, 72 agreed that wrinkles were less visible. ( Less visible wrinkles will make you look years younger. ) Our age-rejection cream will make you look years younger.
That’s quite a big assumption and is itself open to questions of meaning. How much ‘less visible’? (Can it be quantified into a percentage?) How many ‘years younger’? (Two, three …?)
We’ve just looked at some very specific evidence (‘of 97 women …’). But often evidence can be presented in a much more general way.
The taller a man is, the higher his income is likely to be, and the better his promotion chances are.
This time there are no numbers, no percentages, nothing beyond the giving of a correlation between a man’s height and his income and promotion chances. So what sort of inference could be drawn from this sort of evidence?
The taller a man is, the higher his income is likely to be, and the better his promotion chances are. So employers discriminate against short men when it comes to pay and promotion/short men lack the confidence to further their careers/there needs to be a policy making heightism illegal.
We have reached an important point. Which of these inferences does the evidence-claim best support (if any)? We’ll introduce here a way of looking at this problem. This is to look at the process of inference in terms of a bank account.
We know that we can spend only what is in our bank account (ignoring loans, credit cards, gifts, and so on). If we spend more, then we are overdrawn. We have literally taken out of the account more than was in there. The link with inference is a simpleone. The claim(s) from which an inference is drawn represent(s) what is in the account. You can therefore infer (spend) no more than what the claim(s) permit(s).
Let’s return to the evidence on men’s height. We gave three possible inferences. Can we afford any of these? Interestingly, if this evidence is a general trend (which it seems to be), then something appears to be going on which needs explaining. You will again see, by the way, that explanations are never far away in Critical Thinking (whatever some might say or write). Without an explanation, we don’t really know what’s going on here. So what inference we can afford depends on what explanation we put into the account. Without it, there’s not enough in there to go straight from the evidence to an inference. Let’s see why.
The taller a man is, the higher his income is likely to be, and the better his promotion chances are. So employers discriminate against short men when it comes to pay and promotion.
The inference has taken too much out of the account: transaction declined. Quite simply, we don’t know from just the evidence why taller men do better. To make this inference, we need to add something into the account.
The taller a man is, the higher his income is likely to be, and the better his promotion chances are. Employers see shorter men as being less competent at their job. So employers discriminate against short men when it comes to pay and promotion.
Has this addition to the account given us enough to spend on the inference? It’s certainly taken us away from being as overdrawn as we before. But there’s still a worry that the case hasn’t been fully established. We know that taller men earn and get promoted more, and that the author claims that employers see shorter men as being less competent but (yes, there’s a pronounced but) we don’t
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