Claim: The best test of an argument is its ability to convince someone with an opposing viewpoint.
Reason: Only by being forced to defend an idea against the doubts and contrasting views of others does one really discover the value of that idea.
The author claims that the argument is considered cogent and well-formed if it can convince someone with the opposing viewpoint. The notion upon which the author bases his claim is that validity of an idea is established only when it stands firm against the contrasting views of the opposers. No doubt, the purpose of any argument is to prove validity of its claims. If opposing viewpoint puts forth ideas that you cannot refute and hence cannot make the other party agree to your provided reasons, you with all certainty have an ill-formed case.
The building of science and all its sub-branches are contingent upon the pillars of justifiable arguments. Formulation of laws in science are the best example of this. The usual course an idea takes in becoming a law goes through various stages including observation, theory formulation, experiment, and analysis, and only the hypothesis that is corroborated by the results of the experiments becomes a law. A mere glance at this process insinuates that if a scientist has a cogent theory and he/she can logically debunk all claims against it, he can turn it into a law, which is universally accepted and acclaimed. On the other hand, theories that fail to challenge contentious viewpoints remain unsubstantiated and open to debate until further progress is made in tackling such antithetical views.
To account for the validity of author's claim, let’s take some examples from some professionals' work-life. A senior software engineer architect, who works at a software house that develops web and mobile applications, oversees development of client products and takes important decisions about the product throughout its lifecycle, i.e. software requirement gathering, documentation, development, and testing of the product. My uncle who works as an architect, once had a heated argument with the developers about which programming language to use for an e-commerce website. The developers insisted on using C# language instead of JAVA, arguing that they have experience in C# and thus will be able to save time. On the contrary, my uncle convinced them to use JAVA by rejecting their claim of saving time. He put forth the argument that most of the company's products are in JAVA and if we switch to something totally different, even though it will save time initially, but the maintenance of a product written in completely different language would not only require much more time, but also involve greater maintenance cost, since maintenance team does not have expertise in C#. So, either the company will have to train the employees or hire people with required expertise. By properly refuting the claims of the developers was my uncle able to convince his team. If he had not been able to logically disprove developers' claim, the developers might have conceded on working in JAVA because of my uncle's seniority, but this contention would have lead to even stronger revolt from developers.
Building upon a case for validity of author's argument, lets peek into a hearing of a typical crime at a criminal court. The suspect is brought in the court and accused of burglary. The suspect claims that he was not at the place of crime when the incidence happened. In fact, he was out of city that day. Now, if the prosecutor can reject suspect's claim of being out of town, he can make his case stronger. The prosecutor, provides evidence of the suspect's car parked near the place of crime and his DNA found in the house he burglarized. The prosecutor shows the correctness of his claim by rejecting suspect's false claims. This shows that argument that follows a logical course of ideas and has strength to refute all contrasting claims is considered sound and convincing.
To sum up, contrasting views are like competitors in a competition, only one can win, and all others lose. The winning argument is the one that supersedes all others. If the logically cogent argument fails to account for other views, it is bound to face serious backlash from opponents and unlikely to convince people. This general hypothesis does not only apply to science, logic and philosophy, but it’s also applicable to plethora of quotidian disagreements and disputes.
| Post date | Users | Rates | Link to Content |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-01-16 | jason123 | 66 | view |
| 2020-01-09 | Abhipray Singh | 58 | view |
| 2020-01-09 | Abhipray Singh | 66 | view |
| 2019-12-12 | Pranjil | 66 | view |
| 2019-11-26 | NRS | 58 | view |
- The following appears in a letter to the editor for the West Lansburg News:"The tufted groundhog lives in the coastal wetlands of West Lansburg. Ancient records suggest that the tufted groundhog once numbered in the millions. Since they were declared a wi 16
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- “The best way to teach is to praise positiveactions and ignore negative ones.” Write a response in which you discuss theextent to which you agree or disagree with therecommendation and explain your reasoningfor the position you take. In developing and 16
- “The best way to teach is to praise positive actions and ignore negative ones.” Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the recommendation and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing 58
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 5, column 801, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...de in tackling such antithetical views. To account for the validity of authors c...
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Line 13, column 449, Rule ID: POSSESIVE_APOSTROPHE[1]
Message: Possible typo: apostrophe is missing. Did you mean 'suspects'' or 'suspect's'?
Suggestion: suspects'; suspect's
...he prosecutor, provides evidence of the suspects car parked near the place of crime and ...
^^^^^^^^
Line 13, column 776, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...ims is considered sound and convincing. To sum up, contrasting views are like co...
^^^^^^^
Line 17, column 481, Rule ID: WHITESPACE_RULE
Message: Possible typo: you repeated a whitespace
Suggestion:
...f quotidian disagreements and disputes.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, hence, if, so, thus, well, in fact, no doubt, on the contrary, to sum up, on the other hand
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.5258426966 108% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 14.0 12.4196629213 113% => OK
Conjunction : 26.0 14.8657303371 175% => OK
Relative clauses : 21.0 11.3162921348 186% => OK
Pronoun: 54.0 33.0505617978 163% => Less pronouns wanted
Preposition: 97.0 58.6224719101 165% => OK
Nominalization: 24.0 12.9106741573 186% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 3543.0 2235.4752809 158% => OK
No of words: 692.0 442.535393258 156% => Less content wanted.
Chars per words: 5.11994219653 5.05705443957 101% => OK
Fourth root words length: 5.12892706869 4.55969084622 112% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.85735229605 2.79657885939 102% => OK
Unique words: 348.0 215.323595506 162% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.50289017341 0.4932671777 102% => OK
syllable_count: 1106.1 704.065955056 157% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59117977528 101% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 6.24550561798 160% => OK
Article: 14.0 4.99550561798 280% => Less articles wanted as sentence beginning.
Subordination: 6.0 3.10617977528 193% => OK
Conjunction: 8.0 1.77640449438 450% => Less conjunction wanted as sentence beginning.
Preposition: 7.0 4.38483146067 160% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 30.0 20.2370786517 148% => OK
Sentence length: 23.0 23.0359550562 100% => OK
Sentence length SD: 73.968679558 60.3974514979 122% => OK
Chars per sentence: 118.1 118.986275619 99% => OK
Words per sentence: 23.0666666667 23.4991977007 98% => OK
Discourse Markers: 3.4 5.21951772744 65% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 4.97078651685 101% => OK
Language errors: 4.0 7.80617977528 51% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 12.0 10.2758426966 117% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 13.0 5.13820224719 253% => Less negative sentences wanted.
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.83258426966 103% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.257174092473 0.243740707755 106% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0618574723725 0.0831039109588 74% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0586685659742 0.0758088955206 77% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.150708536361 0.150359130593 100% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0971797917235 0.0667264976115 146% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 14.2 14.1392134831 100% => OK
flesch_reading_ease: 48.13 48.8420337079 99% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.92365168539 111% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.3 12.1743820225 101% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 12.71 12.1639044944 104% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 8.54 8.38706741573 102% => OK
difficult_words: 165.0 100.480337079 164% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 11.8971910112 92% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.2 11.2143820225 100% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.7820224719 93% => OK
What are above readability scores?
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Write the essay in 30 minutes.
Rates: 75.0 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.5 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.