Correct Reasoning: Why We Must Study the Fundamentals

© by Jensen DG. Mañebog/MyInfoBasket.com

From academic subjects like Logic, Critical Thinking, and Debate, we learn about reasoning. Reasoning has various interrelated meanings, one of them is making sense of things or applying logical rules in actual situations like validating something, verifying information, and justifying beliefs.

So why do we need to study about correct reasoning? Is really it practicable, necessary, and beneficial?

The following are some of the interrelated reasons why everyone, especially the future professionals, needs to study ‘correct reasoning.’

1. Correct reasoning is a guide to ‘good thinking’

The subjects that deal with correct reasoning (like Debate) teach the methods and principles for distinguishing correct from incorrect reasoning. Academically significant, those principles of correct reasoning are also guides to ‘good thinking’ just as the principles of medicine are guides to properly treating diseases.

Since everyone makes error in reasoning at least sometimes, we all need to keep an eye on the rules of reasoning, especially when things get complicated and matters become difficult to resolve. Ultimately, studying correct reasoning allows us to achieve a certain degree of confidence that we have a sensible point when we critique others’ line of thought or present our own argument.

2. It sharpens the mind

Studying correct reasoning provides us not only with the habit of properly organizing our ideas but also with clarity of thought. As the world is filled with various propaganda and advertising, subjects like Debate can hone our mind so as to avoid frauds, scams, hoaxes, and con artists. With logical skills, we can keenly filter the volume of information that come our way in this information age and thereby avoid adopting dubious belief systems.

Having a clear and focused mind, we can understand how the world really works and we could know what we have to do to attain our goals. With screened information, we can focus on what truly matters and deal with the real world, instead of living in illusions. Moreover, we can prevent making our world a worse place when we are trying to make it better by advocating solutions that practically work.

3. It is a tool in discerning truths

For instance, subjects like Debate, Logic, and Critical Thinking can make us realize that subjective experiences, gut feelings, and personal testimonies are not conclusive tools to discern truth. Feelings can even cloud one’s mind in determining what is true. Personal experiences are just a small sample of all the events from which to draw universal conclusions. Others’ testimonies, too, are problematic because other people may be as uninformed and partial as we are, or having covert agenda in imparting information.

The Debate subject may not provide us with an encyclopedia of truths but it can be an instrument in discerning good information from odd ones. It can provide us the ability to identify fallacies and debunk unsound arguments which we will recurrently encounter in various discourses, reading materials, and speeches.

4. It enhances linguistic competences

Logic is one of the foundations of Debate. In many ways, Logic and Debate prescribe and teach the proper use of language and thus contribute a lot to having effective communication. Among other things, the subjects teach the various forms of reasoning, distinguish valid from invalid arguments, identify the fallacies we have to avoid, prescribe the norms in correctly defining terms, and propose ways to eliminate ambiguity and vagueness in our expressions.

A good training in Debate (alongside the study of grammar and rhetoric) can make us become more effective in ordinary conversation, speech, oratory, argumentation, and journalism. Practically, the subject can help us in constructing better arguments and rectifying faultily structured inferences. Also improving our rhetorical skills and persuasive power, this discipline can teach us to form and defend our own views, appreciate alternative stands, and express convincingly why our judgments are preferable.

5. It is a versatile intellectual device

To master correct reasoning is to have an intellectual device that is of real use in any subject, academic discipline, and real-life endeavor. In fact, our various knowledge from different fields can be mentally interrelated using reason. Even the different sciences significantly use reasoning to ensure consistency and coherence among their various theories and statements. (Related: Correct Reasoning: Significance to Communication and Man’s Being Social)

As Debate develops a fondness for good reasoning, it can help students become more adept in making decisions and solving problems whether they are encountered at home, in school, business, politics, or the law. (© 2013-present by Jensen DG. Mañebog/MyInfoBasket.com).

Also Check Out: Reasoning and Debate: A Handbook and a Textbook by Jensen DG. Mañebog

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