Please discuss, in detail, what you learned from reading Chapter 7. Discuss at least 2 things you learned.
Chapter 7 of the Epstein book talks about "Counterarguments" and how they are broken down into categories. This chapter goes over raising objections and refuting an argument. refuting an argument is broken down into the following lessons: refuting directly, refuting indirectly, and attempts to refuse that are bad arguments. the two main things that i will be focusing on in this post will the the direct and indirect refuting. Directly refuting an argument would mean that the counter claim would prove that the argument is not valid by both pointing out that a premises is dubious and that the conclusion is false in a straightforward manner. refuting indirectly would refer to an error in the argument without really stating weather the premise is false or dubious. this can be pointed out when there is no consistency in an argument or the conclusion makes little to no sense. i dont really know what kind of example to use to prove this, i found it a bit confusing to provide. :/
I completely agree with you regarding the subject material in this chapter. I had to read over it several times in order to understand it. I found that it was easier to comprehend the material after looking over the examples in detail. For instance, the fly examples showed a distinct difference between refuting an argument both directly and indirectly. The woman that refutes the boy’s original argument made indirect refutation much clearer for me. Nonetheless, I still had to read about reducing the absurd and refuting by analogy to understand the overall concept. I think if you look at the examples one more time it will become easier for you to grasp.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with you that it was a bit difficult to come up with an example for an argument to be refute indirectly. When I was doing my post about refuting an argument I was about give examples for both refuting directly and indirectly argument, but I didn't really know what example to use for an indirect one. I also agree with the comment above that the example about the fly in the book was a great source of information about the two concept. Refuting directly is pretty much straightforward because it showing the obvious error of the argument; which is why it's easy to come up with an example for it. Anyways, this was a great post, you did a nice job explaining about refuting an argument directly and indirectly.
ReplyDeleteI found the part about refuting indirectly difficult to come up with an example as well. All I got out of it was that even though there is something wrong with the premises, sometimes you just cannot pan out which premise is actually debatable. However, I was able to come up with an example for refuting an argument, but was unsure if it worked. I wrote: it is pointless to buy a brand new car. They look cool on the freeway when you drive them and it makes you feel good. However, over time the value drops tremendously. Therefore, it is pointless to buy a brand new car.
ReplyDeleteHaha, I guess we all agree on this one! On my post regarding what we learned for chapter seven, I just kept readsing it over and over and just put down a bit of a summary. I wasnt able to come up with an example on my own. I feel like maybe when I'm reading it, I understand it a little better, but I feel like my examples that I make (or attempt to creat) are really weak or just boggle my mind to make it more confused about what I'm trying to learn in the first place. I think the easiest thing maybe to give an example about would be the counter argument part, because that's kind of how we deal with our parents, ;D lol. We always got to have an answer...
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-take a jacket.
-it's not cold outside and I have on a long sleeve shirt.
-it might get cold later and you'll get sick.
-I already have a sweater in my trunk and I'm going to be indoors.