The Place of Refutation in Argumentation
All of us have probably observed, at one time or another, those gut-wrenching arguments that often devolve into little more than shouting matches between zealous opponents. Such debates generate a lot of heat but seldom resolve issues or win supporters.

No matter how "loudly" you clamor for your own position in an academic discourse, however, without being able to answer the criticisms of others, you are not likely to make much headway in convincing the "nay-sayers" to join your ranks. While it is important to be able to establish with force and clarity your own position and to be able to frame your own argument supporting that position, you must be adept at answering the reservations and objections of those in your reading audience who disagree with your point of view or conclusion. As a writer of academic discourse, you simply have to answer the opposition.

Addressing the arguments of your opposition involves much more than simply rejecting the final conclusions of opposing points of view. To effectively dismiss objections, you have to attack the very foundation of those opposing positions. That means you have to challenge both the stated and often the unstated (implied) premises--that is, the unspoken assumptions themselves that are taken for granted by the opposition in support of their positions. To put it another way, you have to be able to articulate and then to challenge "where they're coming from."

Preparation for Refutation: How much?
You have to do a lot of advance preparation to be able to challenge intelligently the objections of the opposition. In other words, you don't "go to war" without gathering your forces, and you don't "initiate combat" without knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your opponents. The same thing is true in the refutation of opposing points of view in academic argumentation.

In academic refutation, you must know the opposing position and its premises so well as to be able to argue forcefully for that position. You know you have "done your homework" when you can recreate the argument(s) for the opposing positions to the satisfaction of their proponents. Only then will you be able to step behind those arguments to find the weak points and to challenge them.

Points for Attack in the Refutation of Arguments
Here are some elements that can be challenged, only if you have done your homework!

1) Challenge the Authorities
Get to know the sources supporting the opposing positions. You can question the reliability, the motivation, and even the character and experience of an authority. You can also challenge the authority's knowledge and understanding of the issues. For arguments in "soft" disciplines (issues for which there are many points of view and little objective data), you can question the relevance of an authority's academic credentials in speaking on a given issue. You can also challenge irrelevant or inappropriate credentials. For example, a Ph.D. in physics doesn't automatically justify a person's position on welfare funding, yet many people are impressed by someone's opinion just because that person is highly educated in some field, relevant or not to the issue at hand.

2) Question the Data (Information)
Information has to come from somewhere and, once collected, has to be organized into some kind of manageable format--both points for challenge. You can question the range of the data available; does your opponent's information base cover all of the of the sources? You can question the sampling--that is, the examples offered from a pool of information. You can challenge your opponent's attempt to slant the information to serve only his/her position. You can question the accuracy and clarity of your opponent's information as well as the categories in which it has been organized. You can question also the contexts or environment from which the information was selected.

3) Identify Various Logical Fallacies in the Construction of the Opposing Argument
Perhaps your opposition is building a case on popular opinion with little objective information to support it. Or maybe your opponent is jumping to conclusions without examining both sides of the controversy (are you?) It's possible the opposition is making false or irrelevant comparisons--these are just a few examples of logical fallacies.

4) Criticize Definitions and Terminologies
Every subject area in academia generates its own jargon--specialized uses of words to serve the unique interests of that discipline. We sometimes call that "lingo"--medical doctors have their "lingo"; lawyers and teachers, their respective "lingos." Those applications of language also extend even to the definitions of words: "myth" means something very different to the anthropologist using the word; the term "phoneme" has, frightfully, twenty-two different definitions in the field of linguistics. The Innuits (Eskimos of North America) in the Arctic have more than a dozen words for what we simply call "snow." An opponent who is employing specialized, discriminating meanings may be challenged, as was President Clinton in his defense that he has never had "sex" with a staffer.

5) Attack the Stated Premises
To reject an opponent's argument, it isn't necessary to find the premises of your opponent's argument patently false. You can win points with some audiences by finding one or more of them to be simply unacceptable (for reasons you will give) or even only questionable (perhaps for reasons offered above). Remember that the "Dream Team" in the O. J. Simpson trial won their case as the defense when, under California law, they were able to "raise reasonable doubt" by only questioning the reliability of the testimony of a key police investigator whose alleged "racism" made his testimony doubtful to the jury.

6) Attack the Unstated Premises
Raise questions about the assumptions of your opponent's argument. Ask yourself, "Where is that writer coming from?  What must she/he be assuming to offer such a reason for her/his position?"

7) Reject the Underlying Reasoning System
If your opponent has developed a deductive argument in which the premises actually (from his/her point of view) guarantee the conclusion, you can challenge the soundness of the premises by finding them--with reasonable cause, of course--to be either false, unacceptable, or at least questionable. If the argument is non-deductive (that is, a "probablity" argument), you can question on the same grounds those premises that seem to support it and introduce other premises that might contradict others among the opponent's stated premises.

8) Dismiss Your Opponent's Methodologies
Challenge how your opponent gathered supporting information. Perhaps a sampling collected in a survey at the local mall was an inappropriate strategy--the questionnaire wasn't long enough; too few people responded; shouldn't have used a questionnaire in the first place!

A Warning for the Serious Writer of Argumentation
Don't apply any of these strategies above without sufficient reasons for doing so. To challenge an opponent by simply "going through the motions" of the attacking points above without being able to justify yourself will only serve to make you and your position look foolish!

Go to Exercise 13

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