Week 7 - Post 2: Directly & Indirectly Refuting an Argument

When directly refuting an argument, Epstein describes three ways to assist your refutation. These three ways are to, “Show that at least one of the premises is dubious”, “Show that the argument isn’t valid or strong,” and “Show that the conclusion is false.” The example in the book is about killing flies. The person believes that it is useless to kill flies because the faster flies will evade him and survive to reproduce more fast flies. This example could be directly refuted because it can be proven that the argument is not valid or strong. There is a great possibility that extremely fast flies will not be produced after the so-called slow flies are killed. Therefore, the argument is very weak and it is extremely likely that the conclusion is false.

            When indirectly refuting an argument, it is harder to pinpoint why the argument sounds unusual or dubious in one premise, but it is evident that the argument is not valid or strong. Epstein explains that in order to indirectly refute an argument, you need to “reduce the absurd.” He defines this as, “showing that at least one of several claims is false or dubious, or collectively they are unacceptable, by drawing a false or unwanted conclusion from them.” The example in the book of a woman arguing against the logic of fly-killing is an example of a certain type of reducing the absurd called “refuting by analogy.” Her refutation of the fly argument was successful because she compared it to that of killing germs or chickens. Killing these things would not produce superhuman germs or chickens. Thus, this form of refutation was successful when argued in an indirect manner.