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Chapter 10 Blog

I think that a lot of people view refutation in a negative light; I know I did. I use to think of refutation in argumentation as a way of fighting back against opposing views and knit picking the other side's claims and evidence in order to support one's own proposal. While this is a relatively accurate definition, the book offered me further insight. It explained how refutation is a good thing; it's a "constructive process." It is not an uncritical rejection of another argument.

The book describes refutation as a sort of testing process used to find the best decision in the face of an argument. Gordon R. Mitchell describes it as "scrub(bing) the arguments." This process allows decision makers to pick away at the rough spots and really get down to the key points of the decisions and what it truly entails: its benefits and its flaws.

The book continues to explain refutation as a "cooperative" concept. Proper refutation follows essential principals that allow for fairness is presentation, information flow, and time and circumstances needed to make an unbiased, informed decision.

While many people think of refutation as a large scale concept being used in decision making processes in courts and within our government, we see refutation happening around us all the time. On a lower scale, refutation may be used in arguments with siblings. For example, say your family is going to go out to dinner and ask where you would like to go. Your brother wants to go to El Rodeo, but you want to go to Olive Garden. You point out that you all had just eaten Mexican food a few days ago. Your brother reminds you that your dad doesn't care much for Olive garden. Ultimately, you two didn't get to make the decision though; your parents got to make the final call because they were driving and paying. This ties in with the principal of refutation which states that "people are not decision makers in their own causes." In the end, your family goes to Olive Garden because the rest of my family didn't want Mexican food again, and, while Olive Garden may not have been your dad's favorite restaurant, he knew that there was a large variety of options for him to choose from on the menu, so he was bound to find something good, and everyone else likes that restaurant. This shows how refutation can allow for decision makers to see the rough spots of each argument and apply their values to determine which rough spots are worst, which can be overcome, and, in the end, which decision is going to be the most beneficial. Additionally, the arguments presented against the restaurant options were logical arguments. The brother didn't just say, "no, I don't want Olive Garden, so we shouldn't go there," he gave a logical reason as to why that may not be the correct choice. It was not, as I said earlier, an "uncritical rejection of another argument."

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