Critical Thinking and Argumentation
Critical Thinking and Argumentation tests whether you can identify claims, evidence, assumptions, and flaws, evaluate the strength of reasoning, and construct a defensible argument. You are not being asked for your opinion; you are being asked whether the reasoning works and what would make it stronger or weaker.
Core rules and concepts
- Claim, evidence, warrant: a claim is the conclusion; evidence is the support; the warrant is the unstated link that licenses the inference. Most flaws live in the warrant.
- Necessary versus sufficient: a condition can be required without being enough. 'All applicants must pass the test' does not mean passing guarantees admission.
- Validity versus soundness: a valid argument follows from its premises; a sound argument is valid and has true premises.
- Common flaws: hasty generalization from a small sample, false dilemma, ad hominem, circular reasoning, post hoc causation, straw man, and appeal to irrelevant authority.
- Strength tests: ask about relevance, sufficiency, representativeness, and alternative explanations.
Worked example
Argument: 'Our sales rose after the ad campaign; therefore the campaign caused the rise.' Reasoning: the premise reports sequence, not causation. The conclusion assumes that nothing else changed. Confounders include seasonality, a price cut, a competitor's withdrawal, or a distribution change. To strengthen the claim, compare regions or periods with and without the campaign, or control for those variables. To weaken it, show that sales rose equally where the campaign did not run. The flaw is post hoc ergo propter hoc, not a lack of data quantity.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating a correlation as proof of causation.
- Attacking the person rather than the argument.
- Confusing 'some' with 'all', or 'may' with 'will'.
- Assuming an argument is weak because it has an unstated assumption; all arguments do.