Standards of Rationality for Inquiry

David Hamstra asks how we can know whether good writing is true.

I'm looking for good writing. I aim to read good writing, to write well, and to improve the writing of others. I want Best Practices to be a venue where Adventist pastors can consistently read words that elevate their situation against the background of their eternal commitments.

What does good writing look like?

Goodness, in any pursuit, goes along with truth and beauty. For persuasive writing, this looks like ethos (goodness), pathos (beauty), and logos (truth).

If you're a pastor, I'll grant your ethos, unless you give me reason to suspect that your moral character is not what it appears to be. The same goes for pathos—those who can't express themselves compellingly with at least some emotional sincerity, if not style, usually don't last long in our line of work.

Yes, logos is what I'm most often looking for from my fellow pastors. Sure, we seem like we mean well, and we can say it well. But is it true?

To that end, I offer you a list of twenty intellectual virtues for inquiry that I developed to guide my own writing toward presenting ...

A robust account of what is really the case:

1. Necessity of axiomatic assumptions and propriety of basic beliefs

Guiding question: Every inquiry has to start from some fundamental assumptions about how everything hangs together (ontology), how we know things (epistemology), and what is of value (axiology). Are those starting points necessary for the inquiry and common-sensical, and are they careful not to assume the account that the inquiry offers?

2. Inferential validity

Guiding question: Do if-then claims adhere to logical principles like a claim and its opposite not being true at the same time (the law of non-contradiction)?

3. Internal relevance, coherence, and consistency

Guiding question: Do the arguments flow logically in mutually reinforcing dependency without introducing tangents or unjustified tensions and contradictions?

4. Interpretive (Hermeneutical) integrity

Guiding question: Interpretation is relating the whole to the parts and the parts to the whole and involves making sense of reality with judgment calls because we cannot cognitively process reality as a whole. Persons make judgment calls based on their whole subjective outlook, including commitments, consciousnesses, and desires. This becomes relevant when the inquiry has a subject, meaning that the interpreter needs to engage with the subjective outlook of another person or group of persons. In this case, does the inquiry acknowledge and remain true to both the interpreter and the subject being interpreted by integrating or setting aside (bracketing) relevant parts of those whole outlooks for the purpose of inquiry?

5. Methodological aptness

Guiding question: Objects are features of reality that don't have a subjective outlook. We inquire about objects by following processes that focus our attention on how objects interact with other features of reality. Do the methods of the inquiry arise from the nature of the objects being studied and are they consistently applied?

6. Systemic ability to self-correct

Guiding question: A system of inquiry is created by the departure from the fundamental starting points according to the interpretive and methodological approaches to the subjects and objects of inquiry. Does it have a way to recognize and correct its own biases and errors, and does any circular reasoning from the findings of the inquiry back to its starting points and approaches prevent the detection of error or check for the presence of error?

A reliable account of what is actually the case:

7. Factual accuracy and demonstrability

Guiding question: Can the representations of states of affairs be independently verified and shown to correspond to the real world?

8. Transparency of reasoning

Guiding question: Do the arguments show how they began and arrived at every step?

9. Fair handling of anomalies or counter‑evidence

Guiding question: Are ambiguities, uncertainties, and anomalies acknowledged and accounted for without arguing that this case is an exception?

10. Falsifiability or disconfirmability

Guiding question: Can claims in non-foundational/interpretive/methodological domains be tested against some standard of evidence?

11. Explanatory and predictive power

Guiding question: Can the main thesis account for phenomena within and even beyond the scope of its immediate subject, including future events?

12. Precise handling of details and distinctions

Guiding question: Does the inquiry avoid treating different things as the same or the same things as different?

13. Nuanced treatment of subtleties

Guiding question: Is the first impression of the evidence interrogated so that non-obvious realities can be identified and explained?

14. Clarity of exposition

Guiding question: Are the big intellectual moves across the inquiry organized so that they can be re-traced by someone else?

15. Intellectual charity

Guiding question: Are the strongest versions of opposing views engaged?

A plausible account of what is truly the case:

16. Normative or ethical justification

Guiding question: Does the inquiry pursue truth in the service of human flourishing and the pursuit of beauty (for Christians, these will ultimately resolve in a relationship with God)?

17. Parsimony without oversimplifying complexity

Guiding question: Do the arguments aim at the simplest explanation that corresponds to the evidence and avoid explanations of explanations?

18. Profundity of insight

Guiding question: Is there imaginative and creative reasoning that goes beyond the self-evident implications of the inquiry and brings together non-obvious connections with their broader implications?

19. Measuredness of conclusions and avoiding overstatement

Guiding question: Do the conclusions acknowledge their limits, state the conditions under which they hold, and express confidence proportional to the scope, evidence, and findings of the inquiry?

20. Potential for pragmatic fruitfulness and theoretical constructiveness

Guiding question: Are the conclusions operationalizable, scalable, sustainable, and/or adaptable, and can they foster or integrate with other pursuits of inquiry?

The relevance of the criteria will change depending on whether you are writing, say, a sermon or a board briefing. These twenty aren't intended to be exhaustive, but they are enough for my purposes. And I trust that you will see these standards reflected in what you find in Best Practices.