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Authors: Roy van den Brink-Budgen
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know if these two claims together show/demonstrate (prove, if you like) that the better pay and promotion chances of taller men are as a result of how employers see shorter men. So there’s still a big hint of overdrawn here.
Perhaps taller men (for whatever reason) are better qualified, healthier (so take less time off sick), have happier home lives (so work more contentedly and consistently), or whatever. To show how the picture can indeed be muddied by such possibilities, there is evidence (by Danish researchers on shorter British men) that such short men reported worse physical and mental health than those of ‘normal’ height. Inaddition, a French study has found that men who are 6ft or more tall are 50 per cent more likely to be married or in a long-term relationship than men who are 5ft 5in or below.
We can see then that drawing any inference from our first claim starts to look very difficult. Let’s just have a look at the third inference.
The taller a man is, the higher his income is likely to be, and the better his promotion chances are. So there needs to be a policy making heightism illegal.
There is an organisation called the National Organisation of Short Statured Adults (NOSSA) which argues that what it calls ‘heightism’ should indeed be made illegal. The famous and brilliant economist J K Galbraith (6ft 8in) referred to it as ‘one of the most blatant and forgiven prejudices in our society.’ But does the evidence enable us to make the inference above?
Of course, assumptions are never far away, and there’s at least one assumption needed to connect the evidence with the inference.
The explanation for taller men tending to have higher pay and better promotion chances is that there is prejudice by employers against short men.
The effects of the prejudice against short men by employers over pay and promotion could be at least lessened by making heightism illegal.
So, it’s the same story. The original claim and inference didn’t work without the inference being overdrawn. But would the two assumptions we’ve just identified stop the inference being overdrawn, if they were turned into stated reasons?
They’re certainly effective in dealing with the issue of what causes taller men to do better in pay and promotion (so they close off concerns about why shorter men do less well). But the inference is still overdrawn. We would also need the claim that having a prejudice against short men is not a good thing. Going back to our earlier point about whether there are health-related causes of heightism, we would need the claim that the explanation for heightism is not to do with factors that would stop short people from getting on well at work.
You might be thinking by now that we can’t ever infer anything safely once we stray out of the enclosed world of the valid syllogism. But this would be to cut us off fromthe normal way in which we argue. What we’ve seen is that inferences are normally, at best, only probably true. The claims that are used to support inferences might take us a long way towards certainty, but will never quite get there. But in Critical Thinking we are not normally after certainty: an inference with a high probability of being true would sit nicely at our table.
IMPLICATIONS
Having talked a lot about strong claims and inferences, it’s interesting to note that sometimes claims are left deliberately weak, although the intended message of the assumed inference is meant to be strong.
You could save money with our price comparison website.
This claim is, of course, entirely compatible with another one.
You might not save money with our price comparison website. (Or even ‘you will not save money…’)
But you’re meant to draw the inference from the first one that ‘it would be a good idea to use this price comparison website’. You’re not meant to do anything with the other claim. It sits there
Perhaps taller men (for whatever reason) are better qualified, healthier (so take less time off sick), have happier home lives (so work more contentedly and consistently), or whatever. To show how the picture can indeed be muddied by such possibilities, there is evidence (by Danish researchers on shorter British men) that such short men reported worse physical and mental health than those of ‘normal’ height. Inaddition, a French study has found that men who are 6ft or more tall are 50 per cent more likely to be married or in a long-term relationship than men who are 5ft 5in or below.
We can see then that drawing any inference from our first claim starts to look very difficult. Let’s just have a look at the third inference.
The taller a man is, the higher his income is likely to be, and the better his promotion chances are. So there needs to be a policy making heightism illegal.
There is an organisation called the National Organisation of Short Statured Adults (NOSSA) which argues that what it calls ‘heightism’ should indeed be made illegal. The famous and brilliant economist J K Galbraith (6ft 8in) referred to it as ‘one of the most blatant and forgiven prejudices in our society.’ But does the evidence enable us to make the inference above?
Of course, assumptions are never far away, and there’s at least one assumption needed to connect the evidence with the inference.
The explanation for taller men tending to have higher pay and better promotion chances is that there is prejudice by employers against short men.
The effects of the prejudice against short men by employers over pay and promotion could be at least lessened by making heightism illegal.
So, it’s the same story. The original claim and inference didn’t work without the inference being overdrawn. But would the two assumptions we’ve just identified stop the inference being overdrawn, if they were turned into stated reasons?
They’re certainly effective in dealing with the issue of what causes taller men to do better in pay and promotion (so they close off concerns about why shorter men do less well). But the inference is still overdrawn. We would also need the claim that having a prejudice against short men is not a good thing. Going back to our earlier point about whether there are health-related causes of heightism, we would need the claim that the explanation for heightism is not to do with factors that would stop short people from getting on well at work.
You might be thinking by now that we can’t ever infer anything safely once we stray out of the enclosed world of the valid syllogism. But this would be to cut us off fromthe normal way in which we argue. What we’ve seen is that inferences are normally, at best, only probably true. The claims that are used to support inferences might take us a long way towards certainty, but will never quite get there. But in Critical Thinking we are not normally after certainty: an inference with a high probability of being true would sit nicely at our table.
IMPLICATIONS
Having talked a lot about strong claims and inferences, it’s interesting to note that sometimes claims are left deliberately weak, although the intended message of the assumed inference is meant to be strong.
You could save money with our price comparison website.
This claim is, of course, entirely compatible with another one.
You might not save money with our price comparison website. (Or even ‘you will not save money…’)
But you’re meant to draw the inference from the first one that ‘it would be a good idea to use this price comparison website’. You’re not meant to do anything with the other claim. It sits there
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