3. If you show an argument is bad, what have you shown about its conclusion?
4. How should you respond to a counterargument?
5. a. Why are counterarguments useful in your own writing?
b. Give three phrases you can use to introduce objections to your own argument
in your writing.
6. Find an article in which the author answers a counterargument. Good places to look are
in other textbooks and in editorial opinions in the newspaper.
7. Explain the role of each claim in the following discussion.
Zoe: I think sex is the answer to almost everyone's problems.
Dick: How can you say that?
Zoe: It takes away your tension, right?
Dick: Not if you're involved with someone you don't like.
Zoe: Well, anyway, it makes you feel better.
Dick: Not if it's against your morals. Anyway, heroin makes you feel good, too.
Zoe: But it's healthy and natural, just like eating and drinking.
Dick: Sure, and you can catch terrible diseases. Sex should be confined to marriage.
Zoe: Is that a proposal?
8. Write a short argument against drinking alcohol that acknowledges why some people
want to drink alcohol.
9. If you can show that a collection of claims leads to a false conclusion, do you know that
the claims are inconsistent or one of them is false? Explain.
10. Refuting an argument directly is just showing that the argument is .
11. What is reducing an argument to the absurd?
12. Which of the ways of refuting an argument is best? Why?
13. What's the difference between ridicule and reducing to the absurd?
14. Why isn't a phony refutation really a refutation of an argument?
15. Why won't a slippery slope argument do as a way to reduce to the absurd?
16. a. What is a strawman?
b. Bring in an example.
Evaluate the attempts to refute arguments in Exercises 17-22 by answering the following
questions:
What is the method of refutation!
Is the refutation a good argument! (Explain)
154 CHAPTER 7 Counterarguments
17. There is no value at all in Heidegger's philosophy, especially his ethics, since he collab-
orated with the Nazis in running German universities in the 1930s and fired all the Jews.
18. You say you want to raise tuition again? Why not raise the parking fees, too? And the
dorm contracts. And raise prices at the cafeteria, while you're at it. Or maybe even
charge students for using the library. You could balance the school's budget for sure
that way.
19. Look, I agree with you. We have too much violence in the streets, too many drug
pushers, too little respect for the law. But our prisons are overflowing, and that's
costing us a fortune. So we've got to reduce our prison population. Yet you say we
should be even tougher on crime. The answer is simple: Institute a lottery among all
convicted felons in jail and execute one of them every month—no appeals. That'll instill
a real fear of being arrested. And it'd be fair, too.
20. Lee: I'm going to vote for that initiative to eliminate discrimination against
homosexuals in hiring and getting places to live. They should be treated
like everyone else. They deserve a chance to get jobs and homes.
Tom: Are you kidding? I'm voting against it. You should, too. They don't
deserve any preference over the rest of us.
21. (Complete letter to the editor from Vern Raburn, CEO, Eclipse Aviation, in Crosswinds
Weekly, 7/ 11/02, in response to an article "Eclipse Aviation's Money Troubles".)
Should you decide you are interested in supplying your readers with something other
than lies and bullshit, I suggest you spend more time fact checking for yourself. This
will help prevent you from the embarrassment of propagating others' inaccuracies.
22. Zoe: You should eat less red meat. Red meat has lots of cholesterol which blocks
up the arteries and leads to an increased risk of heart disease.
Dick: Mankind has been eating red meat since the dawn of time, and we have still
survived as a species. If we stopped eating everything that was bad for us, we
would be left with nothing to consume but small white tasteless pills, which
would later be discovered to cause a new type of deadly cancer.
Refute the following arguments. Say whether you are showing a premise is dubious,
attacking an unstated premise, showing the argument is weak, or reducing to the absurd.
23. Mrs. Wang is a great marriage therapist. She really cares about her clients.
24. Multiple-choice examinations are the best way to examine students. The grading is
completely objective. Students know how to prepare for them. And professors don't
have to spend a lot of time grading them.
25. You should keep a gun in your home. This is a dangerous neighborhood, and a gun is
the best protection you can get. Think of what could happen if someone broke in.
26. Single parents should get special assistance from the government. After all, a two-parent
family has two paychecks and twice the attention to give to their children. Some single-
parent families end up having to use the welfare system because they can't afford child
care. Therefore, the government should give free child care to single-parent families.
Writing Lesson 7
Now you know that you should include the other side when arguing for a
controversial claim. Argument, counterargument, counter-counterargument.
Remember that to knock off an objection you need a mini-argument that will
be judged by the same standards as any argument.
Write an argument either for or against the following:
Peer-to-peer sharing of songs on the Internet is theft.
Check whether your instructor has chosen a different topic for this assignment.
In order to make sure you use your new skills, the directions for this
assignment are the same as for Writing Lesson 6. You should hand in two pages:
First page: A list of premises and the conclusion.
Second page: The argument written as an essay with indicator words.
We should be able to see at a glance from the list of premises whether your
argument is good. The essay form should read just as clearly, if you use indicator
words well. Remember, there should be no claims in the essay form that aren't
listed as premises. And you should include the other side.
For this issue, and generally, there is a trade-off:
You can make your argument very strong, but perhaps only at the
expense of a rather dubious premise. Or you can make all your
premises clearly true, but leave out the dubious premise that is needed
to make the argument strong. Given the choice, opt for making the
argument strong. If it's weak, no one should accept the conclusion.
And if it's weak because of unstated premises, it is better to have those
premises stated so they can be the object of debate.
Tom is so embarrassed about his last writing assignment that he's asked me not
to include any more. But he's doing much better now, and I'm sure he'll do well in
the course. Maria has done such a good job, though, that I'm including her essay on
a different issue.
155
156 Writing Lesson 7
Maria Schwartz Rodriguez
Critical Thinking, Section 6
Writing Lesson 7
Issue:
If a woman has a baby, then she should not work outside the home until the
child reaches the age of four.
Definition: I take "work outside the home" to mean the woman takes a job that
requires her to be away from her home and child at least 15 hours/week.
Premises:
1. Some women who have a child under the age of four are single mothers.
2. Some women who have a child under the age of four have husbands who do not
earn enough money to support them and the child.
3. Some women who have children have careers from which they cannot take time
without stopping them permanently or for a very long time from advancing.
4. Some women who have children do not have extended families or lots of friends.
5. A woman who has only her family can go stir-crazy if she is just with her child
all the time.
6. A woman who is going stir-crazy, or who is too poor to provide for her child, or
who is unsatisfied because her child is stopping her from getting along in her career
will make a bad mother and companion for her child who is under four.
7. Mothers who are not with their children do not deserve to have children.
8. Whether they deserve to have them or not, they do have them.
9. Children who are not with their mothers will not develop proper intellectual and
emotional skills.
10. What studies I have seen contradict that claim. Until reliable studies are
produced for it, we should not accept it.
11. Day-care can be dangerous.
12. The mother can screen day-care providers, and besides, a bitter, unsatisfied
mother can be dangerous, too.
Conclusion: Under some circumstances it is acceptable for a woman to work
outside the home when she has a child under the age of four.
Writing Lesson 7 157
Maria Schwartz Rodriguez
Critical Thinking, Section 6
Writing Lesson 7, page 2
Under some circumstances it is acceptable for a woman to work outside the home
when she has a child under the age of four. After all, some women who have a child
under the age of four are single mothers. And other women who have a child under
the age of four have husbands who do not earn enough money to support them and
the child. We can't forget women who have children and have careers from which
they cannot take time without stopping them permanently or for a very long time
from advancing. And think of the women who have children who do not have
extended families or lots of friends. She could go stir-crazy if she is just with her
child all the time. These women should be allowed to take work outside the home,
for a woman who is going stir-crazy, or who is too poor to provide for her child, or
who is unsatisfied because her child is stopping her from getting along in her career
will make a bad mother and companion for her child who is under four.
But lots of people say that mothers who are not with their children do not
deserve to have children. Well, whether they deserve to have them or not, they do
have them.
But children who aren't with their mothers will not develop proper intellectual
and emotional skills, it is said. Well, what studies I have seen contradict that claim.
Until reliable studies are produced for it, we should not accept it.
One objection is that mothers who work outside the home often need day-care.-^
And day-care can be dangerous. But the mother can screen day-care providers, and
besides, a bitter, unsatisfied mother can be dangerous, too.
So despite the obvious objections, we can see that under some circumstances it
is acceptable for a woman to work outside the home when she has a child under the
age of four.
This is really excellent. Bravo! A few points where you couldn't improve:
You must include the definition in the essay, right after the first sentence giving the
conclusion.
The grammar on premise (3) is not right.
You missed a possible response to (8) that the state or a church should take the child,
and you'd need to come up with a response to that.
Some variety inputting in the objections might be good—for example, stating (9) as a
question.
You left A out of your list of premises. And (12) is two premises, not one.
I see you avoided entirely the issue of welfare, Have you asked other students to look,
at your paper to see if they can think of objections or support because of that?
If you can write like this in your other courses, you'll do great all through college!
8 General Claims J-
A. General Claims and Their Contradictories 159
• Exercises for Section A 162
B. Some Valid and Invalid Forms 163
• Exercises for Section B 167
C. Between One and All
1. Precise generalities 170
2. Vague generalities 171
• Exercises for Section C 172
Summary 173
A. General Claims and Their Contradictories
We need to know how to reason using general claims that assert something in a
general way about all or a part of a collection. For example,
All good teachers give fair exams. Professor Zzzyzzx gives fair exams.
So Professor Zzzyzzx is a good teacher.
This may seem valid, but it's not. The premises could be true, yet Professor Zzzyzzx
could be a terrible teacher and give fair exams from an instructor's manual.
Some dogs like cats. Some cats like dogs.
So some dogs and cats like each other.
This seems valid, too. But it's not. It could be that all the dogs that like cats are
abhorred by the cats as too wimpy.
These arguments sound right, but they're bad. How are we to avoid getting
lured into belief? We first need to be clear about what "all" and "some" mean.
"All" means "every single one, no exceptions." But then is the following true?
All polar bears in Antarctica can swim.
159
160 CHAPTER 8 General Claims
There are no exceptions: There's not one polar bear in Antarctica that can't swim.
Of course, there aren't any polar bears in Antarctica that can swim either. There
aren't any polar bears at all in Antarctica.
Some people say the claim is false: There has to be at least one object for us to
be right when we say "all" in ordinary conversation. Others say the claim is true.
There's disagreement about "some", too. Consider:
Dr. E: At the end of this term, some of my students will get an A.
At the end of the term one student in all of Dr. E's classes got an A. Was Dr. E right?
If you don't think so, then how many is "some students"? At least 2? At least 8?
At least 10%? More than 18%?
"Some" is purposely vague. We use it when we can't or don't want to be
precise. When we say "some," we are only guaranteeing that there is at least one.
Dr. E: Some of my students will pass my next exam.
All Dr. E's students pass the exam. Was Dr. E right? For this claim to be true, don't
some students also have to fail? With "some" we usually mean "at least one, but not
all." But not always. "Some" and "all" can be ambiguous.
All means "Every single one, no exceptions." Sometimes all is meant
as "Every single one, and there is at least one." Which reading is best
may depend on the argument.
one, but not all." Which reading is best may depend on the argument.
There are lots of different ways to say "all" in English. For example, the
following are equivalent claims:
All dogs bark. Dogs bark.
Every dog barks. Everything that's a dog barks.
There are lots of ways to say the reading of "some" in the sense of "at least
one." For example, the following are equivalent claims:
Some foxes are affectionate. At least one fox is affectionate.
There is a fox that's affectionate. There exists an affectionate fox.
There are also lots of ways of saying that nothing or no part of a collection
satisfies some condition. For example, the following are equivalent claims:
No dog likes cats. Nothing that's a dog likes cats.
All dogs do not like cats. Not even one dog likes cats.
SECTION A General Claims and Contradictories 161
No means "not even one," "every single one is not."
Another word used in general claims is "only." Consider:
Only postal employees deliver U.S. mail.
Ralph is a postal employee.
So Ralph delivers U.S. mail.
This is not valid. Only postal employees deliver U.S. mail does not mean that all
postal employees deliver U.S. mail. It means that anyone who delivers U.S. mail
has got to be a postal employee. To clarify the meaning of "only," and for other
analyses in this chapter, we'll use the letter S, P, Q, R for parts of a sentence.
Only "Only S are P" means "All P are S."
It's easy to get the contradictory of a general claim wrong. Recall that a
contradictory of a claim is one that always has the opposite truth-value. For
example, here's an advertisement that's on TV:
Zocor is a cholesterol medicine. Zocor is not right for everyone.
Why are they advertising medicine that no one should use? They've got the
contradictory of "Zocor is right for everyone" wrong. It should be: "Zocor is not
right for some people."
And the contradictory of "All dogs bark" isn't "All dogs don't bark." Both
claims are false. The contradictory is "Some dogs don't bark."
The contradictory of "Some students are athletes" isn't "Some students are not
athletes." Both claims are true. Rather it's "Not even one student is an athlete" or
"All students are not athletes." Or better still, "No student is an athlete."
Richard L Epstein Page 20