While cause & effect reasoning is about linking events, criteria & match reasoning is about making judgments.
For example, we might use criteria & match reasoning when we’re making a complex purchase decision, like buying an electric scooter.
What selection criteria does this article from Tom's Guide suggest?
THE BEST ELECTRIC SCOOTERS IN 2023
Choosing the best electric scooter for your needs comes down to price and purpose: What are you willing to spend, and what are you using it for?
The article suggests two criteria: price & purpose.
To make a choice, we would reason by comparing each scooter to our criteria and looking for matching features.
How did you describe what you’d want to use it for?
There could be a range of purposes: commuting to school or work, travelling long distances, delivering packages, doing tricks, racing, and so on.
Here are two recommended scooters from Tom’s Guide:
BEST ELECTRIC SCOOTER FOR COMMUTERS
—Unagi Model One Voyager—
Range: 20 miles
Max speed: 20 mph
Weight: 26.5 pounds
Price: $1,490
“The Unagi Model One is very light, yet powerful for its size. While I wish it had different tires and a beefier horn, it’s still the best scooter for those who need a last-mile transport to get them from a train or bus to their office or home. And it looks really awesome, too.”
BEST SCOOTER FOR LONG DISTANCES
—Segway Ninebot Kickscooter Max G2—
Range: 43 miles
Max speed: 23 mph
Weight: 53.5 pounds
Price: $1,299
“The Segway Ninebot Kickscooter Max G2 is every bit as heavy as the original, so it’s not good for those who have to tote their scooter up or down stairs. But its excellent range means you’ll be riding this scooter for a long time.”
What if you’re comparing scooters and can’t find one that matches all your criteria?
If you wanted to make a choice, you’d have to decide whether some criteria were more important than others and whether one scooter was a better match than another on a more important criterion.
When making judgments, we often weight criteria differently, and we often have to evaluate how well something matches a criterion because matches are rarely perfect.
In this example, we've been judging the value of different scooters according to our criteria. That’s called a valuational judgment.
But would you consider a classic Segway to be a scooter? Or a hoverboard? Or one of those one-wheel things?
That’s a kind of criteria & match question called a definitional judgment, which we’ll look at next.
