ELEMENTS OF REASONING

Three basic elements make up reasoned arguments.

Reasoning and logic can seem (and be) extremely complex. However, logic can be broken down into small sets of elements. Therefore, it is useful to review some fundamental elements of reasoned arguments:

1. CONCLUSIONS: The outcome of arguments. CONCLUSIONS are often the answers to QUESTIONS.

2. PREMISES: Statements that contain information for an argument.

3. TRANSITIONS: Ways to logically connect premises.

Reasoned arguments involve coming to conclusions based on a set of premises connected by logical transitions. Practically, deliberately using a reasoned framework can simplify writing because almost every sentence is clearly one of three types: question/conclusion, premise, or transition. To understand how to construct compelling arguments, we will first need to define and explain each component:

Just because questions/conclusions, premises, and transitions are the most common elements of scientific writing does NOT mean that they are the only elements of scientific writing. We have already seen that although clarifications (definitions and examples) usually are not sufficient to be premises themselves, clarifications can be very useful to explain and specify premises that are based on data. Similarly, the implications or applications of a scientific study may be extremely important and impactful. However, it is usually necessary to strongly support the conclusions of the study by defending MANY specific conclusions with strong premises and reasoning before being able to consider implications or applications. 

SUMMARY

Scientific writing is primarily argumentative, based on reasoned frameworks. Reasoned frameworks have only a few main types of elements: Questions/Conclusions, Premises, and Clarifications. Moreover, there are only two main types of premises: Assumptions and Facts. Facts derive their legitimacy from data (measurements or observations): either data that you have collected yourself, data collected from others, or conclusions that are well-supported by data. 

Analyzing arguments is useful for scientific writing. Almost all sentences in a scientific manuscript are one of the six elements of reasoning (assumptions, facts from your data, facts from others’ data, facts from sound conclusions, conclusions, or clarifications). If a sentence is not clearly-identifiable as one of the six elements of reasoning, the it is likely that the sentence would be stronger if made more specific and its role in the argument more clear. If a sentence cannot be specified and clarified, then removing the sentence will most likely strengthen the text.

Based on our analysis of the elements of reasoning, we can re-visit a popular framework for structuring arguments, the “Claim, Evidence, Reasoning” (CER) framework  (Toulmin, 1958). However, one limitation of the CER framework is that it does not differentiate between evidence and clarifications. Evidence is necessary to support conclusions, and clarifications can help explain evidence to the audience, but evidence and clarifications are NOT the same. 

Therefore, a modified framework could be helpful for organizing scientific reasoning: the “Conclusion, Evidence, Reasoning, clarification” (CERc) framework (“clarifications” is not capitalized to emphasize their supportive role). One graphical representation of the CERc framework could be:

We have already filled in much of the CERc framework by identifying the general types of evidence, clarifications, and logical transitions commonly used in scientific communication. Our next task will be to identify the types of reasoning that we can use to use evidence to construct arguments that effectively support conclusions.