PT150 · S2 · Q4 When politicians describe their opponents' positions

When we see Flaw answers start with fails to consider / ignores the possibility, we can ask ourselves whether we could object to the argument using this idea. Could we say, "Hey, author -- I know you're recommending that politicians express their opponents' positions very charitably, but it's difficult to come up with charitable formulations of opposing positions"? Not really. The author never promised it would be easy. She only said that, "if a politician charitably formulated her opponents' positions, then she could persuade more voters with her arguments". This answer would be objecting to the If-condition, which is not something we ever do. We can only object to this conclusion by describing a world in which politicians do succeed in charitably formulating their opponents' positions, but it does not persuade more voters to agree with their arguments.

The author does establish a difference between the politician's style of argumentation (make opponent's position seem implausible and unattractive) and the scholar's style (make opposing position seem as plausible and attractive as possible). The second half of this answer is complaining that the author "focused on different styles even though those two styles might be suited to similar audiences". That complaint doesn't make any sense. Are we trying to say that scholars and politicians have similar audiences? That doesn't sound like our complaint. It sounds more like the opposite of our complaint. The way a scholar talks to other scholars seems like it could play be vastly different rules than the way a politician talks to voters. So this answer would be closer to being okay if said, "even though those styles might be suited to different audiences". That would allow us to complain, "Yes, author, they have two very different styles of argumentation -- but that's because they have to very different audiences, so it's appropriate for the styles to be different".

When we see Flaw answers start with takes for granted / presumes, we treat them like Necessary Assumption answer choices and ask ourselves whether the author needed to assume this idea. Was this author assuming that "both scholars and politicians have persuasion as their aim"? Well, we could say, "No, the author is only thinking that both scholars and politicians would be more persuasive if they presented opposing positions charitably." An author could conclude, "If you wear cologne, you will be more attractive to others", and that isn't assuming that "being more attractive to others is a goal we have. It's just speaking to cause and effect. We could also say, "sure, the author is assuming that both scholars and politicians have persuasion as one of their aims." But we still wouldn't say that our biggest logical complaint with this author is that she's assuming that both scholars and politicians want to persuade. Our problem is that the author is assuming that because a technique has a certain effect for scholars, it will have a similar effect for politicians.

When we see Flaw answers start with takes for granted / presumes, we treat them like Necessary Assumption answer choices and ask ourselves whether the author needed to assume this idea. Was this author assuming that "politicians formulate the positions of opponents uncharitably even when they share the same position?" No, the author said that politicians typically make opponents' positions seem implausible, not that they always do. The author doesn't need to assume that politicians frame an opponent's position unfairly even when they hold the same position.