EXTEND AND REFINE KNOWLEDGE

Extend and Refine Knowledge

Extend and Refine Knowledge

Introduction

Reasoning is the generation or evaluation of claims in relation to their supporting arguments and evidence. The ability to reason has a fundamental impact on one's ability to learn from new information and experiences because reasoning skills determine how people comprehend, evaluate, and accept claims and arguments. Reasoning skills are also crucial for being able to generate and maintain viewpoints or beliefs that are coherent with, and justified by, relevant knowledge. There are two general kinds of reasoning that involve claims and evidence: formal and informal (Vygotsky, 1978).

Formal Reasoning

Formal reasoning is used to evaluate the form of an argument, and to examine the logical relationships between conclusions and their supporting assertions. Arguments are determined to be either valid or invalid based solely on whether their conclusions necessarily follow from their explicitly stated premises or assertions. That is, if the supporting assertions are true, must the conclusion also be true? If so, then the argument is considered valid and the truth of the conclusion can be directly determined by establishing the truth of the supporting assertions (Perloms, 1985).

Syllogisms contain two assertions and a conclusion. An example of a logically valid syllogism is: All dogs are animals; all poodles are dogs; therefore poodles are animals. A slight change to one of the premises will create the invalid syllogism: All dogs are animals; some dogs are poodles; therefore all poodles are animals. This argument form is invalid because it cannot be determined with certainty that the conclusion is true, even if the premises are true. The second premise does not require that all poodles are dogs.

Thus, there may be some poodles who are not dogs and, by extension, some poodles who are not animals. This argument is invalid despite the fact that an accurate knowledge of dogs, poodles, and animals confirms that both the premises and the conclusion are true statements. This validity-truth incongruence highlights the important point that the conceptual content of an argument or the real-world truth of the premises and conclusion are irrelevant to the logic of the argument form (NICKERSON, 1991).

Informal Reasoning

Informal reasoning refers to attempts to determine what information is relevant to a question, what conclusions are plausible, and what degree of support the relevant information provides for these various conclusions. In most circumstances, people must evaluate the justification for a claim in a context where the information is ambiguous and incomplete and the criteria for evaluation are complex and poorly specified. These cognitive processes are involved in answering questions as mundane as "How much food should I prepare for this party?" and as profound as "Did human beings evolve from simple one-celled organisms?" Informal reasoning has a pervasive influence on both the everyday and the monumental decisions that people make, and on the ideas that people come to accept or reject.

Informal and formal reasoning both involve attempts to determine whether a claim has been sufficiently justified by the supporting assertions, but these types of reasoning differ in ...