Refutation and Concession

In the prior exercises you practiced amplification expanding upon your proposition by providing reasoning, evidence, and explanation to lead your reader to understand and accept that which you propose. On the face of things, the more reasons and evidence you provide your audience, the stronger your argument should be. But alas, amplification has its dangers. The more reasons and evidence and explanation you give, the more you stick your neck out. Your opponents are likely to find inconsistencies between some of your reasons, or flaws in your evidence. And those who are intent upon winning the argument at all costs will simply fixate upon your weakest reasons and refute them, giving your proposition the appearance of being invalid when indeed it might be quite strong. Focusing on the weakest arguments of ones opponentthe classic straw man fallacyis a subpar move for a critical thinker worth his salt, but a highly effective strategy for an audience untrained in rhetorical analysis. The forms of refutation and concession help to mitigate the problems of amplification. Refutation requires that you present an opponents argument and then show why it is wrong. Concession requires that you present an opponents argument and show why it is partially correct. How do these strategies strengthen your argument? First, and most importantly, many if not most errors in decision-making can be attributed to faulty reasoning. Testing your reasons insures that your reasoning is as sound as you are able to make it. It also exposes weaknesses in your argument that will make you vulnerable to opponents and less persuasive to even your most receptive readers. Better to test your ideas yourself rather than leaving this entirely in the hands of your readers. Untested reasoning is little more than an opinion dressed in Sunday clothes. Second, demonstrated refutation or concession assures your audience that you have given serious thought to your proposition and the reasoning underlying it. These strategies give the appearance and ideally the reality that a reasonable person has tried to anticipate and address every possible weakness. Third, the strategies of refutation and concession are an excellent means of bolstering the weak points in an argument as well as heading off certain types of attack. Take, for example, the problem of inconsistencies in an argument. If you are arguing for the death penalty, you may encounter a basic contradiction: arguing for the sanctity of the victims life and against the sanctity of the victimizers. Using the strategy of refutation (or concession), you can acknowledge and address this contradiction yourself, denying the opponent the opportunity to dismiss your argument out-of-hand for what is otherwise a glaring contradiction. More importantly, identifying such weaknesses in your reasoning will compel you to strengthen it. Ehrenreichs Are Women Sadder, is an essay predominantly in the refutation form, with the writer mainly refuting the arguments made by those she opposes. About halfway through the essay, in which she has provided a series of reasons supporting her position (or refuting the oppositions), Ehrenreich employes the concession form as a fulcrum:

But let's assume the study is sound and that (white) women have become less happy relative to men since 1972. Does that mean that feminism ruined their lives? She concedesfor arguments sakethat the study is sound. She then moves to break the link between the study and what it is able to reveal about feminisms impact on womens happiness. She uses the study itself as evidence in support of her own position. Not according to Stevenson and Wolfers, who find that "the relative decline in women's wellbeing... holds for both working and stay-at-home mothers, for those married and divorced, for the old and the young, and across the education distribution" -- as well as for both mothers and the childless. If feminism were the problem, you might expect divorced women to be less happy than married ones and employed women to be less happy than stay-at-homes. As for having children, the presumed premier source of female fulfillment: They actually make women less happy. And if the women's movement was such a big downer, you'd expect the saddest women to be those who had some direct exposure to the noxious effects of second wave feminism. As the authors report, however, "there is no evidence that women who experienced the protests and enthusiasm in the 1970s have seen their happiness gap widen by more than for those women were just being born during that period." What this study shows, if anything, is that neither marriage nor children make women happy. (The results are not in yet on nipple piercing.) Nor, for that matter, does there seem to be any problem with "too many choices," "work-life balance," or the "second shift." If you believe Stevenson and Wolfers, women's happiness is supremely indifferent to the actual conditions of their lives, including poverty and racial discrimination. Whatever "happiness" is... When testing your ideas, its important to avoid confirmation bias,--selecting those arguments and evidence which confirm what we already believe. Ehrenreich is perhaps a little in danger of this by assuming rather than testing the assumption that stay-at-home married women with children would be less affected by feminism. This leaves her vulnerable to an opponent saying that such women might be most saddened by feminism, for feminism has made them feel that such a life is not as rewarding or valued as work outside the home. Its important, when refuting, to consider the strongest arguments of your opposition, and test your argument against those. If not, you risk weakening your credibility as well as your argument. The best critical thinking challenges its own beliefs, taking refutation seriously and testing its own and its opponents strongest arguments with the greatest possible intellectual rigor. Sometimes such challenges to ones own beliefs can result in a revision or even reversal of position: a risk you take when you engage in critical thinking.