Beyond Feelings - Vincent Ruggiero.original_ [49]
Group discussion exercise: Discuss one of the cases in application 4 with two or three of your classmates. Try to reach a consensus on the issue, taking special care to avoid hasty conclusions. Be prepared to present your group's view (or the individual views) to the class.
1 Ruth Ellen Thompson, "Lawsuits Link Human Catastrophes, Drug," Binghamton Press, March 13, 1973, p.9A.
2 "Long Sentences Sought for Repeat Offenders," New York Times, April 25, 1982, p.63.
3 "Possessed Teen Gets Long Prison Term," The (Oneonta) Star, December 19, 1981. p.2.
4 "Woman Convicted of Making Ethnic Slur," The (Oneonta) Star, May 14, 1982. p.2.
5 "high School Class Uses Human Cadavers in Lab," Binghamton Press, December 15, 1982, p.2C.
P2-C12-5
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
UNWARRANTED ASSUMPTIONS
As we saw in Chapter 12, a conclusion is a judgment made after thinking (It may be carefully or hastily formed.) We reach conclusions through reasoning. An assumption, on the other hand, is an idea we have in mind without having thought about it. It is not arrived at by reasoning but merely taken for granted.
It is natural to make assumptions. Every day we make hundreds of them. Students walking across campus to class assume that the building is open, that the teacher is still alive and sufficiently motivated to be there, that their watches are accurate in indicating that it is time for class, and that going to class will help them learn the subject (or at least not hinder them from learning it). Without assumptions we would have to ponder every word we utter, every move we make every single moment of every day. Obviously that would represent an enormous output of energy. The net effect would be to increase our fatigue to an intolerable level and to hinder progress.
Fortunately, many of the assumptions we make are warranted. That is, they are justified in the particular circumstances. In the case of the students walking to class, probably every one of the assumptions they make is warranted. The experience of walking to class day after day and finding the building open and the teacher there with a helpful lecture to deliver has made those assumptions reasonable. In fact, even on the first day of class those assumptions would undoubtedly be warranted if the school were accredited and had published a schedule saying that class would be held at that time. (In that case the justification to assume would not be quite so strong as later in the semester, but the assumptions would still be warranted.)
But what if something unexpected happened? If the class were at 8:00 A.M., the custodian may have neglected to open the door to the building. Or the teacher may have become ill that morning and stayed home. Would that make the students' assumptions that the building would be open and the teacher there unwarranted? No. in such cases we would say that the students were justified in assuming that those things would happen, but they just did not happen. What makes an assumption unwarranted is taking too much for granted. For example, if the students had heard on the previous evening's news that the teacher had just been seriously injured in an automobile accident, it would be unwarranted for them to assume he would be in class the next day.
ASSUMPTIONS REFLECT OUTLOOK
All the assumptions discussed so far have concerned relatively routine matters. Yet the network of assumptions people make goes far beyond the routine. It is intimately bound up with their outlook on a large and diverse number of subjects. People may assume that the elected officials of their city, state, and nation are honest and work for the interests of their constituents. Or they may assume the reverse. They may go to the polls each November