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and necessary in any discovery-related situation has been an object of study for nearly
fifteen years. One of our objectives in this course is to bring to your attention the results
of these studies. How well we marshal our existing thoughts and evidence greatly influences
how well we are able to generate new potential evidence and new hypotheses that
we do not have, but would be wise to consider. No single method for marshaling
thoughts and evidence is adequate. As an episode of intelligence analysis unfolds, we
need to bring our thoughts and evidence together in different ways, each of which is
crucial in any kind of discovery or investigative activity, such as intelligence analysis.
In Part III of these notes we will describe some alternative ways for marshaling or combining
your thoughts and evidence that have proven useful in a variety of contexts. In
the three exercises you will perform your first task will be to marshal or organize the
evidence we provide.
B. Objectives Concerning the Construction of Defensible
and Persuasive Arguments Based on Evidence.
Logic is concerned with the soundness of the claims we make — with the
solidity of the grounds we produce to support them, the firmness of the bcking
we can provide for them — or, to change the metaphor, with the sort of CASE
we can present in defense of our claims. The legal analogy implied in this last
way of putting the point can be of real help … logic (we may say) is generalised
jurisprudence.
128
Stephen Toulmin
The Uses of Argument
Intelligence evidence, like any other, has three major credentials: relevance, credibility,
and inferential force or weight. Relevance answers the question: So What?
How is the evidence related to hypotheses whose likeliness is at issue? Credibility
answers the question: Can we believe what the evidence says? Inferential force or
weight concerns the question: How strong does the evidence favor or disfavor hypotheses
at issue? The trouble of course is that no evidence comes to us with these three
credentials already established; they must be established by effective arguments. As
we will later discuss in detail, arguments in defense of these credentials can be astonishingly
complex. They can be quite complex even for single items of evidence. But
when we have a mass of evidence whose meaning we are trying to establish, they can
be extremely complex when they are considered carefully. To use a modern term,
these complex arguments can be considered as inference networks represented as
chains of reasoning, often long and interrelated, that link our evidence to hypotheses
whose likeliness is at issue.
Because of the consequences attendant to the decisions they render, doctors
and lawyers are held to a higher standard of reasoning than any other profession.
Intelligence Analysis should be held to the same standards.
—F.J. Hughes