Chapter 7

Chapter 7 discusses counter-arguments. One of the concepts Epstein talks about is raising objections. He states that the purpose of raising objections is to show that an argument is bad. In doing so, we are making another argument that either calls into question one of the premises, or shows that an unstated premise is dubious, or illustrates why the argument is weak. An example of raising an objection would be if someone were to say
"Cats are great pets because they're cute and they don't require as much attention as other pets because they are independent." Raising an objection could be: "Yeah but you can't have any fun with it, you can't walk it, or play fetch. And what if you're allergic to cats?"
Another concept discussed in chapter 7 is refuting an argument. There are three ways to directly refute and argument:
1. Show that at least one of the premises is dubious.
2. Show that the argument isn't valid or strong.
3. Show that the conclusion is false.
We can also refute an argument by showing that a false or absurd conclusion follows from the premises. To do that we  must be sure that any other claims we use to get the  false or absurd conclusion are plausible, and that the argument we give is strong or valid.