If this were an ideal world, all information transactions would be honest and straightforward, and the recipients of information could completely and unfailingly rely upon its accuracy.
But we all know that the real world is anything but ideal and that the purveyors of information are frequently less than completely honest, even if those departures from absolute honesty
are sometimes “only” those of (presumably inadvertent) omission rather than of (deliberate) commission. And we also recognize that some of those departures aren’t necessarily motivated
by venality or greed (as when the “con” artist is trying to separate the “mark” from his money), but may arise from completely benign, often even noble motives, in whose pursuit “shading
the truth” may be incorrectly considered by some to be morally acceptable.
As a result there’s an important caveat that must be observed if the application of even the most powerful a set of techniques like REAP, Critical Thinking, or even Formal Symbolic Logic
are to be really productive - the reliability of the proposer of the information must first be evaluated and then, if necessary, compensated for!
Sellers and Consumers of Statements
In most contexts, especially those involving human interaction rather than some business or technological subject, it’s all too frequently true that the author/presenter of a communication has
an (often hidden) agenda in whose service statements may be made which are at best only partially true, yet which their proposer nevertheless wishes to have accepted as entirely true.
For convenience, we shall call the (not necessarily entirely honest) proposer of a Statement the “seller”, and the one (s)he is trying to convince the “consumer”.
The seller’s objective is to gain acceptance of the proposed idea(s), at a “cost” to the consumer (which may be legal, moral and/or psychological rather than, or in addition to, pecuniary),
and whose magnitude will depend upon the consumer’s resources, morality, and vulnerability. The consumer’s objective is to attempt to discern the truth, despite what may be a blizzard
of often confusing and obfuscating Statements made by the seller consisting of an unknown mix of honest, half, mis-, and actively false information!
In all cases, the seller’s essential “pitch” consists of:
-
An Argument in which there is:
-
A target Statement (= the Conclusion) that the consumer is being urged to accept.
- "Supporting" Statements (= Premises), which:
-
Purport to be ones the consumer already accepts as true.
- Consequently “prove” the truth of the Conclusion.
Being a skilled Critical Thinker requires understanding the dynamics of the situation, and the various (often clever) devices sellers use (usually deliberately but sometimes inadvertently) to
induce the consumers to accept the (not necessarily valid) Conclusions being sold.
Sellers’ Gimmicks
Clever sellers employ a stunning array of psychological ploys designed to dazzle, impress, confuse, elicit sympathy from or intimidate the consumer in order to gain acceptance for their
Statements, including some or all of:
-
Exhibiting symbols of power, wisdom, and/or authority, and generally presenting themselves as a fountainhead of truth. (This is especially effective when the seller really is an authority figure in some context or other.)
- Smiling, shaking hands, looking attentive, and generally being really friendly.
- Declaiming, shouting, screaming, yelling and generally being emphatic.
- Threatening, bullying, terrorizing, and generally being intimidating, overbearing and/or obnoxious.
- Crying, whimpering, sulking, and generally being pathetic.
- Overwhelming with fast talk, mountains of “data”, and/or confusing rhetoric.
- Making appeals to:
- Ego
- Greed
- Desire
- Custom
- Bias
- Patriotism
- Group Loyalty
All of these techniques are effective individually and collectively to greater or lesser degree, depending on the seller, audience and context. Some sellers rely for their effectiveness on
positive interaction with the consumer and on negative interaction with others, but none of that has anything to do with the truth or falsity of the Statement(s) being sold, since they all
work just as well (or badly) with lies as with the truth. Because all of these techniques are pernicious and damaging to truth, it’s vitally important to be alert to their existence and to not
be taken in by them!
CAUTION! The implied presumption here is that accounting for any possible use of seller’s gimmicks will in and of itself be sufficient to properly decode/understand the seller’s
message, and thus justify moving on to the remaining REAP steps. But as we will see when we conduct our brief overview of Formal Symbolic Logic in the Appendix, that alone is not sufficient, and true
understanding of the seller’s message also requires assuring that his/her Arguments be both Valid and Sound! For that reason, revisiting REAP after we’ve covered Formal Symbolic Logic
will be well advised.
Most of the data encountered in both academic and personal life by individuals who are engaged in other than scientific and/or mathematical fields falls into the “soft” category, and comes
to us via some form of communication rather than by direct observation.
High on this list of data types in terms of perceived reliability are scholarly papers and other similar writings. Distinctly further down on the reliability scale are such things as the “position”
statements issued by corporations, political candidates and office holders, media news accounts and their interpretations, and the various writings of advocacy groups. And it is in these
latter areas, especially, that discerning the writer’s true message is often not only difficult but invariably crucial to making the correct decision regarding the weight to be assigned to the
message’s credibility. So a key task we must efficiently accomplish is that of digesting and evaluating the accuracy/validity of those often questionable communications, and that’s the
purpose for which REAP was created.
REAP
Read-Encode-Annotate-Ponder (REAP) is a strategy developed M.G. Eanet & A.V. Manzo at University of Missouri - Kansas City to improve the digestion and
understanding of written information, although it can be applied equally well to audio-visual materials.
Steps in REAP:
R = READ/listen, to identify the presenter’s message.
This is the most crucial step because of the truism “garbage in, garbage out”. So if this task isn’t performed absolutely correctly all of the subsequent effort, however well executed, will be
wasted! It’s often the most difficult step because of the host of roadblocks to correctly discerning the writer’s message that we shall consider shortly, plus a few more that we will
encounter after we’ve discussed Symbolic Logic in some detail, in the Appendix.
One of the most common and serious problems we will encounter is in trying to correctly tease out and discern the essence of the presenter’s message from all of the often voluminous
verbiage that typically surrounds and obscures it.
In carrying out this essential first step, it will almost always be useful and often even necessary to first “boil down” the author’s verbiage to a bare minimum of prose. To do this:
-
Begin with a quick overview, to get a general “feel” for where the author is coming from and what his objective in making the presentation probably is. Clues which may aid in
this are biographical material and organizational citations, as well as any cited references.
-
Eliminate all excess verbiage, to achieve the most concise language possible:
-
delete any not directly relevant statements
-
delete any “loaded”, prejudicial or pejorative statements
-
replace flowery verbiage with simple, direct declarative language
-
Try to create a one short sentence summary of what you think the author’s message is.
-
Then try to find something similar in the presentation. If it exists, it’s almost certainly the author’s Conclusion.
-
If the author’s Conclusion isn’t evident, try to reconstruct it.
-
Identify the author’s Premises
-
Rewrite the Premises and Conclusion for conciseness and clarity.
Performing this exercise is obviously much easier said than done, but it is the best way to assure your understanding of the author’s intent and message. The caution to be observed in
carrying out this step is that in trying to “boil down” the author’s message to its bare essence that you don’t somehow distort/alter it!
E = ENCODE the message by translating it into your own words.
This simple task is useful because it ensures that you have truly understood the message the presenter intended to convey. But it contains a great hidden danger because if not very carefully
performed your “translation” may in fact be a distortion which then prevents properly addressing the issue raised. For this reason it’s often advisable to exactly retain at least a few of the
presenter’s own key descriptive phrases and/or declaratory verbiage.
A = ANNOTATE to synthesize, explain, clarify, and/or amplify the author’s message and/or its context.
Even if the first two steps in the REAP paradigm have been successfully carried out, its final success or failure will still depend on how well the third step of Annotation is conducted.
Annotation Types
-
Reconstructive
-
Summary response. Cogently restates/summarizes the presenter’s basic message.
- Attention-getting response. Highlights that portion of the essay that motivates the reader. (Here again it is best to use the author's
own words to avoid possible distortion of his/her message.)
- Question response. Proposes a summarizing/organizing question that you believe the essay addresses.
-
Constructive (Requires reading and thinking between and beyond the lines.)
-
Personal view. Answers the question "How do your own views and feelings compare with what you perceive the author said?"
- Critical response. Supports, rejects, or questions the main idea, and tells why:
-
Restate the author's position.
-
State your position.
-
Explain how the two differ.
- Intention response. State and briefly explain what you perceive to be the author's objective in writing the selection. This is a special version of the
critical response that requires you to try to think from the author's perspective.
- Motivation response. State what you believe may have caused the author to create the selection. This is another special version of the critical
response in which you attempt to discover the author's personal agenda and possible associated areas of (sometimes unwitting) bias.
- Contrary (“Devil’s advocate”) response. State a logical alternative position to the author’s, even if it is not one that you necessarily support.
- Discovery response. State one or more practical questions that need to be answered before the “facts” provided by the author can be properly judged for accuracy or worth. This often leads to more reading and research, and occasionally to a reformulated position.
- Creative response. Suggest different and (hopefully) better solutions, views and/or applications than those proposed by the author.
P = PONDER what you have read and written, and/or discuss with others.
After all of the foregoing, it’s still necessary to reconsider the entire analysis, think about its implications, and if necessary to reassess your understanding of both the writer’s message and
what it means in terms of how to appropriately deal with it.
EXPLANATION = A collection of related Statements in which the Conclusion is already accepted as fact, and therefore need not be proved. In this case, the only
function of the Premises is to improve understanding. (Example: The Sun appears to rise and set every day because the Earth rotates on its axis once every 24 hours.)
Spelling Out The Presenter’s Premises and Conclusions
A major problem we encounter in the real world when dealing with presentations is that the Arguments advanced are rarely simple. Even if no seller’s gimmicks are involved, but especially
if they are, not only are the Arguments typically embedded in editorials, letters to the editor, essays, technical papers, newscasts, talk show interviews and a host of similar contexts, but the
y are also frequently complex, with numerous premises and sometimes convoluted, often interrelated conclusions. And that’s assuming a straightforward presentation without any extraneous
and often unrelated material.
So after we’ve Read the presenter’s message but before we even begin to attempt to Encode it, it will be extremely useful to try to work out the broad interrelationships between
the Premises and Conclusions provided. The technique for doing this is quite similar to that used in Concept Mapping:
-
Identify and number the overall conclusion
-
Identify and number any intermediate conclusions
-
Identify and number the supporting statements for each conclusion
-
Note whether the supporting statements are independent or operate jointly
-
Make a simple Concept Map showing how these elements interrelate. (Most of these maps will resemble an upside down Organization chart!)
How all of this is done can best be demonstrated by example, as follows:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NY Times Editorial 2/1/02
The View From Riyadh
Saudi Arabia’s normally reticent leaders have made an unusual effort in recent days to air their views about the United States and its role in the Middle East. The openness itself is welcome
and some of the comments have been heartening, including the desire to strengthen the friendship between Riyadh and Washington. Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia’s rulers remain reluctant to
reckon with deformities in their own society that fuel the violent Islamic fundamentalism of Osama bin Laden and his followers.
Crown Prince Abdullah, who has all but replaced the ailing King Fahd as Saudi Arabia’s supreme leader, and Prince Nawwaf, the intelligence chief, largely glossed over the serious concerns
Americans now have about Saudi Arabia in interviews with The Times and The Washington Post. America’s historic relationship with Saudi Arabia, so central to the energy needs of the
West and the security of the oil-rich Persian Gulf, has been badly shaken by the events of Sept. 11 and subsequent revelations of the close links between important elements of Saudi
society and Al Qaeda’s terrorist war against the United States.
These problems are too important to overlook, or to deflect with the kind of polemics the two men offered about Israel. Washington’s relationship with Riyadh will not right itself until sensitive
issues concerning Saudi Arabia itself are openly addressed. These include the growth of virulent anti-American sentiment among young Saudis and the continued close links between the kingdom’s
economic and religious establishments and violent fundamentalist groups abroad.
Four and a half months after Sept. 11, Crown Prince Abdullah still refuses to make the kind of clean break with violent Islamic fundamentalism that Gen. Musharraf has made in Pakistan.
The Prince and many other Saudi leaders seem in denial about the extensive connections between the kingdom and events of that day. These include the Saudi passports carried by most
of the suspected hijackers , the well-connected Saudi charities that funneled money to Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network and the Saudi-funded seminaries in Pakistan and Afghanistan
that steered students into battle on behalf of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
While the Crown Prince dismisses Osama bin Laden and his Saudi followers as “deviants” trying “to drive a wedge” between Riyadh and Washington, his half-brother, the intelligence chief,
more realistically recognizes that an overwhelming majority of young Saudis now sympathize with the terrorist leader’s cause. Saudis from the royal family on down are responsive to the militant
teachings of the country’s officially established Wahhabi sect of Islam. For at least some Wahhabi mullahs, those teachings now include support for armed jihad against the United States.
Saudi leaders need to be more forthright in opposing those who distort religion to justify the terrorist murder of innocent civilians. As the custodians of Islam’s holiest places, they can speak with
great authority on these issues. They can also do a better job of making sure that Saudi Arabia ceases to send mullahs and money abroad in support of violent fundamentalism. In effect they have
encouraged the training of Islamic revolutionaries who may eventually threaten their own throne. The royal family should begin reducing pressures inside the kingdom by gradually opening up a system
in which no one is presently held accountable for corruption, and (in which) educated professionals, women and religious moderates have no meaningful voice.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now let’s analyze this editorial using the above technique by:
-
Numbering all the Statements
-
Identifying the key Premises and Conclusions
-
Constructing a simple Concept Map showing how they interrelate.
Numbering all of the Statements yields this result:
1 Saudi Arabia’s normally reticent leaders have made an unusual effort in recent days to air their views about the United States and its role in the Middle East.
2 The openness itself is welcome and some of the comments have been heartening, including the desire to strengthen the friendship between Riyadh and Washington.
3 Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia’s rulers remain reluctant to reckon with deformities in their own society that fuel the violent Islamic fundamentalism of Osama bin Laden and his followers.
4 Crown Prince Abdullah, who has all but replaced the ailing King Fahd as Saudi Arabia’s supreme leader, and Prince Nawwaf, the intelligence chief, largely glossed over the serious concerns Americans now have about Saudi Arabia in interviews with The Times and The Washington Post.
5 America’s historic relationship with Saudi Arabia, so central to the energy needs of the West and the security of the oil-rich Persian Gulf, has been badly shaken by the events of Sept. 11 and subsequent revelations of the close links between important elements of Saudi society and Al Qaeda’s terrorist war against the United States.
6 These problems are too important to overlook, or to deflect with the kind of polemics the two men offered about Israel.
7 Washington’s relationship with Riyadh will not right itself until sensitive issues concerning Saudi Arabia itself are openly addressed.
8 These include the growth of virulent anti-American sentiment among young Saudis and the continued close links between the kingdom’s economic and religious establishments and violent fundamentalist groups abroad.
9 Four and a half months after Sept. 11, Crown Prince Abdullah still refuses to make the kind of clean break with violent Islamic fundamentalism that Gen. Musharraf has made in Pakistan. The Prince and many other Saudi leaders seem in denial about the extensive connections between the kingdom and events of that day.
10 These include the Saudi passports carried by most of the suspected hijackers , the well-connected Saudi charities that funneled money to Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network and the Saudi-funded seminaries in Pakistan and Afghanistan that steered students into battle on behalf of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
11 While the Crown Prince dismisses Osama bin Laden and his Saudi followers as “deviants” trying “to drive a wedge” between Riyadh and Washington, his half-brother, the intelligence chief, more realistically recognizes that an overwhelming majority of young Saudis now sympathize with the terrorist leader’s cause.
12 Saudis from the royal family on down are responsive to the militant teachings of the country’s officially established Wahhabi sect of Islam. For at least some Wahhabi mullahs, those teachings now include support for armed jihad against the United States.
13 Saudi leaders need to be more forthright in opposing those who distort religion to justify the terrorist murder of innocent civilians.
14 As the custodians of Islam’s holiest places, they can speak with great authority on these issues.
15They can also do a better job of making sure that Saudi Arabia ceases to send mullahs and money abroad in support of violent fundamentalism.
16 In effect they have encouraged the training of Islamic revolutionaries who may eventually threaten their own throne.
17 The royal family should begin reducing pressures inside the kingdom by gradually opening up a system in which no one is presently held accountable for corruption, and (in which) educated professionals, women and religious moderates have no meaningful voice.
Identifying the Key Premises and Conclusions
Preliminary analysis quickly reveals that statement 17 is the overall conclusion, while 3, 7, 13 and 15 are intermediate conclusions. 4 supports 5 which supports 3, which in turn supports 7, as does 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. 14 supports 13, 16 supports 15, and 7, 13 and 15 support 17. Neither 1, 2, or 6 are relevant to the arguments being made, so ...
Our simple Concept Map looks like this:
View From Riyadh Concept Map
Critical Thinking
As a result of the real world’s many imperfections, it was recognized that creating an efficient methodology for distinguishing between unadorned fact and mere advocacy and/or deception
was necessary if rational decision making was to occur, and this process came to be known as Critical Thinking. This discipline organizes and sharpens the key process of correctly evaluating
and making sense of writings such as reports, depositions and/or speeches, especially in those situations in which competing “experts” make conflicting claims regarding the facts of the situation
and what those facts “really” mean.
Critical Thinking (sometimes called Informal Logic) is an efficient and highly versatile methodology which applies logical concepts to the analysis of everyday reasoning and problem-solving. Elements of Formal Symbolic Logic are frequently involved, but usually only to the extent that they contribute to this practical objective.
Critical Thinking usually has only limited applicability in Mathematics and the “hard” sciences, where immutable physical laws and explicit mathematical formulas usually preclude
much leeway in the interpretation of what constitutes fact. In those special contexts, most statements are made (as in research papers, patent applications, etc.) with the simple and straightforward
objective of advancing knowledge, so of necessity such statements are usually as entirely truthful as the proposer can make them, although even they are sometimes open to different
interpretations.
The Phases of Critical Thinking:
There are a number of different ways in which the discipline of Critical Thinking can be logically structured, among which the following simple formulation is one that has been found to be
particularly useful:
-
RECONSTRUCTION = Extracting an Argument from the surrounding mix of (sometimes extraneous) statements which have been presented. This is the function that REAP is designed to serve, and is the entry point for your analysis.
-
ASSESSMENT = Determining whether the structure of the Argument extracted does or does not allow truth to logically follow from the Premises to the Conclusion. If it does, the Argument
is Valid. Otherwise it is Invalid. The procedures for accomplishing this key task are the core elements of Formal Symbolic Logic, and is the reason we briefly explore that important discipline in the Appendix.
-
EVALUATION = Judging whether the Premises are true or false, clear or vague, and in need of further defense or not. If the Argument is Valid and all of the Premises are true, then the Argument
is also Sound. This is also a function performed by Formal Symbolic Logic.
The important thing to realize is that although both the crucial Assessment and Evaluation functions of Critical Thinking are theoretically best performed via application of the discipline of
Formal Symbolic Logic, many practitioners of Critical Thinking haven’t studied that subject and therefore can’t utilize its techniques. Instead, they must try to achieve the same result
approximately, and this can lead to significant errors in judgment.
In order to avoid that problem in this course we briefly cover the elements of Formal Symbolic Logic in the Appendix, despite that subject’s difficulty.
Where Critical Thinking gets really interesting and useful is in those areas in which it goes beyond the limits of Formal Symbolic Logic to consider other aspects of a situation which nevertheless
profoundly affect the validity of any conclusions that may be drawn.
These additional elements of Critical Thinking are:
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Estimating
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Evaluating
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Classifying
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Assuming
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Inferring Logically
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Grasping principles
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Noting Relationships
-
Hypothesizing
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Offering Opinions With Reasons
-
Making Judgments With Criteria
Caution!
Despite its great usefulness, Critical Thinking is severely limited because it is really only concerned with the front end of the Decision Making/Problem Solving process - evaluating the current situation.
The full implications of these limitations will only become apparent when we embark upon the detailed study of Decision Making/Problem Solving itself (the central objective of this book) in Chapters 3-5.
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