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10.1 Refuting Arguments
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Refutation is the act or process of refuting an argument raised by another debater. According to that usage, “refutation” is a noun and “refute” is a verb. In any debate, refutation is one of the processes used for interacting with other arguments. Refutation is the act of refuting or criticizing an argument made by someone else, to show how that argument is somehow problematic. The argument can be shown to be weak, incomplete, poorly proven, or false. In addition to using refutation to weaken an argument, it also can be used to defend a position that another debater has refuted. Refutation is an interactive process wherein debaters critically examine one another’s arguments by comparing them to other arguments deemed to be cogent, or by subjecting them to various tests of strength. The process of refutation applies both to invalidating or validating an argument.
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Refutation also applies to rebuilding. Thus, this chapter deals with the twin topics of refuting and rebuilding. Refuting is generally thought of as a process of invalidating an argument, and rebuilding is considered a process of revalidating an argument. The first part of the chapter will deal with refutation used to disprove, debunk, discredit, or otherwise invalidate an argument, and the second part of the chapter will deal with rebuilding, repairing, and reconstructing arguments previously refuted.
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Refutation serves several purposes. The first one that people ordinarily think about is that refutation weakens, destroys, dismantles, or overturns an argument. Thinking of refutation in that manner occurs when debaters are interested in making arguments that prevail over those of other debaters. In that situation, debaters would use refutation to weaken the argument of their opponents so that judges will see their arguments as superior.
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A second function of refutation, even when it is used to invalidate an argument, involves a generative process where refutation shows the weaknesses of an argument and those weaknesses are then used to generate better arguments. This generative process of refutation can lead the original debater to improve his or her argument to account for the weaknesses pointed out in the refutation. Refutation also can help the person refuting to make better arguments to support his or her side of the motion. The second function of refutation, the generative function, is much better suited to the nature of excellent debate than the first. Of course, a debater can weaken or even “destroy” an opponent’s arguments using refutation, but a truly excellent debater uses refutation to make a better debate by generating better arguments.
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In this section, we will discuss methods of refutation, methods of deciding what to refute, and introduce a four-step process of refutation.
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10.1.1 Methods of Refutation
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Refutation can be accomplished by methods that are internal or external to the arguments being refuted. The internal method involves pointing to fallacious reasoning, and the external method involves creating a counter argument. Of course, refutation can also be accomplished by a combination of these two methods.
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10.1.1.1 Internal Refutation The first method of refutation can be called internal because it involves examining the argument by looking at its component parts and the relationship of those parts to one another. When debaters examine an argument internally, they are trying to decide whether or not it meets the criteria for a good argument. If it does not, the argument is said to be “fallacious.” Thus, the internal method of refutation involves the process of detecting fallacies.1 The concept of fallacies is briefly developed here simply to illustrate the idea of internal refutation. Fallacies will be discussed briefly in this section and more extensively in Chapter 21.
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To understand the process of detecting fallacious arguments, the criteria for the logical assessment of arguments needs to be examined more fully. A good argument must have good evidence, and the evidence should be soundly linked to a claim. The features of argument—claims, evidence, and links—will be more fully discussed later. For now, we will simply say that an argument is a good one if it is built upon good evidence and good links between the evidence and the claim.
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Canadian Philosophers, Ralph H. Johnson and J. Anthony Blair, developed three standards for distinguishing good arguments from poor ones. Those standards are related to the quality of evidence and the quality of the links between evidence and claims; the first standard is related to evidence, and the second and third standards are related to links. The three standards are called acceptability, relevance, and sufficiency. The following diagram, that we will henceforth call the Johnson and Blair Model of Argument Cogency, is a simple illustration of these three criteria (Johnson and Blair, 2006: 55).
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Johnson and Blair Model of Argument Cogency
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Arguments that satisfy the three criteria are logically good arguments, and those that fail to satisfy one or more of them are not as good. If an argument fails to satisfy one of the criteria, the debater presenting that argument has committed a fallacy. The sections below outline each of the three criteria and the basic fallacy associated with each criterion.
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The standard of acceptability is related to the concept of evidence. Evidence is the material that debaters use to support their arguments. For instance, debaters might use information or statistics from published sources as evidence to support their argument. A debater thinking about refuting an argument based on a published source would want to ask if the published source was a good one; does the publication have a good reputation for publishing accurate information? Sometimes a debater might use persons of authority to support their arguments. Here, the rebuttalist might ask whether or not the author who is cited is qualified in the field that is the subject of the published source.
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Statements such as “the publication my opponents have cited has a reputation for only publishing liberal (or conservative) information” or “the person my opponents cite as an authority may be an authority in some field, but not in one relevant to this argument.” Statements like those involve internal refutation. If those statements prove acceptable, they indicate that the opponent’s argument involves a fallacy.
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Sometimes, an argument can be supported by acceptable evidence but still be a logically poor argument because it does not meet one of the two other standards. Such would be the case if the evidence were acceptable but not properly linked to the claim. In that case, the standard of relevance is used to judge whether or not the evidence, however good, is related to the claim the debater is trying to make. Let’s say that a cancer drug was tested on 25 males and found to have a positive effect, and that study was used as evidence to support an argument that the cancer drug was good for a particular kind of cancer that occurred primarily in females. Because the evidence only involved males and the conclusion only involved females, the evidence is not relevant to the conclusion. Such an argument would be open to a charge that it does not meet the standard of relevance and, thus, the debater has presented a fallacious argument.
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An argument can begin with acceptable evidence that is relevant to the claim and still not be good enough to persuade the judge or the audience. A number of examples exist where evidence is relevant to an argument but still not sufficient. Say, for instance, that a lawyer says, “Because of the place of the wound, we know the murderer was left-handed and the accused man is left-handed, thus, the accused is guilty of murder.” Of course, the evidence that the accused is left-handed is relevant to whether or not he was, in fact, the murderer, but that evidence is not sufficient to convince a reasonable judge or audience because the murderer could have been any number of left-handed men or women.
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The standard of sufficiency demands that the combination of evidence and reasoning be good enough to convince an audience or judge to accept the argument with a reasonable degree of certainty. A reasonable level of certainty is never 100%. In most argumentative situations where they are expected to choose between two competing arguments, judges will accept the argument that they consider most probable. The standard of sufficiency is the standard that ensures that the argument meets this level of probability.
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Thus, if a debater can show how the argument does not meet the standards of acceptability, relevance, and sufficiency, that debater can show how the opponent has presented a fallacious argument. The charge of fallacy may inspire the original debater to make the argument better, in which case, refutation has served the generative function of causing improved arguments. If the argument cannot be repaired, it will be rejected.
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10.1.1.2 External Refutation A second method of refutation involves the external method of presenting a counter argument. We may think of this method as external because, rather than criticizing the internal structure of the argument, it brings another, outside argument to bear on the critique of the original argument. Even if the arguments presented by an opponent are not fallacious, debaters may be able to present arguments that directly counter them. In the earlier example of the left-handed murderer, if the defense attorney proclaims, “Yes, but the defendant is really right-handed,” even though the defense attorney did not criticize the internal method by which the other attorney made the argument, the defense attorney nevertheless has refuted the original argument by presenting a counter argument.
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Imagine a debate in which a debater on the Government side argues for changes in education policy, and a debater on the opposition side claims that the present system is already making necessary reforms and those reforms make the changes suggested by the Government debater unnecessary. The Government debater might present a counter-argument to suggest that the reforms being undertaken are of a cosmetic nature only and do not address the main issues of educational opportunities. That kind of counter-argument constitutes what this chapter calls external refutation.
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Thus, refutation may involve either an internal method of examination of the argument to detect fallacious reasoning, or an external method of presenting a counter argument. Either of these methods may succeed in refuting the argument. But perhaps the strongest method would be to refute an argument by using a combination of both methods—to show that the argument fails to meet one or more of the standards of a good argument and, in addition, to present a counter argument.
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