Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of reason as a way of knowing
Deductive reasoning----from general to particular-----invalid syllogism
Inductive reasoning-----from particular to general ----Hasty generalization
Premise
Confirmation bias
To distinguish a generalization to be good or not:
1. A reasonable number of instances
2. A variety of circumstances
3. Actively look for counter-examples
4. Coherence—demand more evidences for surprising claims than unsurprising claims
5. Subject area---be aware of the subject area you are dealing with
---------------------generalization tend to be more reliable in natural sciences than in social
sciences
Difficult to confirm a universally proper magnitude of number
Informal reasoning
Outline
 Prescribed title
Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of reason as a way a knowing\
 Key words: strengths/ weaknesses/ reason/ knowing
 Ways of knowing: reason
 Areas of knowledge: history and science
 Supportive argument
For history, the argument will be about “how do I Know if Tibet should be a part of
China”
For science, the argument will be about “How do I know the reliability of the
conclusion for my Extended Essay which is in physic”
Evaluate the strength and weakness of reason as a way of knowing
Quite often we judge a person’s “quality” by seeing if he or she is logic or not. It might not
be perfect method to judge people; however, it reflects the importance of being logic in the
human society. As one of the most outstanding characters of reasoning, logic has made reason a
very useful and popular method to know their surrounding world. On the other hand, reason is a
process of getting conclusions from a proper number of information sources, that is to say, either
the information sources or the way we reason out conclusions could both be affected by lots of
outer factors. This would weaken us from approaching truth through reason as well.
In this
essay, strength and weakness of reason as a way of knowing will be discussed around the
following three knowledge issues:
How do I know if Tibet is a part of china? (History)
How do I know the reliability of the conclusion for my Extended Essay which is in physics?
The first time I was told about Tibet as “problem” being concerned was in the summer
course last year. Before I came to Norway, I had never put a question on the Tibet being a part of
China. The history books that all my classmates and I had used in school told us China and Tibet
which were originally both independent countries have joined each other to be one part since
Tang dynasty through loyal intermarriage. As sang by a song called “56 brothers, 56 flowers”
which we would hear whenever there is a national celebration, Tibetans has been counted as one
unique Chinese ethnic group with its other 55 brothers. I never heard from anybody around me
talking about the independence of Tibet, neither did the public media such as TV or internet. As a
result, I eventually reason out that Tibet being a province of China is just a fact.
However, after
coming to Norway, things became different. Just type “Tibet China independence” these three
words, we can easily get 286,000 results. And we even have Tibetan refugee students from India,
who are like somewhat much more persuading evidence concerning Tibet problem.
Combined
with this example, we can see the disadvantages to use reason as a way to search for “truth” in
history. Due to its special position, history is usually bonded with political influence. That is to say,
all the information that we have access to might not be reliable.
Apart from bias problems
from the premises, another weakness of using reasoning in history is that we usually make
perception before reasoning out our conclusion. The Tibetan students and the Chinese students
we had presentations during one World Today. When we searched for information for those
presentations, the same thing we both did was that we just selected the information which was
useful for us. Sometimes we were actually getting information from a same site (Wikipedia for
instance), when we came across information which was against, we would just consider them
wrong or ignore them.
This prevented all of us take information from different sources, thus
make it hardly impossible to accept views from each other (though not necessarily).
I have been working on my EE in physics, in which I have been working on the relationship
between the velocities of water and its depth. Firstly I did some research online first to find some
relevant theory. Then one self-designed experiment was carried out experimentally. However, the
experiment result didn't seem to match the theory completely. However, reasoning was proved
to be a very useful tool for me to complete the essay. To get my conclusion, I considered a lot
more different factors such as affect on velocity from surface tension, disturbance on measuring
the depth of water from surface tension, range of frequency to generate the waves, reliability
(limitation) of the apparatus that I was using, dependability of the method used to carry out the
experiment, method that I used to analysis the data and so on, even though there was only one
mentioned in the research question. I tried to collect as many factors as I can, so that I could do a
numerous comparison between them. Then, some of them like a combination of depth of water
and surface tension, limitation of apparatus tend to give better and outstanding explanations
why some results didn't match theory. At the same time, some factors like disturbance on
measuring the depth of water didn't seem to make a big difference. So I selected those which
gave good explanations and discarded those which didn't seem to influence a lot on the result.
And this selection made the analyzing process much easier. As I tried to select a number of
possible factors, the conclusion tend to be much more reliable than just concerning the only
factor---depth of water in my research question. On the other hand reasoning process is more
persuading, especially when we present our conclusion or result to other people, they would be
considered logical, thus more closer to “the truth” However, considering the reasoning process
that I was using, it also implies some weakness which might prevent me from getting an
appropriate conclusion. To reason out my conclusion, I need to collect and compare different
factors first.
However, the way I select those factors would be very much influenced by the
information I had checked in advance.
In fact, the factors that I put first to be discussed and had
been focusing on are the factor listed on the websites I checked. That is to say, we often know the
factors we would use before we actually select factors needed for reasoning.
More briefly, that
is to say the selecting of information is quite easily biased by our perception, which would make
truth more difficult to be revealed.
Then on the other hand, by the nature of reasoning, it
seems the more factors to be counted, the more closely we can approach to “the truth”. When
doing scientific research, we are likely to generalize some phenomenon before we have enough
information. In the case of the experiment in my Extended Essay, I collected data for 25 times to
get a conclusion. To evaluate the essay, this number would be one of the weaknesses for a good
conclusion. For a more thorough theoretical investigation, this number would be suspected not
enough as well.
All in all, reason by its nature as a way of knowing is very outstanding because its being
logical, and it has been using as an significant method for scientific research; however, the way
we do the reasoning process will be easily disturbed by our perception, especially in some social
science studies, perception sometimes can just make us hardly possible to make reasonable
conclusions or understanding of opposite political positions by reasoning.
Some questions:
1. Would you think the paragraphs for argument too big? Should I divide strengths and
weakness into different paragraphs for each knowledge field?
2. Do you feel the argument expressed well enough for people to understand in terms of
language and method?
3. What should I modify on the structure of the essay?
…………………………………………..
4. I am not sure if I deal the arguments well in terms of counterarguments..