Chapter 7 talks about counter arguments and the concept that I pick to talk about is raising objections. Raising objection can show how an argument is bad. It can question the premises, show the unstated premise is dubious and can illustrate how the argument is weak. This happens because people like to challenge to sustain the argument. A lot of people raise objections in the argument. In order to have a good argument, you must think about the counter arguments that the audience might have. This will help you find better support to your premises and be able to convince your audience to agree with you.
This is a common conversation that I hear every now and then amongst my friends.
1: I need to go shopping.
2: You just went shopping last week
1: But that was a long time ago and I need new clothes this week.
2: You already brought a lot of clothes last week. Do you even have money to buy new clothes?
1: not really.
2: then you do not need new clothes cause you don’t have money for it anyways.
1: I guess I won’t go then.
In this conversation 2 people are discussing whether speaker 1 will go shopping. Speaker 2 questions the premises of speaker 1 needing to go shopping. Speaker 1 doesn’t have much of a good support to the premises, therefore loses in the argument and shopping is no longer an option.
I can definitely relate to your shopping example. I liked your explanation of how raising objection can show how an argument is bad. That is very true! Speaker 1 is clearly presenting a bad argument because they have no strong counterargument to respond with to speaker 2’s counterarguments. Speaker 2 is really just stating the obvious and being a good friend by giving speaker 1 a reality check. If speaker 1 evaluated their argument before they presented it to speaker 2, they might have convinced speaker 2 that they really did need to go shopping.
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