What does attacking a premise mean exactly?

fiji12345678

I have been at times confused about the exact meaning of attacking a premise.

When a stimulus includes a study that says, for example, most people with certain genes hate apples in a weaken question, if an answer choice says "some studies show that most people with the same genes do not hate apples," this is considered as attacking the premise, right?

But if an answer choice says something that implies that the study did not include enough people to provide a legitimate level of support, it is not attacking the premise.

Is it a correct way of understanding the concept of attacking a premise?

vandyzach

I think you need to give us more information on this stimulus and answer choices. I cannot recall the problem you are talking about, and I think we need to know more to be able to answer this question.

If what you gave us (the correlation) is the SUPPORT of the argument, and the CONCLUSION is that having the gene causes people to hate apples, then yes, what you said (that some studies show that most people with the same genes do not hate apples) is absolutely a weakener because it exploits a gap of the argument. I'll go into why this is, but first I need to know exactly what the argument is that we are trying to weaken.