2.12: Descriptions and Explanations

Critical thinkers need to pay close attention to language. What is a language? As we all know, a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.

More seriously, a language is a tool we use for many purposes. We use it to intimidate, to promise, to perform marriages, to forgive, to apologize, and to insult. But most of our reasoning occurs when we use language to describe, explain, or argue, which is why this book concentrates on these three uses: we use language to describe a situation, to explain why an event occurred, and to argue that our conclusion should be believed.

But it can be difficult to distinguish these three uses from each other. Here is a quick summary of the differences among the three:

• A description says that it's like that.
• An explanation says how it came to be like that.
• An argument tries to convince you that it is like that.

Arguments aim at convincing you that something is so or that something should be done. Explanations don't. They assume you are already convinced, and they try to show the cause, the motivation, or the sequence of events that led up to it.

Explanations of events often indicate the forces or causes that made the event occur. In the case of events that are human actions, such as Dwayne's unscrewing the lid on a jar of peanut butter, the explanation of Dwayne’s action might appeal to his intentions, such as his wanting to satisfy his hunger. Intentions are mental causes.

In some explanations, we simply are trying to say how some remark came to be said, that is, what caused it to be said. Let's talk about this. But first, I have a question for you. Why did God, when He created the world, create lawyers before snakes?

Hmm. Think about it.

He needed the practice.

I used this joke to talk about explanations because to understand the joke you had to take what was said and use the principle of charity and come up with an explanation of what caused me to say what I said. In doing this, you saw quickly that the joke would make sense if I were assuming that lawyers are snakes. I was, and I was playing on the ambiguity in the word "snake," which means a reptile and also a treacherous person. If you did this little bit of reasoning, then you're in on the joke and you laugh because you also know that it's a stereotype that lawyers are snakes. That's how the joke works.

Notice that in this reasoning there wasn't any argument present. There was just a process of explanation, which was enough for you to get the joke.

Explanations are not quite like arguments. I wasn't trying to convince you of anything, as I would be if I were arguing. Getting the joke was simply about finding the explanation.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

What is the explanation behind this joke?

Question: What is the difference between a catfish and a lawyer?
Answer: One is a bottom-dwelling garbage-eating scavenger. The other is a fish.

Answer

The explanation behind this joke is that the person asking the question is assuming that all lawyers are bottom-dwelling garbage-eating scavengers.

Let's try another concept check.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Is this an argument or an explanation?

Let me explain myself more clearly. The car will explode if you drop the match into the gas tank. You don’t want that, do you? So, don’t drop the match in there.

Answer

This is an argument for the conclusion that you should not drop the match in the gas tank. The speaker misused the word “explain.” Instead of using the phrase, “explain myself,” the speaker should have said, “spell out my argument.”

To appreciate the difference between a description and an explanation, consider one of the current limits of medical science. Scientists do not know what causes pimples, but they do have a clear understanding of what pimples are. That is, they can provide a detailed description of pimples, but they can offer no explanation of why some people get them and some do not. Regarding the topic of pimples, scientists can describe but not explain.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Is this an argument or an explanation? Shut up!

Answer

Neither.

When we explain, we normally explain events, not persons or objects. Historians don't explain Napoleon. They explain why he did what he did.

Arguments are different still. An argument is designed to convince someone to do something or to believe something, which it does by giving specific reasons. For example, we could argue that Napoleon became emperor of France because history professors say so. Notice that this argument doesn't describe the event (of Napoleon's becoming emperor of France) or explain it. The argument simply gives a reason to believe that it occurred.

Although descriptions need not be explanations, and although arguments are different from both, in real life they get jumbled together. This is fine; we don't often need them to occur in their pure form. However, it's hard to appreciate all that is going on in a jumbled whole unless we appreciate the parts.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Below are three passages about the same topic. Say which one is the argument, which is the description, and which is the explanation.

a. It’s raining cats and dogs. If we go on the picnic today, we will get really wet, and probably be unhappy.
b. We shouldn’t go on the picnic because we will get really wet and probably be unhappy.
c. It’s raining cats and dogs there at the picnic area because the thunderstorm finally blew in from the North.

Answer

(a) description, (b) argument, (c) explanation. The word “because” appears in both the argument and the explanation, which should tell you that the word “because” is not a reliable indicator of whether an argument or an explanation is present. However, if an argument is present, then the word “because” indicates a premise and not a conclusion; but if an explanation is present, then the word “because” probably indicates a cause or motive

If Betsy Ross says, "The new flag I designed has red and white stripes with thirteen stars," is she explaining the flag? No, she is just describing it. She is not explaining where the flag came from or what motivated her to make it. She isn’t talking about causes. Nor is she arguing about the flag. However, if Betsy Ross says something a little more elaborate, such as "The new flag I designed has red and white stripes with thirteen stars for the thirteen new states," she is describing the flag and also explaining why it has thirteen stars instead of some other number.

Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\)

If Betsy Ross says, "I designed the flag because I wanted to help our new nation," she is only explaining why she designed it; she is not arguing that she designed it, nor is she describing the flag.

Couldn't you say that when Betsy Ross says, "The new flag I designed has red and white stripes with thirteen stars" she is explaining what the flag is like? Well, people do say this, but they are being sloppy. She is just describing.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Is the following passage most probably an argument, an explanation, or a description?

The most striking thing about Beijing, indeed about all of China, is that there are people everywhere. You need to imagine yourself in a never-ending Macy's sale. There are lines to everything. You have to get in a line to find out which line to be in.¹

Answer

It is most probably only a description. It is at least a description because it describes Beijing as being a crowded city containing many lines. Nothing is explained. There is no explanation of why Beijing has so many people, or why it has so many lines. You might try to conceive of the passage as being an argument for the conclusion that Beijing is crowded and has lines, but no reasons are given in defense of this claim. It probably would be a mistake to say the passage uses the reason that Beijing has many lines to conclude that it is crowded. This would probably be a mistake, because the comments about lines seem to be there to illustrate or describe in more detail the crowded nature of the city, not to make a case for the claim that the city is crowded.

There are several good reasons to learn to distinguish arguments from explanations. You would be wasting your time explaining what caused some event if the person you were speaking to did not believe the event ever occurred. Instead, you should be directing your comments to arguing that the event did occur. Or, suppose you take an author to be arguing when in fact she is explaining. If you complain to yourself about the quality of her argument and dismiss her passage as unconvincing, you will have failed to get the explanation that is successfully communicated to other readers of the same passage.

An argument and an explanation are different because speakers present them with different intentions. Arguments are intended to establish their conclusion. Explanations aren't. They are intended to provide the motivation of the actor or the cause of whatever it is that is being explained.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

For each passage, indicate whether it is most probably an argument, an explanation, or a description. a. The apple fell because the drying stem was no longer strong enough to resist the weight of the apple. b. You should eat an apple a day because doing so will keep the doctor away.

Answer

(a) This is an explanation of the apple's falling, (b) This is an argument concluding that you should eat an apple a day

Suppose you and your friend Edward are standing in an apple orchard looking at an apple that just fell to the ground in front of you. Edward, who is a scientist, explains that the apple fell because the force of gravity pulling down on the apple caused tension in the apple stem and eventually broke it once the stem had dried out and got brittle; gravity then was able to pull the apple toward the center of the Earth until the resistance of the ground stopped the fall. His explanation is not an argument that the apple fell. It is taken for granted that the apple fell; what's in doubt is why this occurred. When Edward appeals to the existence of gravitational force and to the structural weakness of the apple's stem to explain why the apple fell, he is giving a possible explanation of why it happened, perhaps even the right explanation. Nevertheless, he doesn't defend his explanation. He doesn't argue that his is the right explanation. He doesn't give any reasons why the apple's falling should be explained this way instead of by saying that "It was the apple's time" or by appealing to magnetic attraction between the apple and the iron core at the center of the earth.

Let’s now investigate how to distinguish explanations from arguments when they are jumbled together. You create both when you explain why event E occurred and then argue for why this explanation of E is better than alternative explanations. For example, articles in science journals are often devoted to arguing that one explanation of a phenomenon is better than a previously suggested explanation. Sometimes arguments are offered as to why someone's explanation of an event is the right one, and sometimes the argument is intermixed with the explanation. Nevertheless, the argument and the explanation are distinct, not identical. Even if an argument does not accompany the explanation, every scientist who claims to offer the explanation of some event has the burden of proving that their explanation is the best one.

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

You remember the dinosaurs, don’t you? They appeared on Earth back in the day when New Jersey was next to Morocco. Construct an argument for the fact that dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago without explaining that fact. According to the theory of evolution, this is approximately the time that the Rocky Mountains and European Alps were created. And it was at about this time that the world got its first plants with flowers. (Don't worry too much about the quality of the argument; just make sure that it is an argument and not an explanation.)

Answer

Add texts here. Do not delete this text first.

A velociraptor²

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

Construct an explanation, but not an argument, for the fact that dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago. (Don't worry too much about the quality of the explanation; just make sure that it is an explanation and not an argument.)

Answer

Here is one explanation. A six-mile-wide rock crashed into our planet 65 million years ago, knocking up so much dust that the planet was dark for about a month. During this month the weather turned very cold, and the dinosaurs' main food died. The dinosaurs could not quickly adapt to the new conditions, and they died. (The air sure must have smelled bad that month!) Another explanation might not point out that a rock crashed into our planet but instead might blame dinosaur deaths on their gorging on psychotropic plants. Other explanations could blame their death on their choking on volcano ash and dust, or their catching a special disease, or their being killed for food by extraterrestrial space aliens who landed on our planet

The topic of distinguishing arguments from explanations will be given its own chapter later in this book.

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¹ From Cheri Smith, Suttertown News, Sacramento, CA, March 19, 1987.

² This photo from Wikipedia Commons Graphics is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license to Salvatore Rabito Alcón.