1.1 Critical Reasoning

Everyone Reasons Critically

Imagine that you oversee a team of software developers working on your company’s key product. One day, Juliette, a developer, comes to you and says she has designed two new processes that will improve the product in different ways. The first process will make the software 50 percent more efficient, so it will run more quickly for your customers. The second process will make the software 50 percent more accurate, so the program will generate fewer errors.

The catch is that you’re releasing a new software update soon, and you don’t have time to implement both new processes. Which would you choose? Would you increase the software’s efficiency? Or make the software more accurate? How would you decide? And why would you choose one over the other?

We face decisions like the above example every day. Choosing between two appealing options requires us to reason critically. We need to understand what factors are relevant to the decision, how to weigh them against each other, and how to make a final choice. After all, the choices won’t lead to identical outcomes. Each one will have different pros and cons.

Integrating information and making choices are both part of critical reasoning, but they aren’t the only parts. More generally, critical reasoning is the study of how to think carefully about issues that matter to you. If you’re buying a new car, you want to understand what your needs are, what vehicles best meet those needs, and how to get the best prices. If you’re searching for a job, you want to know where hiring managers are looking for new employees and how to tailor your skills to their needs. You can even think critically about things as mundane as whether to upgrade an office space or how to eat at all the best restaurants in the city for the lowest cost.

We reason critically, carefully, and systematically about these issues and many more. That’s why this course on logic and rhetoric begins with an introduction to critical reasoning. Thinking carefully is the gateway to a formal study of logic, arguments, persuasion, and rhetoric, each of which is essential for communication in every profession. This topic will introduce these basic concepts, which we’ll get to know in much more detail later, and will give us a taste for the skills we’ll be applying to real-world problems in future topics.