Three Ways to Weaken?

weilucas37

What are the three ways to weaken an argument again? I only remember alternative hypothesis. I swear there was a lesson that taught this but I don't remember which one.

dimam.ghazala

If I'm not mistaken you're referring to the methods discussed in Causation Strategies:
For that I have...
1. Locating mistakes in the chronology of events
2. Blocking the 3rd common cause
3. The use of a competing data set
4. Finding a competing explanation (alternative hypothesis)
All four kind of blend into one another though, which is mentioned in the lesson.

I hope this helps! If anyone can add onto this or correct me, let me know!

jbantony

For weakening questions that do not involve causation the way to approach weakening questions is choose the AC that attacks the assumed support between premise and conclusion (which are the assumptions that the premise offers).

If we were to go more in depth, every argument, as you already know have premises and they lead to the conclusion. The implicit assumption is that these premises support the concluded conclusion, this applies to every question. So an argument such as the sky is clear this morning therefore there is no way it's going to rain today has the assumption that the premise "the sky is clear in the morning" supports my conclusion in some way. One of the assumptions of this premise is that if the sky is clear in the morning it will not change for the entire day So to weaken this argument you can say "Due to climate change rain patterns have increasingly become more unpredictable and spontaneous" This AC attacks the as before mentioned assumption.

As you do more of these questions you will start to get good at identifying if the AC actually attacks these assumptions or not. What you do not want to do is attack the premise itself, never do this. If you attack the premise you are not actually weakening the argument, you are rendering it invalid. Remember, the question stem asks us to weaken the argument not render it invalid. In other words you can think of weakening questions as questions that ask you to weaken the relationship between the premise and conclusion.

If in my previous example you pick an AC that says "the skies were not actually clear this morning" then I essentially cannot conclude that it will not rain today, this renders my argument invalid, this AC is not correct as it does not actually weaken anything, you're just denying my claim to the argued conclusion.