Raising Objections
When making an argument, there's always going to be a counterargument, meaning a claim that will contradict the previous claim. These contradicting claims are called " objections". Here is an example that I made on my own of a bad argument between Suzy and Jim :
Suzy: People should not eat meat because it's animal cruelty.
Jim: Human beings need to eat meat because they need protein to develop.
Specially children, they need it for growth.
Suzy: But you can find protein in other food. Or you can buy supplement pills.
Jim: supplement pills tend to be expensive.
Suzy: Plus slaughter house are not treating animals properly.
Jim: What does it matter? You'll eat the meat eventually
Suzy: Stressed and abused animals can make their meat taste bad
Jim: You know not all slaughter houses treat them poorly. For example organic meat.
Suzy: Besides, cows, pigs and chicken cost a lot because you need water and food and a shelter to keep them.They take a lot of space
Jim: So what? People occupy more space on the planet than those animals. So if you think they take too much space, then we should eat them.
Suzy: No
Jim: If people stop eating meat what are we gonna do with all the cows, pigs and chicken in the world?
Suzy:....?
This is an interesting argument because it has so many pros and cons, showing many objections in this counterargument.
Attempts to refute that are bad arguments
This is the attempt to reduce an argument to make it less vague but can sometimes become a slippery slope or ridicule( Epstein, 151).
Here's an example:
A: Steeve is not feeling well today, I think he has a cold and a fever.
B: How do you know?
A: he looked pale,tired and I saw him coughing a lot.
B: Do you think he has the swine flu?
A: That could be a possibility judging his terrible condition.
B: Well hope that he doesn't grow a swirly tail, flat nose and hooves.
That's terrible :(. What if Steeve really had swine flu? I don't think that would be the case to make fun of, considering that Swine flu can be deadly.
I like what you said about raising objections. Your example was very detailed and easy to see what the objections were. Each claim that followed clearly contradicted the previous one. I agree with what you said that there are many pros and cons in this counterargument. I also enjoyed reading through it because it was interesting and funny.
ReplyDeleteYour example and explanation of “attempts to refute that are bad arguments” was also good. The refutation attempt became a fairly bad argument. It did turn into ridicule when person B mentioned growing a pig’s tail, nose and hooves and it stopped being a valid attempt after that.