Over the last couple of weeks, we've been talking about fallacies in order to help you all figure out ways in which you can criticize an argument. Sometimes, an argument might seem valid or strong. But if you recognize that it's actually a fallacy, that'll help you to see what's wrong with the argument and not to be moved by it. But there are other ways of criticizing arguments besides recognizing them as fallacies. Or, in any case, recognizing them as the one, one of the kinds of fallacies that we've been discussing so far over the past couple of weeks. And this week we're going to broaden our scope a little bit and talk about other ways of criticizing arguments. This week we're going to talk about refutation, its varieties and pitfalls. So, what's refutation? What are the varieties of refutation? What are the pitfalls of refutation? Let's address those questions in order. So, first, what is refutation? Refutation, or to refute an argument, is to show that the argument is unsuccessful in some way or other. That's what you're doing when you refute an argument. You're showing that the argument is unsuccessful in some way or other. Now, an argument might be unsuccessful because we're not entitled to accept its premises, right? Maybe its premises are false or maybe whether they're true or false, we just have no reason to accept them. Or an argument may be unsuccessful because whether or not its premise are true or known by us to be true, the premises don't support the conclusion of the argument. So, the conclusion isn't adequately supported by the premises. It doesn't follow from the premises. It's not something that the premises give us very powerful reason to believe. So, we can refute an argument by showing that it's unsuccessful in any of those ways. Okay. So, because refuting an argument is just to show that it's unsuccessful in any of those ways, there are going to be different ways to refute an argument corresponding to the different ways. In which arguments can be unsuccessful. So, for instance, if we're going to show that the premises of an argument don't support its conclusion, then we can do that by means of something that we'll call refutation by parallel reasoning. Right? One way of doing that, of course, is to point out that the argument is a fallacy. Right? It might appear valid or strong but, in fact, it's not. But another way of doing that, independently of pointing out that it's a fallacy, is to refute the argument by parallel reasoning. And in the next lecture, we'll talk about what refutation by parallel reasoning is. Another way that we might refute an argument is by showing that its premises are false or in any case whether they're false or not, we're not entitled to accept them. And we can do that, we can show that we're not entitled to accept the premises by using things that we'll call counter examples. Or a method that we'll call, reductio ad absurdum. Okay. So those are the varieties of refutation. We can refute an argument by means of parallel reasoning. We can refute an argument by means of counterexamples. Or we can refute an argument by reductio ad absurdum. And we'll talk about those different varieties of refutation this week. Now, often refutations are successful and help us to see why an argument that someone else is giving or maybe an argument that we ourselves gave is unsuccessful. But sometimes, refutations don't work. In particular, there are a couple of different kinds of error to which refutations are especially liable. One of those kinds of error is what's called attacking a straw man, or refuting a straw man. Sometimes, when you try to refute a particular argument, you end up attacking something that isn't quite the same as that argument. Something that might seem very similar to that argument, you might mistake it for being the same as that argument. But its not quite the same and the difference is significant. That's called attacking a straw man. Your refutation of an argument also might be unsuccessful because it depends upon a false dichotomy. You assume that a particular dichotomy is true. Either things have to be one way or have to be other way and you make that assumption in attempting to refute an argument. But your refutation is unsuccessful because the assumption that you've made, the assumption that things have to be either one way or another way, is a false assumption. That's called a false dichotomy. Okay, so those are some dangers to which refutation is subject, and we'll also be talking about those this week. Alright, so now that we've said what refutation is, what its varieties are and what its dangers are, let's start talking about particular kinds of refutation. Next time, we're going to talk about refutation by parallel reasoning. See you next time.
