PT 33 S1 #21 Forum

[niederbomb]

Apparently, the answer is C. I eliminated it because it says ".....confront EVERY argument" which seemed kind of weird.

I picked D, and it's wrong.

[AverageTutoring]

Apparently, the answer is C. I eliminated it because it says ".....confront EVERY argument" which seemed kind of weird.

I picked D, and it's wrong.

Premis

Character attacks dont deal with the argument, rather with that persons right to be in the debate.

Conclusion

Character attacks should be avoided in a political debate.

Missing Link

We know that character attacks dont deal with the argument. But does that mean they should be avoided? There is a missing link here. In order to conclude that character attacks should be avoided we need a solid reason, which currently, we dont have other than common sense.

Answer Choices

C: If we are to only include techniques that confront EVERY SINGLE ARGUMENT in a political debate, then we CANNOT or should not include character attacks. Why? Because we know for a fact that character attacks do not confront the opponent's argument. Well..if they dont confront an opponents argument, then they are missing an issue, a big issue! But according to the principle in answer C, if we are missing an issue/argument, we cannot/should not use this technique.

Sounds good to me?

D: Do we care about further debates? We only care about this particular debate. What if this debate was the most important debate ever and character attacks would help us win? Well...arguably trading up the ability to debate in the future to win this debate, this all important debate, would be something we would be willing to do/should do.

Plus, this really doesn't pick up on the missing link between the premis and the conclusion. Typically in justify/principle questions we are looking for the missing link.

[niederbomb]

Thanks...I see it now.

I just got confused because, after all, the correct answer for a "plug the gap" question looks just like a wrong answer for other types of questions.

But yeah, in this case it plugs the hole pretty cozily.