Chapter-6

The acceptability of reasons:

including their credibility
GROUP 1:
Rabin Panta (177072)
Puja Bhattarai (177012)
Utsukta Nyachhyon (177067)
Rojan Joshi (177037)
Birat Neupane (177066)
Swikriti Bhattarai (177013)
Rosni Dumaru (177030)
 Introduction
Firstly, we should understand two things,
What is reason?
What is credibility?

• Reason means the power of mind to think, understand, and form

judgements logically

• Credibility means the quality of being trusted and believed in

• Let us consider a situation where two people are arguing in a case.
In this situation, people around them will react in following ways;

i. They will agree with the argument

ii. Or they will disagree

• This happens because it is very rare for listeners to take the argument
seriously and weight carefully whether it is good or bad argument
 Acceptability questions put in context
Once we are reasonably clear what an author is saying, what his or her
reasons or conclusions are, we are in a position to evaluate their
reasoning and this involves asking the three different questions;

i. Are the reasons acceptable?

ii. Does the reasoning support its conclusion?
Are there other relevant considerations/arguments?
iii. What is your overall evaluation?
Different kinds of
1. Factual Claim:

• Also Known as Claim of Facts

• Factual is concerned with facts, or contains of

facts

• Debates whether it is true or false

• It focuses on different questions like:

Did it Happen?

Is it true?

How can we know this?

Example:

According to official figures, 13% of the UK population lives in poverty.

2. Claim of Value

• Judgment of the rightness or wrongness of something/someone based on

comparison or other relatively

• Involves comparison and evaluation

• Comes in the form of Arguments

• Trickiest form of academic argument

 Example:

• Parasite is the best movie this year.

• It is a judgment comparing and contrasting

with other movies assigning a value.
 3. Claim of Definitions

• Define or redefine a particular term or an idea

• To check the meanings of such technical words we can either look in

textbooks or works of references in that field.
 3. Claim of Definitions

Example: “Individuals, families and groups in the population can be said to be

in poverty when they lack the resources to obtain the types of diet, participate
in the activities and have the living conditions and amenities that are
customary, or at least widely encouraged or approved, in the societies to which
they belong.”(Townsend, poverty in the United Kingdom 1979, p.31)
4. Causal Explanations

• Asserts that there is a relationship between two events such that one
is the effect of the other.

• Try to argue what has happened that has resulted in something.

• Example:

“Poverty in the UK has many causes, including unemployment, low pay,

low educational achievement and long term illness”
5. Recommend (claim of policy)

• Argue for a particular course of an action

• They generally include the word 'SHOULD'

• Includes some group like a government and an agency

Example:

“The government should try to eliminate child Poverty over the next twenty
years.”
 The Acceptability of claims
• To judge what other people said is acceptable or not
• There are 6 question that we can use to evaluate the acceptability of claim:
1. How certain is it claimed to be?
2. Does the context of the claim influence its acceptability?
3. Does it require expertise/ research to decide?
4. Is it widely known or believed?
5. How well does it fit with our other beliefs?
6. Is it from credible source?
 1. How certain is it claimed to be?
• Sometimes, in expressing a claim, we use language like the following:

My intuition/ faith/ opinion/ view/ thesis is……

I am certain that/ I can’t prove it but I believe that….
The facts are/ appear to be…..
I observe(d)/ saw that… etc.
 Contd.
• Whether a claim is acceptable may depend on the strength of
commitment
• May be acceptable as a ‘Guess’ or a ‘Possibility’
e.g. Investigation at an early stage.
 2. Does the context of the claim influence its
acceptability?
• Claim is acceptable might depend on the context in which it is made.

• E.g. :Women should only be limited inside the house

:Detective reasoning with colleagues at an early stage of her
investigation saying, ‘I think the butler did it….’
3. Does it require expertise/research to decide?
• Sometimes reasons which are given for some conclusion require
specialist knowledge
• Sometimes you will have this knowledge and sometimes not
The effects of smoking cigarettes in Britain
• In Great Britain about 200,000 people die each year from heart
disease, while about 35,000 die from lung cancer. Heavy smoking
approximately doubles one’s chances of dying from heart disease, and
increases the chance of dying of lung cancer by a factor of about ten.
Most people will conclude that smoking is more likely to cause lung
cancer than heart disease and indeed both in Britain and elsewhere
government campaigns against smoking have been largely based on
this assumption. But it is false. If one takes into account the greater
frequency of heart disease, then for every smoker who brings lung
cancer on himself there will be more than two who die of self-induced
coronary illness.
Does it require expertise/research to decide?

• How vaccines train our immune system?

Traditional vaccines work by creating a weakened version of a virus,
similar enough to the original that the immune system will be
forearmed if the person is exposed to a full infection in future, helping
prevent actual illness.
4. Is it widely known or believed?
• Sometimes a reason presented in support of a conclusion is widely
known or believed.
• For example:
It is morally wrong to commit murder so….
• In any normal context, we should simply accept this reason as true.
• Another example:
Mount Everest is located in Nepal
• Depends on context
Since the Earth is roughly Spherical
5. How well does it fit with our other beliefs?
• Depends on past beliefs comparing to new belief
• Sometimes fits well and sometimes not
• Examples:
• Global Warming
6. Is it from credible source?
• Clear information and reliable source needed
• Represents the certainty of argument to be accepted or not
• Which source to believe?
Judging the Credibility of Sources Skillfully
Since so much of what we learn is learned from other people, any activity
which aims to improve our critical thinking has to deal with the questions
about:

● Whom one should believe

● To what extent
● On what subjects
● In what contexts.
Example 1
You are considering buying a second-hand car, but since you know very little
about cars you have employed an expert mechanic (who is not acquainted
with and has no other connection with the present owners) to check the
vehicle over. He tells you that the car is in good condition and that it would
be a good buy.

Should you believe him? Why or why not?

Discussion
What is important to know is whether the car is:
● In good condition for its age and,
● Whether it is worth the price.

Since we are not expert enough to judge these things ourselves, we have
to get advice.
Now the question is, How credible is the mechanic we have asked to
advise us?
Let us suppose that we have hired a professional external mechanic to check our
vehicle over. Then, in normal circumstances, we can be reasonably confident in
accepting his advice

This is essentially because:

(i) He has the relevant expertise – he has been trained and he knows what to look
for,
(ii) He does not know the sellers – so there is no pressure on him from that source
to hide anything from us, he has no bias as we might say, and
(iii) The organization for which he works has a good reputation in connection with
providing this service.
None of this will absolutely guarantee that his report is correct, but it give us
good reason to accept his judgement in the circumstances.

● Additionally, we can corroborate his judgement.

Example 2
You are reading an article in a popular magazine which mainly reports stories about
extraordinary events, such as sightings of UFOs, visits from ‘aliens’, statues of saints
weeping real tears, and so on. The story which catches your eye states that there
are human beings living in a remote part of Africa who have several ‘horns’, each
about four inches long, growing out of their backs, rather as some dinosaurs did
millions of years ago.
The article refuses to say where in Africa these people live because it wants to
‘protect them from interference by the outside world’. What credence should you
attach to this article and why?
Discussion
This story is not at all credible. There are several reasons for saying this.

(i) The claims about human beings having ‘horns’ growing out of their backs is
contrary to all (other) evidence about human beings. We know a great deal about
human physiology and we know a great deal about the variations among different
human beings. The claims about horns growing out of people’s backs conflict with
everything else we know and are thus inherently implausible; this is a fact about
the nature of the claim.
(ii) The magazine is not a serious scientific journal (which would be careful about checking
its facts) but a popular magazine (which mainly ‘reports’ extraordinary events, events
which are contrary to most things we know). Given what we know about the magazine, it
is more likely to have a reputation for telling far-fetched stories than for being able to
verify them; this is a matter of its reputation.

(iii) The article refuses to say where these people live and thus makes it impossible to
check the evidence for this story, so there is no possibility of corroboration. These are
surely reasons enough seriously to doubt the truth of this story.
Example 3

You are learning to drive with a driving instructor who has taught many of your
friends and acquaintances and has a good reputation among them as a driving
instructor. You ask her about a particular driving problem and she gives you quite
categorical advice, saying,

‘In this sort of case you must . . .’

Should you believe her? Why or why not?
Credibility is different from truth, but helps us
judge what is true

• Credibility is a matter of degree, and it involves both the honesty of

the person and how much of an authority they are.

• Trust is your impression of another human being.

 long criminal record for found in suspicion of
beating people injuring an old man and
denies it

Dan (used to be a gangster)

Does he deserve to be believed?

Low Credibility
• Credibility is a continuum, it is possible to rank people according to their
credibility in a particular area.
• There are situations when we tend to believe someone who is making
false statements.
• For instance:
Harry (an expert ‘astronomer’) identifies a star in the night sky as Sirius
star. In this case, his credibility is high.
• We judge someone’s credibility on various grounds.
 Conclusion

• This chapter help us to decide whether claims/reasons which are

presented in support of a conclusion are acceptable or not.
• For judging acceptability, thinking map should be used.
• Different kinds of claims have to be evaluated in different ways.
THANK YOU!

ANY QUERIES?
Reference
• https://chiefexecutive.net/the-critical-difference-between-credibility-
and-trust/
• https://marksinthesand.com/2014/05/27/credible-vs-trustworthy/
• https://wikidiff.com/trust/credibility
• https://www.unit5.org/cms/lib03/IL01905100/Centricity/Domain/
1254/vern%20persuasive%20patterns.pdf
• https://prezi.com/yefieyvfc7ou/the-five-types-of-claims-6/
• https://quizlet.com/61766820/five-types-of-claims-flash-cards/