Chapter 7

In chapter seven the main theme of the chapter was Counterarguments.  The chapter broke down into two topics, which I believe were interesting to learn.  The first topic is raising objections.   The book describes raising objections as “a standard way to show that an argument is bad.”  Objections are raised when a claim is put forth and one of our claims is either wrong or doubtful. 

The second topic in the chapter is “Refuting an Argument” which then breaks this topic into three different sections, the first, refuting directly, second; refuting indirectly, and third; attempts to refute that are bad arguments.

Refuting directly is when an argument “shows that at least one of the premises is dubious, the argument isn’t valid or strong, and that the conclusion is false.”  I also learned in this chapter that there are four specific ways that imitate reducing the absurd; “phony refutation, slippery slope arguments, ridicule, and straw man”