What is Valid Reasoning? 10 Coaching Practices to Try
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For What is Valid Reasoning, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Practices that may help
- Distinguish directional from accuracy goals before you start
Before reasoning about something, ask whether you are trying to reach a specific answer or the correct one.
Motivated Reasoning - Set the constraint: what conclusions would you not accept?
Pre-define which conclusions would be embarrassing, then monitor whether your reasoning is steering away from them.
Motivated Reasoning - Catch yourself working backward from a conclusion
Notice when the conclusion appeared before the evidence — and treat that as a red flag.
Motivated Reasoning - Motivated Reasoning
Motivated reasoning, studied extensively by Ziva Kunda and others, is the tendency to reason toward a conclusion you want to reach rather than wherever the evidence leads. It is not conscious deception — the brain generates genuinely felt arguments for the preferred conclusion. Detection and structured debiasing techniques reduce but do not eliminate it; awareness alone is insufficient. - Surface and test underlying assumptions
Identify the implicit assumptions that your reasoning depends on and test whether they hold.
Socratic Questioning - Surface the hidden premises
Find the unstated assumptions that the argument needs to work.
Argument Mapping - Add the strongest objection to every major supporting reason
For each supporting reason, find the best counter and put it on the map.
Argument Mapping - Apply the same evidence standard regardless of whether you like the conclusion
Grade the evidence before you know which conclusion it supports.
Motivated Reasoning - Separate the claim from its reasons
Start every map by writing the central claim and the distinct reasons offered for it.
Argument Mapping - Verify the root cause by tracing back up the chain
After reaching a root, work back up: does each "because" in the chain make logical sense?
The Five Whys
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I’m about to reason through something where, honestly, I already badly want one particular answer to be true
- There are a couple of answers here that would be genuinely uncomfortable or embarrassing for me to land on
- If I’m honest, I knew where I was going to land before I’d looked at anything
- My conclusion feels airtight and yet something nags at me, and I think it’s that the whole thing only holds if a couple of unspoken things are true
- On paper my reasoning checks out, but the conclusion still feels shaky and I can’t locate why
Related concerns
- An Introduction To Reasoning
Before reasoning about something, ask whether you are trying to reach a specific answer or the correct one.
Distinguish directional from accuracy goals before you start
- Critical Reasoning Assumptions
Identify the implicit assumptions that your reasoning depends on and test whether they hold.
Surface and test underlying assumptions
- Explain Your Reasoning
Notice when the conclusion appeared before the evidence — and treat that as a red flag.
Catch yourself working backward from a conclusion
- How To Check Your Reasoning
Notice when the conclusion appeared before the evidence — and treat that as a red flag.
- How To Tell Your Actual Reasons Apart From Your Conclusion
Start every map by writing the central claim and the distinct reasons offered for it.
Separate the claim from its reasons
- Reasoning Process Audit
Notice when the conclusion appeared before the evidence — and treat that as a red flag.
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