Deductive Reasoning: Philosophy, Psychology and Its Relevance to the Civil Service
Different disciplines have different methods of advancing arguments – Philosophy imparts the infallibility of a priori, logical arguments while Psychology teaches the scientific method and the merits of empirical arguments. My internship with the Social Service Office @ Queenstown (SSO@Queenstown) gave me an opportunity to apply both of my academic trainings through a research project on medical compliance. While I appreciate my undergraduate experiences and its value-add to my internship, I am also caught in a dilemma navigating my own expectations of what my future career in the civil service looks like.
SSO@Queenstown was the first internship that sparked my journey with the civil service, and I felt like this internship would set the expectations I have of my future career in the civil service. SSOs are part of the Ministry of Social and Family Development and were created to bridge the gap between policymakers and the social service professionals who enact their policies. Given its purpose and its nature as a government agency, I expected SSOs to behave like think tanks performing rigorous research for the marginalized communities in Singapore. During my first meeting at SSO@Queenstown, my supervisor briefed me about the project I would be handling. She shared about how seniors were being hospitalized in the Queenstown area, and how this was a community problem as it was negatively affecting polyclinic and hospital operations. Citing her own anecdotal observations, she concluded that the community problem was occurring because seniors were being non-medically compliant and intentionally skipping their medications. Given this situation, she wanted me to examine possible community interventions that would reduce the number of non-medically compliant seniors around the Queenstown area.
At the end of my briefing, I experienced a dissonance between my expectations of how an SSO operated, and what I was tasked to do. Instead of providing objective data to support her claim that there was a community problem, my supervisor’s claim that all seniors were intentionally non-medically compliant was based off a handful of house visits. This reminded me of what I learned in GET1029: Life, the Universe and Everything on inductive arguments, which extrapolates the truth of some individual facts into forming a general conclusion about the situation. In the tutorial handout below, we see that inductive arguments can lead to false conclusions – though this can be alleviated by appealing to stronger inductive reasoning. However, given that my supervisor was advancing her claim based off her own anecdotal observations, it can be inferred that she was appealing to weak inductive reasoning.
This was problematic because then the project I was tasked to do may not even be what the community needs, as it may be untrue that the seniors are intentionally non-medically compliant. The dissonance I experienced was coming from how quickly and uncritically the SSO claimed that there was a community problem based off inductive reasoning. This was especially concerning as the SSO was my first internship in the civil service, and I started to worry if this was how the civil service operated.
By this point in my internship, I was sceptical and worried about the project I was tasked to do, given its appeal to weak inductive reasoning. In order to alleviate my concerns, I spoke with my supervisor about my expectations of the research that the SSO does, and how inductive reasoning could be problematic. I shared my GET1029 handout, and how I learned that deductive reasoning allows for conclusions to be true if the premises are true. Thus, by examining the truth of her premise that seniors were intentionally non-medically compliant, we would know the truth of whether there is a need for community intervention.
I realized that while I could provide an a priori deduction proving how my supervisor’s claim or premise was false, I could go one step further and also supplement empirical data demonstrating the fallacious nature of inductive reasoning. My training in Psychology came in handy, as I was taught in PL2131: Research and Statistical Methods I on how to collect empirical data with the use of the scientific method. Through data collection and analysis, I can show how the inductive claim that all the seniors were intentionally skipping their medication and being non-medically compliant was false. As seen in the PL2131 lecture slides, we were introduced to the scientific framework which is deductive in nature. Through defining and falsifying hypotheses with the use of data, researchers can achieve a deductive conclusion that is objectively true, unlike inductive conclusions that depend on the relative strength of the premises.
Applying the scientific framework to my project, I conducted the psychological research and presented my findings to my supervisor. As seen in my general discussions, my survey showed that most seniors agreed that it was necessary for them to take their medication. Additionally, only 20% of the seniors are non-medically compliant because they either forgot to take their medications, or because they disliked the side-effects of medications. These empirical findings disproved the initial inductive claim by my supervisor that seniors were deliberately non-medically complaint as they did not see a purpose in taking their medication.
By the end of my internship, I realized the value of deductive reasoning in tackling community issues. However, while I was satisfied that my logically and empirically driven approach corrected the previous inductive claim by my supervisor, there was still a question that was bugging me. After my presentation, I spoke with my supervisor again, and asked her – why did she not verify her claim? Her response was simple – there were many constraints by the SSO that she has to work with. While there are 24 SSOs island-wide, each SSO is in-charge of a relatively large service boundary and can have up to hundreds of clients. With only about 10 to 15 social service professionals in each SSO, each of them concurrently handles at least 6 to 10 pressing problems. I was merely working on one of the many community issues that the SSO@Queenstown was tasked with resolving. Thus, I had the luxury of time and resources that allowed me to pursue my ideal vision of how SSOs conducted their research, which is a something that does not exist for SSO staffs who have to juggle between their set of responsibilities.
This experience at the SSO@Queenstown complicated my own ideal expectations of what the civil service should be like, and my role in it. In university, students are taught and given the freedom to pursue their ideals when conducting their own projects, free from practical concerns such as scarcity of resources. However, in the process of pursuing ideals, it has unknowingly led me into my own ivory tower and distanced me from the realities of the working world. When I write about my policy recommendations in my essays, I am not burdened by how these translate in the real-world. However, this academic freedom does not exist in the civil service, which operates with real financial, political and societal constraints.
At this point, I am hesitant about how I should navigate the trade-offs between advancing the ideals imparted by my undergraduate experiences and the pragmatic constraints of finite resources in the civil service. I expect that in my future career in the civil service, I will not be able to dedicate all my attention on one project and I have to learn to juggle between my responsibilities. Given that I also hope to work in a social ministry or statutory board in the future, I can envision feeling the same kind of dilemma and constraints that my supervisor experienced in the SSO. I think for now, I will re-calibrate my expectations of the civil service and hope that with sufficient work experiences, I will become better at synthesizing my academic ideals and the realities of working in the civil service.