The meaning and relationship of two hypotheses

It is found that the premise hypothesis corresponds to the third misunderstanding that we have to break before: seeing is believing and thinking that what we see or hear is everything. In fact, these hidden assumptions, together with the reasons, lead to the conclusion.

Many times, the reasons seem impeccable, but the hidden assumptions are wrong. If we can't find it, we will fall into a trap. Just like the example we gave earlier about "the government should ban smoking", there are many reasons why smoking is harmful to health, all of which are reasonable, but it implies the assumption that "health is more important than freedom".

If you don't find this hypothesis, then you may believe this conclusion.

What assumptions often confuse our eyes?

Let's take a look at the types of assumptions, which are generally divided into two types:

1. Value hypothesis

2. Descriptive assumptions

The first is the value hypothesis, the hypothesis that one value is more important than another.

For example, freedom is more important than order, and collective interests are higher than individual interests.

The prescriptive topics we learned in previous courses are also the topics of "what should the world be like", such as whether to work overtime for promotion, whether to buy a house when getting married and so on. In addition to conclusions and reasons, these topics often have assumptions about values. However, the value hypothesis is sometimes spoken and sometimes hidden.

For example, a critic said, "Smog is harmful to health. We would rather give up economic development than control smog. " What is the hypothesis behind this sentence? You can look at the following analysis:

Conclusion: I would rather give up economic development than control smog.

Reason: smog is harmful to health.

Value hypothesis: it is more important to ensure people's life and health than to improve material living standards.

Usually, in this kind of social debate, it is very common to choose one value and reject another, because it can capture all listeners with the same position invisibly. But at the same time, it puts itself in the dichotomy of black and white, and the conclusion is too controversial and will be easily questioned.

When you find the hypothesis of values, you will know the key to refute it, because people's life and health and material living standards are not completely opposite, but the assumptions implied by the author are completely opposite. After discovering this hidden hypothesis, we can ask, "Do we have to stop economic development to control smog?" ? Can't smog control develop the economy at the same time? "

Ok, so we know what a value hypothesis is. So the question is, how do we find the value hypothesis?

There are two ways:

Know each other's background.

If it is a hot article, you can search the author's personal background information to analyze TA's position, or read a few past articles of the author, which can help you understand what kind of person the author is. For example, a self-media person said, "Because writing explosive articles can be realized more quickly than writing dry goods, you should learn how to write explosive articles." This passage makes sense and has a conclusion. You want to find an implicit hypothesis. In fact, you can combine the author's personality. Ta often writes chicken soup for success, from which it can be inferred that ta's implicit assumption is that "everyone wants to cash in faster when writing articles."

2) Reverse thinking.

Think about which values stand out if you hold the opposite view. For example, the above example. If you stand on the standpoint of insisting on writing dry goods articles, although you can't realize it quickly, you can get more recognition and be happier, which means you don't think that writing articles is purely for realizing it quickly. According to this, the position of the speaker can also be obtained.

Second, what is a descriptive hypothesis?

Ok, after introducing the value hypothesis, let's look at the second hypothesis: descriptive hypothesis. It is a hypothesis about the past, present and future of the world, and it is a hypothesis about some objective descriptions.

It's kind of like a concept we take for granted in our lives. We always take these concepts for granted, but generally don't realize that these concepts are sometimes unreliable.

For example, "I think Xiao Wang should have caught a cold, because the temperature dropped yesterday and he wore less clothes." There is a descriptive hypothesis that there is an inevitable connection between colds and colds caused by cooling. But in fact, the cold is caused by virus infection, which has nothing to do with temperature difference.

So you see, sometimes, some things are natural and correct to most people, and there are assumptions behind them. If there is something wrong with this assumption itself, then this argument is not so powerful.

So how do you find descriptive assumptions?

You can ask yourself: How are the causes and conclusions logically related?

For example, in the above example, the conclusion is that "Xiao Wang should have caught a cold" because "he wore less clothes when the temperature dropped yesterday". Why did he catch a cold when it was cold? When we think about it, we know that wearing less clothes when cooling down implies a common cold, and we often mistake a cold and catching a cold for the same thing, so we find a hypothesis.

Trying to find the hidden assumptions behind the argument is of great help to improve the quality of our argument and discover our value.

If we don't find it, we will be "cooled down and cause a cold." Such rhetoric brainwashed, thus silently accepting the wrong idea that a cold is the cause of a cold.

All right, let's sum it up. In this lesson, we learned the assumptions hidden in the argument, including value assumptions and descriptive assumptions. Value hypothesis is to assume that one value is higher than another. If we don't see the author's value hypothesis, we are easily misled, and descriptive hypothesis is some concepts that we take for granted in our lives. Of course, they are often unreliable. In the process of argumentation, we need to distinguish these specious concepts and ask more about what is behind them.

Well, here, we have made a comprehensive and critical thinking about the reasons. So, if the reason is no problem, the conclusion must be no problem? Of course not. In the process of reasoning, it is necessary to see whether the reasoning logic is rigorous and whether there are common logical fallacies. So, how to identify this logical fallacy, how to see more divine logic, and how to distinguish more divine logic? I will tell you more information in the next section.