Critical Thinking And Application In Management: A reflective journal.

I can’t help but to laugh when I watch this video, it makes me realize how easy I am to make an assumption and ending up making an ass out of myself. But I digress, in today's lecture, I learned about the second part of chapter three which is ‘assumption’. In critical thinking an assumption can be defined as a statement that doesn't state explicitly but which underlie an argument.


Assumptions in unstated belief can be categorized into two - value assumption and reality assumption. Value assumption is people's belief of what is good or bad, right or wrong, what should or should not be accepted, while reality assumption are people's beliefs of what is true or false. By understanding both of this value I can see that different values form the basis of many arguments and that conflicts are more often based on different value priorities.


I've learn that in value assumption there is a time where I will be facing a value conflict. A value conflict is when one value assumption clashes with another value assumption. For instances death penalty for drug trafficker, some might think it is the right to do because by sentencing them to death penalty they could save other people's life from being snared into drugs abuse while other might oppose to the idea because for them it is not in their hand to take someone else's life.


Ideological assumption happened when we combine value assumption with reality assumption. What is true and acceptable during that time might not be the same after a long time. We used to accept that women were too sensitive and emotional to do a hard task when the time asked for it but nowadays woman are treated equally.


To sum things up, an assumption refers to anything that is taken for granted in the presentation of an argument. Usually an assumption is implicit so sometimes what we believe in depends on how we perceive things. Every one of us carries a different value and each entitled his own opinion. Thus, forming the basis of many arguments and since assumption is not explicitly stated we need to be able to read between the lines to dissect the arguments.