Skip to main content

countercharges

Responding to a charge by making a countercharge, or a tu quoque is the term for when someone responds to a claim by pointing to another claim which seeks to nullify or normalize the original charge. The textbook provides an example of a university professor charged with using funds to lavishly redecorate his office; his countercharge is to make salient that the attorney general (who asserted the original charge) just spend significant money for a new door into her office. The Recent statement Trump made about the Saudi government, which made public the USA's (quietly held) 30 year tradition of exempting the Saudi government from human rights abuses because they are a clever economic ally in the Middle East, made the left furious. Conservative commentators made the point that Obama too was guilty of turning a blind eye to the Saudi Arabia government. The erroneous argument made by the right in response to left's back lash fails to address the issue at hand. However, it does dull the significance of Trump's actions because the fury coming from the left can be more easily criticized as being partisan as opposed to virtuous. By making known that the Obama administration is guilty of acting (but not saying it outright) in a similar way towards Saudi Arabia,  (being lenient in regards to their human rights abuses), the political right's countercharge is effective, especially to those who already support Trump. There is much of this sort of argument style in current politics. A new term for it is "what aboutism" whereby the accused (party or candidate) points to an aspect of the opposing side's behavior which mimics the injunctive act or statement. I find this argument strategy to unveil partisanship, and augment furiousness, but I think it does little to exempt the accused from their actions.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chap 5

Chapter five focuses primarily on identifying and developing propositions for problems that people think are relevant. It goes over 6 steps for choosing a valid proposition based on a perceived “feeling of doubt.” While all six steps may not be necessary, the collectively ensure a well thought out and firm proposition. The six steps include identifying the question, surveying implicated objectives (or understanding what is the goal accomplishment in regard to the question), searching for new information, considering alternative options, considering costs and risks of each potential proposition, and then finally choosing one of the propositions. The authors then go on to talk about analyzing and strengthening the proposition chosen. This includes identification and ranking of the issues that the proposition addresses as well as understanding how the decision makers will react to these issues and propositions. In general, with all these methods of critically analyzing the proposition, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Chapter 10

There were a couple of terms I found in this chapter that I wish were explained a little more. First, the concept of uncritical responses to refutation is only covered briefly. I think that this is one of the most fundamental barriers to effective public argumentation in the United States right now. I find this issue most concerning for the liberal party. Recalling the last election and the concept of 'incremental' argumentation, I feel that people demonstrated a massive failure of critical thinking by voting for third parties or not voting. People who were disappointed with Hillary Clinton's candidacy in place of Bernie Sanders decided to either continue voting for Bernie or not vote altogether. Neither of these strategies amounted to effective support of their cause, and they constitute the uncritical "knee-jerk" reaction described in this chapter. In this case, uncritical response to opposition worked directly against the interests of the decision-makers. A...
1 comment
Read more

Chapter 4 - The Nature of Arguments

Chapter 4 of Argumentation and Critical Decision Making by Rieke, Sillars and Peterson teaches us that even though each argument is different than another and may appear in a different situation, most arguments can be diagrammed by what is called the Toulmin model. Developed by Stephen Toulmin, this model provides a visual breakdown of an argument’s structure and parts. It begins with the “claim” that is seeking adherence by the presenter. This is what the entire argument model revolves around. Next,  the claim requires what is called “grounds” that basically means the reasoning of why the claim should gain adherence. In between the two the two, we are introduced to a “warrant”. This is information that provides more clarity to why the grounds support the claim. Both the grounds and warrant can be reinforced in the model by what is called “backing”. This is a fancy way of saying hard evidence such as quotes, specific data, etc. Last but not least, we have qualifiers and reservation...
1 comment
Read more