An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Creativity - always yours

FOUR WAYS TO ATTACK AN ARGUMENT 109
Summary: Definition of a good argument
1. The premises are true or highly plausible.
2. The argument is deductively valid or inductively strong.
3. The premises are not question-begging.
4. All the premises are relevant to the conclusion.
12.2 FOUR WAYS TO ATTACK AN ARGUMENT
Now that we know what a good argument is, what should we do when we come
across an argument that is nor good? It is important not to rely on your gut feeling
and just dismiss the argument. See if you can think of one or more reasons why
the argument should be rejected. In general, there are four main ways to attack an
argument: two direct methods and two indirect ones:
1. Direct method 1: Attack the premises. If you can show that an argument
relies on at least one implausible premise, that is a good way of showing
that the argument is not good enough. But sometimes you do not have to
go all the way to show that a premise is false. You might argue that there is
simply not enough evidence to show that the premise is true. This falls short
of arguing that the premise is false, but it passes the burden of proof to the
opponent. But remember, just because an argument has a false premise, it
does not follow that the conclusion is false!
2. Direct method 2: Attack the reasoning. Even if the premises are all very
plausible, you need to check whether the reasoning of the argument is acceptable.
The argument might be invalid or inductively weak, or question
begging.
3. Indirect method 1: Attack the argument indirectly by attacking the conclusion.
If you can show that the conclusion of an argument is false, this
implies that there must be something wrong with the argument. This strategy
of refuting an argument is useful when it is difficult to evaluate an argument
directly, perhaps because it is too long or convoluted. Of course, this
strategy does not really explain what is wrong with the argument.
4. Indirect method 2: Give an analogous argument that is obviously bad. The
idea is to compare the original argument with another argument. If the new
argument is obviously bad, and it has the same structure as the original one,
then the original one is likely to be a bad argument as well. This is a good
strategy to use when it is difficult to see what is wrong with an argument, or
your opponent refuses to admit that the argument is no good.