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Chapter 11


Chapter 11 addresses the issue of various fallacies that are often seen when doing a rebuttal and how to use fallacy claims in order to call out this faulty rebuttal. Similar to chapter 10, chapter 11 discusses how to avoid having a bad refutation by avoiding the use of fallacies in a rebuttal.  A fallacy claim which is defined in the text as “…asserts that an argument must be rejected because it violates a significant rule of argumentation relevant to the appropriate decision makers.” (174) is the claim one should make when a fallacy in the rebuttal occurs. There are various fallacies listed in this chapter that are important in my opinion and are fallacies that we see in almost every argument. Responding to a rebuttal with a counter charge, known as tu quoque, is in my opinion the most common rebuttal we see in everyday argumentation as well as “professional” argumentation, for example a presidential debate. This fallacy is the most important one in my opinion because it is the one we all have to look out for. When you are under attack, the typical response is to want to fire back at that person that is attacking you, but by responding with a countercharge you are just showing that you have no other argument but to attack a claim. It is not always a fallacy to respond to a charge with a countercharge, like everything in argumentation context is extremely important; things like decision makers, who will oppose, and the setting, always needs to be taken into consideration because the way we argue will vary due to those factors.

Comments

  1. Great job elaborating on this chapter Chloe. Fallacy claims are something common in arguments or debates. When first reading this, it was difficult to understand based off the textbook definition. With your explanation is clearer now. I agree with some of your points as well. For instance, I agree with your statement about the Tu Quoque, or counter charge, that it is the most important fallacy because it is the most common one. Counter charge is important to me because I experience them in my daily arguments on basketball topics. So I relate to your statement totally and back you up on it completely.

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