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jcdjgd wrote: I follow that the stimulus is describing a necessary condition of avoiding an attack on an opponent's character, because it doesn't confront the opponents argument, but how does the answer of (C) follow from this?

Why must a debating technique confront EVERY argument? Is this just a jumbled way of saying that every argument presented must attack the opponents argument?

Thanks in advance.

Keep in mind you're trying to strength this argument. The argument's conclusion is that you shouldn't do insult your opponents. The support for that is that if you do insult them, you're just wasting time instead of addressing their argument. But there's no logical basis for concluding that you shouldn't insult your opponents, there might be other reasons to do so; maybe you just really like insulting people. Maybe it's very persuasive because your audience is comprised of idiots.

To strengthen this argument, (C) says that you shouldn't use argument strategies that are not comprehensive. Well, insulting your opponent is not a comprehensive argument strategy, since it doesn't confront their statements. So if (C) is a valid principle, we would have to accept the conclusion.

Make sense?