This document discusses identifying issues and conclusions in critical thinking. It explains that there are two kinds of issues: descriptive issues, which raise questions about descriptions of past, present or future events, and prescriptive issues, which raise questions about what should or should not be done. The document provides examples of descriptive and prescriptive questions. It also outlines clues to help identify an author's conclusion, such as looking for indicator words like "therefore" and checking the context and author's background. The overall message is that properly identifying the issue and conclusion is important for critically evaluating an argument.

1. Asking the Right
Questions
A Guide to Critical Thinking

2. Kinds of Issues
• When we talk about issues, what do we mean?
• There are two kinds of Issues.
• Descriptive Issues – These are issues that raise
questions about the accuracy of descriptions of the
past, present, future.
• Prescriptive Issues – These are issues that raise
questions about what we should do or what is right
or wrong, good or bad.

3. Descriptive Issues
• Descriptive issues pose questions
such as:
• Do people who live in developed
countries live longer than people
in developing countries?
• What causes mass migration?
• Who is more responsible for
solving the world’s economic
problems?
• How much would free tertiary
tuition cost the taxpayer?
• These questions all have one thing
in common, they demand
answers attempting to describe
the world as it is, was or will be.

4. Prescriptive Issues
• Prescriptive Issues pose
questions such as:
• Should Capital Punishment
be abolished?
• What ought to be done
about Climate Change?
• Must the West pay
reparations for slavery?
• All of these questions
demand answers suggesting
the way the world ought to
be.

5. Activity
• You have each been given an exercise sheet.
• You should take some time to identify an issue that you feel is very
important to the world today.
• Describe the issue so that people can understand what it is.
• Explain why the issue is important so that people can know why they
should be concerned about it.
• Identify two ways in which the issue has a global and local impact (two
each)
• Write down one descriptive question and one prescriptive question that
will help us to better understand the reality of the issue as well as what
ought to be done about it.

6. Activity
• Next, go around and try to convince each other that your issue is
more important than the other issues.

7. The Most Important
Issues Facing the World
Today
• Climate change
• Artificial general intelligence
• Biotechnology risk
• Ecological collapse
• Molecular nanotechnology
• Nuclear holocaust
• Overpopulation
• Global pandemic

8. What are the Issue and
Conclusion? • The issue is not always
clearly stated and you have
to infer it from other clues in
the text.
• A useful method for finding
the issue is to ask: What is
the author reacting to?
• However, the best way to
identify the issue is to locate
the conclusion.
• YOU CANNOT CRITICALLY
EVALUATE UNTIL YOU HAVE
FOUND THE CONCLUSION.

9. What are the Issue and
Conclusion? • What is a Conclusion?
• The Conclusion is the message
that the author or speaker
wishes you to accept.
• To help you identify the
conclusion, you should ask:
• What is the writer or speaker
trying to prove?
• What is the main point?
• The answer to either of these
questions will be the
conclusion.

10. Clues to help you identify
the Conclusion
• Your ongoing concern is:
• Should you accept the
conclusion on the basis of
what is supporting the
claim?
• Clue number 1: Ask what the
issue is.
• Clue number 2: Look for
indicator words.

11. Clues to help you identify the Conclusion
Indicator
words are
words such as:
Consequently Suggests that Hence Therefore
Points to the
conclusion
that
Thus
The point I am
trying to make
It follows that
It is highly
probable that
Shows that Proves that Indicates that
The truth of
the matter is

12. Clues to help you identify
the Conclusion
• Clue number 3: Look in likely
places.
• The first two obvious places
are at the beginning or at
the end.
• If you are reading a long
complex passage and are
having difficulty seeing
where it is going, skip ahead
to the end.

13. Clues to help
you identify
the
Conclusion
• Clue number 4:
Remember what a
conclusion is not.
• Conclusions are not:
• Examples
• Statistics
• Definitions
• Background information
• Evidence

14. Clues to help you identify the Conclusion
• Clue number 5: Check the
context of the
communication and the
author’s background.

15. Clues to help you identify
the Conclusion
• Clue number 6: Ask the
question, “and therefore?”
• Because conclusions are
often implied, ask for the
identity of the “and
therefore” part.
• Conclusions like “The
Democratic Party will harm
the economy with their
plans to tackle Climate
Change” are often left for
the reader to infer from
limited information provided
in political ads.