Eight types of statements or assertions:
  1. Arguments are combinations of conclusions, reasonings, and "calls to action"
  2. Explanations are combinations of conclusions and reasonings, but there are no calls to cations actions
  3. Descriptions are statements without reasonings but they just describe an event or a phenomenon.
  4. Summaries are longer descriptions and they do not contain any reasoning either.
  5. Opinions are statements where a first person perspective is presented; in opinion, the writer expresses a matter of fact and makes a statement.
  6. Beliefs share similarity with opinions but here, instead of a statement of fact, the writer displays a moral or an ethical position
  7. Clarifications are statements where the author makes explicit comments and add texts that explains the phenomeon or fact or rephrases the fact or phenomenon but does not add any reasoning.
  8. Illustrations share similarity with clarifications (you can say illustrations are clarifications bynature) but here, the author offers a specific example or one or more 'facts' to justify the position. Here too, the author does not offer any reasoning behind the statement.
The following presents an algorithm that we can use to identify different types of statements or chains of statements.
// Insert the algorithm image here
In academic and most forms of writing, unless we are concerned with opinion pieces, and editorials, we deal with arguments and explanations. For a journal article or a piece of text that explains a health phenomenon, we deal with one of the following types:
  1. Descriptions or summaries: most commonly appears in the methods and results section
  2. Explanations are most common in the discussion section
  3. Arguments (that is, conclusion + reasoning + call to  action) appear in the conclusion and recommendation section
  4. Clarification, illustration, and explanations are most common in introduction section.
As we start reading an article, book, journal, or a more scholarly or academic focused article, this is what we do:
Premises and conclusions: the standard form of argument mapping
We will work with standard form of arguments and explanations
  1. Start with the conclusion & the conclusion must sit in the bottom of the table
  2. State the explicit premises or statements that lead to conclusions
  3. State the implicit premises (also called "assumptions")
  4. Fill in the intervening conclusions
  5. You can chain the premises and conclusions
Evaluate the assumptions and reasonings to arrive at what is missing, or what could be the next points, and build your own arguments. Here, as you do so, combine your domain knowledge, best evidence, and validity of the reasoning. At the end of this process, you will arrive at:
  1. Is this reasoning valid?
  2. Is this reasoning true in that it makes sense?
  3. Is the underlying assumption valid? (is it logically sound?)
  4. Is the underlying assumption meaningful? (It is true?)
Deductive and inductive logic
Putting everything together: how to use these tools to identify gaps in the logic or evidence or literature