These, therefore, are the 3 Cs of assessment: coherence, completeness, and correctness. A philosophical position, similar to a business plan, may be correct as far as it goes, without going far enough. A viewpoint may be correct, within limits, without being complete enough. Consider a management theory that says companies prosper best when all their executives share a strong sense of purpose. That may be true, but it’s an incomplete perspective. As a matter of fact, a business can flourish best when everyone, not just the executives, shares a strong sense of purpose. And maybe customers and supplier need to be let in on that purpose as well. Such an assessment tells you that the original view needs more development. A philosophical view or theory may even be correct in its main principles but incoherent in some of its less vital components — in which case, it needs some logical retooling before we can accept it as a whole. We must check for and identify all three qualities of coherence, comprehensiveness, and correctness in order to evaluate it well. Keeping this concept in mind, you can greatly enhance your skills of assessment through a philosophical examination of any big claim or position.
Using argument
Philosophy cultivates our skills of analysis and assessment. It also schools us on the correct use of argument.
Arguments are not, in philosophical terms, shouting matches, verbal tug-o-wars, or personally abusive altercations. You may often find yourself amazed at what people seem to think constitutes a reasonable exchange of differing ideas these days. Arguments on television often feature squared jaws, red faces, and bulging veins, along with such rejoinders as “Oh yeah?”, “Who says?”, and “That’s just your opinion!” Social media is usually even worse. Many people seem to misunderstand what a logical argument essentially and at its best really is.
EXPLORING REASON
Analysis involves the use of reason. So does assessment. The same is true of argument. But what exactly is reason? The philosophers all use it and urge the rest of us to do so, even as they point out its limits, as well as its strengths.
We can think of reason clearly as one of the powers of the mind, like perception or imagination. It is the power of moving logically from one idea to another, of seeing connections through logic or the considerations of cause and effect, and of arriving at justified conclusions from given starting points. By the power of reason, we can often best see where truth is to be found.
“Use your head!” you may urge a friend, meaning to advise a use of reason. (“Use the common sense God gave a squirrel” could be a less complimentary version of the same advice.)
In the history of philosophy, some great minds have thought that reason could do everything — from discerning the truth of “First Principles,” or the most basic facts about the world, to deducing all less fundamental truths from those same principles. Others have insisted that widespread experience of the empirical world — seeing, hearing, touching, and so on — is necessary for gaining substantive truth about life. Swinging from one extreme to the other, from the primacy of reason to the importance of experience, characterizes a good deal of the history of philosophy, as it does most of life, for that matter. The truth is not usually at an extreme. A person is often called a “rationalist” who views reason as very powerful and who wants an argument for the proof of almost anything he or she believes. By contrast, a person is often called an “empiricist” who, by contrast, just keeps hammering away on the importance of sense experience for confirming anything we believe. The sentence, “I’ll believe it when I see it” is a typical empiricist claim. But even the most experientially oriented philosophers value the role of reason in analysis, discernment, evaluation, and inference, or logical argument.
So, in philosophy, arguments aren’t supposed to be things you win or lose. They’re not like games or athletic contests of the mind. Even if you engage in an argument with another person in the colloquial sense over a substantive issue — and you truly want to convince your dialogue partner of the persuasiveness of your viewpoint — you’d better be able to construct a good argument in the philosophical sense as well. And studying a little philosophy helps you know how to do so better than you may already.
In every walk of life, you need to be able to give a reasoned presentation of your beliefs in such a way as to persuade other people. Lawyers aren’t the only ones who worry about convincing others to accept a particular point of view. Persuasive argument is an important part of every marketing campaign and management job, it’s a tool for any business builder, a requirement for any challenged parent, and it’s useful for any young person making their way in the world. It’s as important to serious preachers and teachers as to practicing scientists. A good argument helps us see where the truth is to be found.
In my first year at college, I discovered an important truth about the limitations of reasoned argument. My mother had always insisted I have short hair and be perfectly shaved each day. But away on my own, I grew my hair long and began to cultivate an impressive mustache. A few months later, I saw my mom for the first time since the inception of my new look. She offered me money on the spot to shave off my mustache and claimed that “Something’s psychologically wrong with anyone who has a beard or mustache!”, I refused on principle and found the claim to be outrageous.
Instead, I decided to prove by argument she was wrong and started enumerating aloud all the great personages of history I could think of who had mustaches or beards and yet who were paragons of psychological health and worldly success. Working my way from ancient Greece through modern times, I was taken up short and momentarily struck mute by a sudden realization “Mother,” I said with all the shocked conviction I could muster, suddenly certain that I had unassailable proof of my own stance that facial hair and sound psychological health can go quite well together, “Dad has always had a mustache!”
“You see what I’m saying?” she instantly replied, and in doing showed me the sad truth about the limits of reasoned argument in the world.
UNDERSTANDING THE DANGERS OF ARGUMENT: A GUIDE
How can you actually use argument well and maybe even make progress in an argument with another person — or at least not get
