The other day my wife announces, “I need a new car.” We had finished paying off her car a couple of years ago and she was looking around for a new car to replace the one she had been driving for the last several years. She offers her claim, “Suzy should have a new car.” I’m thinking, that we could drive her car for another year or so and it would save us money. My wife does not see it my way.
Before we can make a decision on this claim, we need to analyze this argument by asking and answering the important questions associated with this claim. In other words, we need to discover the Issues. Answers are easy. We have the entire contents of the Internet to help us find the answer. The challenge is knowing what questions to ask. I am guessing you have never had any formal training on knowing how to discover the key questions to ask of any claim. You are not alone.
Pinnacle Foods decided to launch Duncan Hines ready-cakes into Japan. They realized that Japan was a great, untapped market. They did great market research on the Japanese per capita income, and grocery spending. They even researched consumer tastes to determine just the right level of sweetness in their baked goods. Pinnacle Foods realized that there was virtually no competition in Japan for ready-made cakes. Thousands of boxes of cake mix were shipped and they readied themselves for all the profit they would make. But very few sold.
Pinnacle Foods failed to ask one important question, “Does the typical Japanese family have a ‘conventional’ Western oven needed to bake the cake?” They did not. The typical Japanese family had rice cookers, not ovens. Thousands of cake mixes went unsold. The answer was easy to find; asking the correct question was much more challenging.
Coming to a decision on any claim and building your case for or against the claim begins with asking and answering key questions. This can only be done by carefully analyzing the claim under discussion. To do this, critical thinkers need to first challenge their assumptions and then proceed with an organized method of analysis, in order to discover the important questions, or as we call them here, Issues. Issues become the foundation for taking a position on the claim, and formulating Contentions to argue that position.
