 Hello! This is the first in a sequence of videos to help with critical thinking, and this video is going to be all about conclusions, reasons and evidence. Now it's really important to know exactly what we mean by conclusions, reasons and evidence, because these are the basic parts of any argument, and it's really important to be able to identify them before you start thinking about whether the argument is any good. So first of all, what do we mean by the conclusion of an argument? The key thing to understand is that the conclusion is the main point of any argument. The idea is that the author of an argument is trying to persuade you to believe something, so they've got some opinion which they want to justify, and the opinion which they're sitting down to try and justify is going to be the conclusion of their argument. It's where they want to end up, the destination of their argument. So the conclusion of an argument is the main point that the author is making, for which presumably there should be lots of good reasons. So the conclusion is the thing that the author is trying to justify, or maybe even prove. Now it's important to know that the conclusion could come anywhere within the argument, could be the beginning in the middle or at the end. So we're not talking about a kind of summarizing statement or a summarizing paragraph that you're encouraged to put at the end of essays. A conclusion isn't a summary, a way of saying quickly what you've said already. A conclusion is the main idea, the main point, which an author is trying to justify. So a conclusion in the critical thinking sense is very different from a summary. Okay, now let's think about reasons, what are reasons? Well, reasons are the things that support the conclusion. So they're what an author says in order to try to justify the thing that they believe and they want you to believe. And obviously in most cases, the reasons had better be less controversial than the conclusion. The reasons are supposed to persuade people to believe the conclusion. So hopefully the reasons will be things that people are sort of prepared to accept already, and then if they're going to accept those then that should persuade them that they should also accept the author's conclusion. Finally, evidence. Well, evidence should also support a conclusion. So to some extent it's like a reason, but evidence should be strictly factual. So when we think of a statement of evidence, we're thinking of something that's given as a fact that people shouldn't really be questioning, it's just something that we know, or something that we found out possibly by doing an experiment. So it's something that we know is true, or we know has happened, and from that we're going to go on and build a case, a reasoned case for some conclusion. And tellingly, evidence really often involves statistics, numbers, or generally it's just the outcome of something that somebody has measured, or some research that they've gone and done. Okay, so let's look at some examples of arguments and see if we can identify the conclusions and the reasons and the evidence if there is any. So my first example is to do with offices and office culture. Here's the argument. It says that employers are now so concerned to remove any distraction that might reduce the productivity of their workforce that they're trying to ban office romances. It's hard to imagine a more ill-conceived proposal. It will make employees resent their bosses and make being at work even more unpleasant. It seems quite likely that such a ban will lower the productivity of the workforce. Fewer people finding partners at work could even have an undesirable effect on marriage and birth rates. Okay, so at this point you might like to pause the video and have a think about that passage and try to decide what's the conclusion, what's the main point that the author wants you to accept. Okay, well the conclusion is that it's hard to imagine a more ill-conceived proposal. That's what the author wants you to believe, that it's a stupid idea to ban office romances. And several reasons are given to support that conclusion. Several reasons are given to try to persuade you that it's a stupid idea to get rid of office romances. First of all, that it will make employees resent their bosses and make being at work even more unpleasant. Secondly, that possibly or probably such a ban will lower the productivity of the workforce. And finally, that fewer people finding partners at work could even have an undesirable effect on marriage and birth rates. Okay, now supposing you weren't sure which of these statements was the conclusion and which were the reasons, there's something that you can do to help you decide. If we pick out a pair of statements and we're not sure which one is the reason and which one is the conclusion, what we can do is to put the word therefore in between and see how it sounds. So let's try it this way around. It's hard to imagine more ill-conceived proposal than banning office romances. Therefore, it will make employees resent their bosses and make being at work even more unpleasant. Okay, well, hopefully you can see that there doesn't really make a lot of sense. But if we swap the two statements around and say it again, it will make employees resent their bosses and make being at work even more unpleasant. Therefore, it's hard to imagine a more ill-conceived proposal than banning office romances. I hope you agree that it makes a lot more sense that way around. And that shows that the first statement is a reason and the second statement is a conclusion. So if we go back to the original argument, we can make sure that the statement identified as the conclusion is the conclusion by reading out each of the reasons and seeing if it makes sense. So I can say it will make employees resent their bosses and make being at work even more unpleasant. Therefore, it's hard to imagine a more ill-conceived proposal. I can also say it seems quite likely that such a ban will lower the productivity of the workforce. Therefore, it's hard to imagine a more ill-conceived proposal than banning office romances. And finally, I can say fewer people finding partners at work could even have an undesirable effect on marriage and birth rates. Therefore, it's hard to imagine a more ill-conceived proposal. OK, so if you play around with the statements in the argument trying out to see which way around they fit, it should be possible to reassure ourselves that the statement identified as the conclusion is the conclusion. It's hard to imagine a more ill-conceived proposal. All right, that just leaves one question about this argument. What's that thing at the beginning? Well, this is what I call scene setting because it doesn't really play a role in the argument. It doesn't help to justify anything. It's not evidence for anything. It's not the conclusion. It's just setting up the argument and explaining where the author's coming from. OK, really, the author's saying what employers are doing, and then the author gets on with their argument and says what they think. This is a dumb idea. OK, let's look at another example now. And this one's going to be to do with children, and in particular the time of year at which they're born. Here's the argument. Parents should give their children the best chances in life, so we should encourage parents to have babies in the autumn. People born in the autumn have the longest life expectancy and the best chance of good health. Moreover, they're the most likely to succeed in sport, particularly football. A study by the Association of Football Statisticians, believe me, there is such a thing, revealed that 40% of Englishmen in the Premier League were born in the autumn, compared with just 15% in the summer. OK, again, it'll be useful for you now to pause the video and have a think about which is the conclusion. So pause the video and decide which statement is the conclusion. OK, the conclusion is that we should encourage parents to have babies in the autumn. That's what the author is trying to persuade us. They want us to think that parents should have babies at that time of year. And that's supported by several reasons. They're telling us that parents should have babies then, because they ought to give their children the best chances in life. And people born in the autumn have the longest life expectancy and the best chance of good health. And also, they're the most likely to succeed in sport. So here we've got the main conclusion. We should encourage parents to have babies in the autumn, supported by these three reasons. Again, we can test that that's right by putting in the word therefore and experimenting with different ways around. And by the way, we call this doing the therefore test. So we can try to say we should encourage parents to have babies in the autumn. Therefore, people born in the autumn have the longest life expectancy and the best chance of good health. But does that make sense? I don't think so. Let's try it the other way around. People born in the autumn have the longest life expectancy and the best chance of good health. Therefore, we should encourage parents to have babies in the autumn. Hopefully you'll agree that that does make sense. And that shows that the first statement is the reason and the bottom statement is the conclusion. The conclusion is we should encourage parents to have babies in the autumn. Okay, so let's go back to the argument. We just need to decide about this bit at the bottom. Okay, well, not surprisingly, perhaps this is a piece of evidence because the Association of Football Statisticians, they've gone away and done some research and they've come up with a fact that 40% of Englishmen in the Premier League are born in the autumn compared with just 15% in the summer. That's a fact. You could dispute whether maybe the statisticians have done their calculation incorrectly. But on the whole, it's not something that's open to debate. It's just something that's hopefully true. It's not really a question of opinion, unlike the things higher up the page which I've labelled as reasons. This is just something that's a basic given fact. And telling me, of course, there are some statistics here and as I said, evidence often involves statistics. It's the outcome of some research. Okay, so what we've managed to do here is to label each part of the argument and decide what its function is. We've worked out the main conclusion. That's what we're supposed to accept. We've worked out what the reasons for that are. We've also seen what the evidence is. And now we could carry on and decide what we think about these reasons. Do we agree with them? If we agree with them, do they support the main conclusion? And we could ask questions like that. So whenever you get an argument to look at, it's really helpful to identify the conclusion, the reasons and all the different parts of it as a preliminary, as a first step towards evaluating the argument and thinking about whether it fits together, whether it actually works. Okay, let's look at one more argument and this one's going to be about lying politicians. And this is a picture of President Richard Nixon, a president who is very famous for having lied. Hopefully you may have heard of the Watergate scandal and if you haven't, you should possibly look it up. So here's the last argument. People are always complaining that politicians are liars, but it's voters, not politicians, who are to blame for politicians' liars. Voters like politicians who tell them everything will get better if their party wins. The electorate doesn't vote for honest politicians who admit the negative consequences of their views. Voters encourage politicians to lie. Okay, so again, why don't you pause the video now and have a think about what the conclusion of this argument is. So do that, pause the video and have a think. Okay, well this one was a bit harder, I think. This time the conclusion is that it's voters, not politicians, who are to blame for politicians' lies. And that's supported by various reasons, supported by the claim that voters like politicians who tell them everything will get better, and by the claim that the electorate doesn't vote for honest politicians. So those are both reasons which support the idea that it's voters rather than politicians who are to blame. They both suggest that voters are rather causing or tempting politicians to lie and so therefore it's voters' fault. Hopefully you recognize that the thing at the start is a piece of scene setting that's just telling us some background, some context, it's what other people say, what they think, and then the author of this comes in with their view. But this time we had something that we haven't seen before at the end, and this is something that in critical thinking we would call an intermediate conclusion. And that's because it's something that's supported by a reason and it goes on to support the main conclusion. So it's partly a reason and it's a conclusion. Now let's look at this in more detail because we didn't have an intermediate conclusion in the previous arguments. What you can do is you can order the statements of that argument in a chain like this. Voters like politicians who tell them everything will get better if their party wins, so therefore voters encourage politicians to lie. And therefore it's voters, not politicians who are to blame for politicians' lies. Now what we've got here is a chain where the first step is a reason, the thing at the beginning is our basic reason, that's the starting point, and that leads eventually to the main conclusion, it's voters, not politicians who are to blame for politicians' lies. And the thing in between is this intermediate conclusion. It's intermediate because it's in the middle, it's a conclusion because it follows from, it's supported by the statement that voters like politicians who lie to them. And it's intermediate because it's support, it goes on to support the overall main conclusion, it's voters not politicians who are to blame. So this was an example of an argument which had a chain structure, some reasons that led to one conclusion, the intermediate conclusion, which then led on to a further conclusion. It's voters not politicians who are to blame. So hopefully that gives you the sense that arguments can sometimes have a more complicated structure and obviously you'd expect that the longer the argument, the more complex the structure because as well as just having reasons and a conclusion, we can have other things like an intermediate conclusion and later on you'll see that there are various other types of thing that you can have within arguments, different types of argument element other than conclusions and reasons and evidence. Okay, well that's nearly the end of this video. Before I stop, I just want to point out one thing. The task of identifying reasons and conclusions is often a lot easier than those examples suggested because a lot of the time, the reasons and the conclusion are marked out with particular words that tell you you're about to hear a conclusion, or you're about to hear a reason. For example, there are various words that tell you you're about to hear a conclusion. We've already come across one. Therefore, it tells you you're about to hear a conclusion. But also there are some more words that do this. So, thus, hence. It follows that and there are other phrases too. These are all words, phrases that tell you you're about to hear a conclusion. So when you see one, now you're about to have a conclusion. And there are lots of reason indicators as well. Here, perhaps the most common ones. Because, since, and as. Those are all words that tell you you're about to hear a reason. Here's something that's meant to show you something else. So often when you're reading an argument, the task of identifying the parts is made a lot easier. And actually, when you're writing arguments, I hope you would use these words to make the structure of your own argument really clear. Okay, that is the end of this video. Thank you very much for watching. And I look forward to making the next video for you soon.