WHAT REASONING IS AND
WHY WE NEED IT
We're all familiar with the standard three R's—"Readin',
'Ritin', 'n' 'Rithmetic." Basic skills in literacy and mathematics
are crucial to functioning in modern society as informed and productive citizens.
It's hard for those of us who have such skills to imagine trying to get by in the modern world without
being able to read and write in our native language, or to figure
dimensions, weights, time, energy, percentages, and (of course) money.
The three R's are arguably the most important of all the things we
study, because without them it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to become
adequately conversant and competent in any other subject. They're key to
learning and accomplishing just about everything else, from sports to
arts, from mechanics to medicine, from physics to philosophy, from
homemaking to high finance.
But while the three R's are crucial to
communicating information and crunching numbers, they don't show us how
to analyze and synthesize that information or how to interpret the
number-crunching. Without the ability to evaluate and process all
this information reliably and effectively, we'd find ourselves in the
predicament of being interactive but not very intelligent, knowledgeable
but not very smart, clever but not very wise.
That's where reasoning comes in. Reasoning
is the ability to distinguish good information from bad (i.e., with
respect to what's consistent and coherent), and to process the good
information in ways that explain (i.e., make more comprehensible) what
we think we know, guide us to plausible answers to our questions, and enable us to
find realistic solutions to our problems. But the number-one problem here is
that, for the most part, it's assumed that good reasoning skills are
naturally acquired, when evidence suggests that this isn't actually the
case for most people. For example, can you tell which, if any, of
the following lines of reasoning are logically valid?
- If the king is dying, the prince must be
summoned. The prince has been summoned, so the king must be
dying.
- Most hard-drug addicts get started by using
marijuana, so marijuana use leads to hard-drug addiction.
- Elves are wiser than gnomes, and wizards are
wiser than elves, so wizards are wiser than gnomes.
- Christians, Jews, and Muslims all believe in
God; so, Christians, Jews, and Muslims all believe in the same thing.
If you answered that 3 is the only logically
valid example of the four, you're correct. But can you explain
exactly why 3 is valid, and why 1, 2, and 4 are not?
If you can't (or if you answer "Because 3 is my favorite number!"), then
stick around, and you might learn something interesting!
Yes, the ability to reason comes to us naturally; but the ability to reason well—that is, critically,
coherently, and consistently—is something that requires disciplined
objectivity, which most people can acquire only with a measure of effort and
guidance. The fact that most people aren't routinely
taught basic principles of good reasoning as such is a major factor in our tendency
to use trial and error as our preferred method, and tradition or
ideology rather than reality as our guide, in decision-making outside
the fields in which we're specifically trained. We may be expert
thinkers in our jobs, but tend to be impulsive consumers, undisciplined
debtors, fumbling problem-solvers, unrealistic planners, panicky
investors, and gullible
voters.
As to this last point, it's arguably the most
troublesome. Much of the electorate is far too eagerly charmed by
platitudes and blinded by simplistic ideologies, deliberately ignoring
the very real implications of salient and relevant facts.
Consequently, bumbling incompetents and narrow-minded schemers are all
too often elected, rather than knowledgeable and disciplined thinkers,
to the detriment of all. The results have historically ranged from frustrating
to catastrophic: hot-headed and counterproductive policy, economic
instability, wholesale lapses of ethics, loss of public and diplomatic
trust, runaway toxic
pollution, neglect of infrastructure, ineffectual emergency relief,
unnecessary wars, and so on and on.
Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, we all too often
tend to think as children—wishfully instead of rationally, fearfully
instead of cautiously, hopefully instead of objectively, dogmatically
instead of realistically.
Considering the problems we face, we must do better; we must grow up.
Sloppy, mediocre, reactive, myopically self-serving
thinking is a practice we can no longer afford to indulge when it comes to
important decisions. We face issues today, as never before, which
affect not only our own immediate health and prosperity, but also that of our
children and grandchildren, and even civilization itself. No, we
needn't abandon our hopes and dreams. But to have a realistic
chance of attaining them, we must cultivate the habit of thinking clearly
and soberly. We must base our thinking, not on ideology, but on
reality. To do that, we must have a reliable way to distinguish
one from the other, and critical thinking is an indispensable tool to
that end. Indeed, it isn't only the personal and global calamities we hope to avoid, but the new levels of prosperity and well-being
we mean to achieve, which hang in the balance.
What Reasoning Is, and What It Isn't
There are several modes of thinking, of which
reasoning is one. Other modes include emotion,
imagination, belief, memorization, speculation, knowledge, and
association. Each has its own function; each contributes something
to the unique human "package;" and no one of them can accomplish the
whole job alone. To get a clear overall picture, let's start by
considering each of these elements briefly.
Emotions
, such as joy, anger, fear, sadness, love, hate, desire,
jealousy, pride, shame, envy, and resentment, are largely influenced by our
body chemistry—which in turn is influenced by our glandular secretions,
our genetic makeup, our physical and social environment, and things we ingest.
Emotions are our feelings: primitive, spontaneous and sometimes overpowering, yet
something we consider an essential facet of our humanity. Emotions motivate us to act in certain ways, without our
having to give serious consideration to the implications of our actions.
Now, human emotions evolved over tens of thousands of years, but human
society has evolved from Stone Age to Space Age in a relative eye-blink.
Thus, in contrast to other species, humans' natural emotional responses aren't always in synch with
their
artificial social traditions and mores. In our current, highly synthetic
environment, sometimes emotions work to our benefit, and sometimes to
our detriment. We depend on them in emergencies; but we'd be
unwise to trust them when deciding to visit the dentist, what line of
work to get into, which candidate to vote for, or whether to trust the
chummy salesperson at the used-chariot lot.
Fortunately, we have other tools available.
Imagination
is the process of envisioning the unknown, the
unsensed, or the non-existent, from Tolkien's Middle Earth to the middle
of nowhere, from molecules to distant worlds, from microscopic life to
afterlife. Imagination can serve merely as an escape from boredom,
or as a door to the contemplation of ancient mysteries and the investigation of new
possibilities. But it's also key to empathy, to imagine what
others feel and think in situations to which we ourselves might or might
not be subject; and this, we might argue, underlies our desire for fair
play and justice, while a lack of empathic imagination might be a factor
in the callous and brutal behavior of some people. Human
imagination is also a powerful tool that enables us to plan, by
envisioning alternative futures and ways of altering our behavior, to
improve our chances of achieving a favorable outcome or of avoiding an
unfavorable one.
Speculation
(also called conjecture) is closely related to
imagination. It is an active mental process that serves as a preliminary
approach to questions of "how," "why," and "what
if." Speculation can be a purely playful toy, a device for scheming and
planning, or a tool for developing testable hypotheses, depending on our
goal and the degree of discipline we're prepared to apply.
Belief is
the acceptance of some ideas as true, and the rejection of others as
false, based on inconclusive evidence, or even in spite of evidence to
the contrary. The practical function of belief is
formulating tentative working hypotheses for coping in a world
where certain knowledge is scarce. As more
evidence comes to light, we can adjust our beliefs accordingly.
(Some people try to do it the other way round—distort or ignore evidence to
comply with existing beliefs. But reality tends to win out in the end,
even though in some cases it might take centuries to dislodge especially
popular beliefs.) Belief compares with
disbelief, which is an active opinion that a belief is false, and so
disbelief is actually also a form of belief. This contrasts with unbelief, which is simply a passive lack of
belief. It's probably fair to say that most adults are
disbelievers with respect to flying unicorns (which they feel they have
adequate reason to reject), and unbelievers with respect to the
advisability of colonizing the moon (for which they simply have
inadequate evidence upon which to form an opinion).
Memorization
—rote learning—is handy for building vocabularies and keeping
multiplication tables handy. It allows us to store and retrieve
information and procedures that we use frequently, without having to
rethink them or look them up each time. But while this
storage-and-retrieval mode is important and vast, it contributes little to our
evaluation and understanding of the information content. We can
memorize gibberish—"Be-bop-a-lula"—almost as easily as we can
memorize intelligible thoughts—"That's my baby." Memory doesn't
care. Something else has to take care of distinguishing sense from
nonsense.
Knowledge
is an information storage mode characterized by some as
"justified true belief." By "true," we mean in accord with some
standard, such as reality (as nearly as we can determine what reality is), or
dogma or existing belief, which are easier to specify but which sometimes
turn out to be at
odds with reality. By "justified," we mean that
there is both sufficient supporting evidence to make it very likely that the
belief is actually true, and little or no significant evidence to
suggest that the belief might be problematic or false. Note that
both parts of this justification are necessary for an idea to be fairly
characterized as knowledge: Lack of serious challenge does not by itself
constitute justification without positive evidence, and evidence in
support of an idea does not refute serious evidence against it.
(Many ideas are incorrectly claimed to be knowledge, when in fact they
amount only to willful belief. No intensity of will, even if
unanimous, constitutes even the slightest evidence that a belief is
actually true.)
Association
is a quick and easy form of mental evaluation, in
which new ideas are compared to those already existing in memory. Some new ideas are
found to be compatible with our existing beliefs, some are incompatible
with them, and some are neutral. Whether we accept or reject ideas
on the basis of association alone, or apply a more objective approach,
depends on other factors, including whether we have the time, ability,
and inclination to exercise more advanced brain functions.
Each of the kinds of thinking mentioned so far
can be classified as to functions of survival response, trial-and-error
testing, information storage and retrieval, amusement, and passive
filtering. What's left is the active evaluation and linking of
ideas in ways that lead to comprehensive understanding and informed
decision-making.
Reasoning
is the application of intellect to find meaningful
connections and relationships among ideas, to evaluate and explain
evidence, to pose and answer questions, to identify and solve problems,
to envision and consider alternatives, and to make thoughtful decisions
among available options. However, there are different kinds of
reasoning. Some are quick and easy, but not very reliable outside
the realm of the very simple and familiar. Others rely on
appealing allusions and can be emotionally persuasive. Still others require a bit
more effort and discipline, but are more consistently reliable.
Common Kinds of Reasoning
Common sense
, in its most charitable manifestation, is the application of
generally held beliefs, traditions, hunches, and sketchy thinking about what usually works
and what usually doesn't. In some cases, the beliefs happen to be true; but
in others, they turn out to be poorly founded or to have obscure
contingencies. Commonsense beliefs
typically hang more on tradition than on fact. They're often subject
to unspoken conditions that can be safely assumed in most situations,
but turn out to be unexpectedly variable in a few. Far from being universally
constant, traditions have historically evolved, and vary from one group
to another, depending on the shared experiences and prejudices within
each group. Thus, so-called common sense isn't really all that
common. Moreover, it often has less to do with the senses than
with biases, and thus is more of an associative process than a truly
reasoning one.
Through the ages, common sense has persuaded
people that the earth stands still at the center of the universe, that
disease and misfortune are caused by evil spirits, that slaves should
subjugate themselves to their masters, that women are the property of
their fathers and husbands, that rulers are divinely inspired and
privileged, and that the natural universe is governed by the will of
supernatural beings. Most of these commonsense notions have long
since been disproved or discredited. And whatever we might be
inclined to think about the rest, we must concede that they've yet to be
reliably verified. In perhaps a majority of cases, the admonition, "Use common sense,"
simply means, "Think and behave as I do, even though I can't think of a
convincing reason for you to do so!" We are thus wise to regard
so-called common sense with a measure of suspicion, if not outright
contempt, if it turns out that there's no other justification for a
claim.
Rhetoric
is an ancient art of persuasion that uses artful manipulation
of words to play on the feelings of an audience. Rhetoric
typically works by associating ideas with notions of good and evil,
right and wrong, rather than by advancing through a methodical progression of
evidence and rational linkages. Rhetoric is very effective at eliciting response using cherry-picked evidence and
popular
inferences, and can even appear to mimic logic with a generous
sprinkling of whenevers, becauses, and therefores.
But rhetoric has no firm constraints on truth, coherence, and consistency,
beyond what a speaker or writer can get away with when addressing an eager and
uncritical audience. Thus, while it can be used to promote
constructive objectives, rhetoric is just as easily (and perhaps even
more often) used to advocate
incoherent foolishness, or to incite destructive rage or fear, among a gullible
populace largely untrained in methods of critical thinking.
Logic
is a form of reasoning based on the systematic
connection of ideas in a way that methodically leads to a specific
implication or inference. Properly applied, coherent logical
method ensures that the conclusion is at least highly likely, and at best incontrovertible, in
light of sufficient and reliable evidence. Unlike rhetoric, logic has internal
checks on the mutual consistency among the ideas it presents. It
has a well defined structure, developed and refined over 25 centuries,
which guards against misunderstanding and incoherence. Thus, logic
has arguably become more of a science than an art. (Indeed, the sciences
would be lost without it!) Whereas rhetoric might be thought of as
the flamboyant advocacy of causes, logic is more the tirelessly sober
quest for rational consistency, and thus truth, insofar as truth
signifies being consistent with reality.
Logic is clearly the superior mode of reasoning,
when the objective is to discover what's real and true, rather than
what's simply easy or popular or declared by authority. The trouble is that what's real and
true often doesn't coincide with what's easy and popular; and many
people prefer answers that are appealing but unworkable, rather than
answers that are workable but not necessarily appealing.
Moreover, using logic correctly isn't quite as instinctive as we might
assume, but requires a bit of effort and discipline to master.
Furthermore, even when we've mastered it, logical reasoning often comes
across as dry and uninteresting, even when it concerns issues of vital
importance. So, logic has an automatic public-relations
deficiency, to put it mildly. Very well, let's deal with this
deficiency point by point.
- Logic sometimes doesn't give us the
answers we want. But that's just a reflection of the real world,
which is indifferent to what
we want. Besides, what we want often isn't what we actually need.
When we have a real problem, we might want a handy excuse or a
comforting diversion, but what we actually need is a real solution to
address the problem effectively. Logic is the reasoning tool to
help get this job done properly. Once it's done, the want of excuses
and diversions evaporates.
- Logic requires effort and discipline.
Reasoning comes naturally to humans; all that most people need is a little
guidance on how to use it properly and to avoid common errors.
This relatively small effort is an investment that pays off in the long run, in
terms of consistently reliable results, and in reduced error, waste, and
frustration. Over a lifetime, the reward is well worth many
times the initial effort.
- Logical reasoning seems dull and boring.
This isn't a problem when we're just trying to analyze a line of
thinking without unnecessary distractions. But once any logical
glitches have been remedied, a dull presentation can be a setback—even
a fatal one—in the public arena. The solution is to mix the
logic with just enough rhetoric to hold interest and build enthusiasm,
while a solid logical case is shaped around clear evidence and
coherent reasoning to engage the mind. Rhetoric shouldn't be used to camouflage
logical weaknesses, but it isn't taboo if the underlying evidence and
logic are sufficient and sound in themselves.
What Reasoning Can and Can't Do for Us
Reasoning isn't a substitute for knowledge.
Without knowledge, reasoning can't safely guide us through fixing a toaster,
let alone designing a bridge, flying
a plane, curing a disease, or remedying economic recession. But with a working knowledge of
these things, disciplined reasoning helps us to master them with
greater efficiency and fewer errors, and to solve related problems as we
encounter them. Reasoning enables us to evaluate, organize, and apply knowledge, and
also to
develop reliable new knowledge from that which already exists.
Reasoning is how we make sense of knowledge, so that we can do more than
simply memorize and repeat it. Reasoning allows us to connect the
dots provided by plain facts, so that we can deduce implications and draw reliable inferences,
which can in turn be usefully applied, and thus advance to a more
comprehensive level of understanding about nearly anything. In
short, good reasoning both refines our knowledge and multiplies its
effectiveness. Like reading and math, reasoning helps us to learn and understand everything
else both more easily and more thoroughly, and enables us to put that
understanding to good use. That's precisely why
reasoning
must, like literacy and mathematics, be considered a basic and essential
skill in any society that hopes to be credibly competitive in the
increasingly global environment of the twenty-first century.
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