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Because How to Analyze and Evaluate Ordinary Reasoning Analysis 1 |
G. Randolph Mayes Department of Philosophy Sacramento State University |
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Instructions: Carefully analyze the following 2 examples in Rationale 2.0. Print your answer and turn it in at the beginning of class on 10/15. Each of these examples contains an explanatory and an argumentative element, so be sure to capture each. This means there will be four distinct rationales, two for each example.
Example 1
From New Scientist, May 24 2008
Randomized controlled trials form the basis of modern medicine, but their usefulness is not limited to medicine. They can be designed to test the effectiveness of many kinds of social policies, from education to crime. Such trials often reveal that policies do not work, or worse. School-based driving lessons, for instance, have increased the number of car accidents. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So why aren't rigorous trials of policies standard practice? One reason is that policy-makers and their supporters don't like it when their ideas are shown to fail. Take programmes in the US to promote sexual abstinence among young people. There are two issues here - is it desirable for teenagers to be abstinent, and do the abstinence programmes work? Many people who answer yes to the first question won't accept that the answer to the second is no. Science can never tell us what a society's aims should be. But once we decide on those aims, science is the best way to find out which policies will help achieve them. There is outrage when patients die because drugs have not been properly tested. We should be equally indignant if people die because of untested policies dished out by politicians.
Example 2 According to a recent study "Unskilled and Unaware of It," by Justin Kruger and David Dunning, people tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. Researchers have found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked these errors to deficits in metacognitive ability; i.e., the capacity to think about ones own thought processes. Research also showed that improving the metacognitive skills of the participants helped them recognize their own limitations.
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