Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia
Following Kaplan (1966) and Scollon (1997) this paper makes a distinction between contrastive rhetoric, contrastive poetics and contrastive inferencing. From this, it is argued that there are a number of confusions implicit in the teaching of critical reasoning. The paper looks at the construction of inferences in the form of syllogistic reasoning as one form of 'critical reasoning'. A number of problems are outlined: 1. the conflation of poetic and inferential form; 2. The 'exposition' problem; 3. The problem of the shifting conclusion; 4. The implied argument problem; and 5. Critical thinking and disciplinary bias.
Keywords: critical reasoning; contrastive rhetoric; contrastive inferencing.