Weaken Questions Difficulties

jenny_03

Can someone clarify the strategy used to solve weaken questions. I understand not "attacking" the premise but to indeed attack the support however, isn't the premise the support the conclusion receives?

nye8870

http://7sage.com/lesson/how-to-weaken-arguments/ Have you watched this yet?

jenny_03

I have @nye8870

nye8870

@jennifer_takyi So ... what is meant by not attacking the premise is to NOT say: "This premise is not true." Instead you say (to the argument) "I accept your premise as true" but, "because of [insert correct answer choice] your premise is not as convincing as before."

GSU Hopeful

The "support" is the relationship between the premise and the conclusion. They each have separate jobs that we don't really care about. What we do care about is how they interact with one another. We have to take each at face value and assume they are true for purposes of the argument.

Weakening questions require us to separate the premise and conclusion and analyze their interaction with one another. There will be a flaw in reasoning, perhaps multiple flaws. We need to identify those flaws and bring them to light via the answer choices. These could suggest an alternate explanation, competing data sets, competing chronological events, etc. Our goal here is to make the premise less relevant to the conclusion and the primary way of accomplishing this is by identifying a flaw and using that against the argument. Find that crack in the argument and drive a wedge into it to open it on up.