For the last discussion question of the week, I thought I'd focus on the topic of direct and indirect refutations. When I first glanced over this section, I found it a bit confusing for the subject of "indirect refutations".
Whenever you encounter another argument, you must be able to effectively respond to the subject of the argument. As we've already figured out from the book, not every argument is rational, strong, or even logical. To respond to arguments, we must use "refutation". There are two ways, direct and indirect, that we must use to respond to an argument.
Direct Refutation: A direct point-by-point rebuttal to an argument, where we set out to do one of three things:
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.
Indirect Refutation: This sort of refutation is a bit more vague. It doesn't focus on a specific aspect of an argument, but it sets out to accomplish the same goal: to prove the argument is false. There's not too much information available online about it, but I found a link where it's used most often in a courtroom to question the general credibility of a witness, without having to repeat the same allegations over and over again.
http://cannoneerno4.wordpress.com/2007/10/26/counterpropaganda-techniques/
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