One other interesting thing that I learned in this Chapter was that an
argument cannot be rated as good or bad on the fact that it convinces a person
or not. There are many different situations that would cause a person not to be
persuaded by an argument so that is why you can’t judge the strength of an
argument on whether or not it convinced someone to change their mind. There is
no real exact scale to judge to strength of an argument. The only way to
judge an argument is by how plausible and likely the premises offered in the
argument are. This is something that I never knew was true because whenever
someone won a debate I always assumed it was because they had a strong argument
but this is not the case. Whether the argument is won or not has nothing to do
with the strength of the argument. This was a very interesting concept to me
that I had never really thought of before that I am very glad I learned the
truth behind.
You make a very interesting point in your post here. I, too, thought that an argument was good depending on whether it was able to convince someone or not. It's like the persuasive essays and speeches we've done in the earlier years of school. We were always graded depending on whether we were able to make a convincing argument. But in the book, it states that an argument is good depending on whether the argument is plausible and the other factors such as the premise being more plausible than the conclusion and whether it is valid and strong. It's strange to see the different things we learn as we go through school.
ReplyDelete