The speaker opines that defending against anopposing viewpoint is the best way to test an argument and I concur with it.Admittedly that there are other ways like taking the argument into practice and so forth,however, they are not the best way to judge an argument. We can clarify thispoint by discussion in fields of science, philosophy and business.
In the science realm, especially in physics,a point of view will be largely accepted if it can beat other viewpoints anddoubts. For a famous example, Einstein come up with the theory of relativitylast century, but almost no one thought it was true at the beginning. After hisannounce of the theory, lots of physicians, especially classical scientists,said Einstein's argument belied scientific facts and it was totally wrong.Confronting with them ountains ofchallenges, Einstein defended his theory and convinced them by his awesomeinductions. And most of people in the world accept the theory of relativity nowand there are only few people think it's incredible nowadays. This vividexample indicates that in scientific field, a view can be accepted if it canwithstand all the challenges by dissent views. To defend it against opposingperspectives, a point can also be improved and compact.
As for the consideration in philosophy, arguments will not be diminished candefinitely beat 怎么有两个谓语others at least in some aspect. If someone wants to convince a view inphilosophy by practice, others will think he's crazy. In philosophy, most ofthe topics are not realistic to take it into practice. For instance, if somepeople are arguing about the status of someone dies, one may think the dead manwill become another creature on the earth and other ones might reckon that hewill become angel in the heaven or devil in the hell. Of course, to verify itby trial and error is impossible and stupid. But by arguing, as most ofphilosophers did, both arguments have their own supports so both of them havetheir own followers. Someone may say that challenging others in words is alwaysungrounded. Nevertheless, I cannot agree with that because challenging bydebates have to be based some facts in life. It's true that wecannot test on areal man to decide what will happen to him after he die, but people indifferent sides must provide some symptoms or reasons. Without a test exact setto it, arguments can also be convincing by some other reasons.
In addition, the best test of arguments inbusiness arena is the same as above two fields. A policy in a firm is alwaysmade by debating in board meetings. Judging how to arranging a barrel of moneyis often decided by excogitating a bunch of ideas first, and list pros and consof each possibility, and at last make the decision by debate. In the debate process,one can be challenged by others about the disadvantages of his point of view,which are always considered opposing ideas. In the process of guarding anddefending, his argument will be accepted by more people if it's really a goodone and it can be also improved if some suggestions are helpful. Mature ideas inbusiness world can withstand every chance of bankruptcy, and no one can take itinto practice first and then decide because on the one hand, money is limitedand on the other, marketing is pretty risky and a loss may not be made up afterthe practice. Someone may argue that people can just put a small amount ofmoney in the market and see how it works. But this kind of test is still riskybecause we may know the fallacy of composition, which means what is true for asmall amount of things may not be true for a large quantity.
To sum up, I insist that an argument isconvincing enough if and only if one can defend the idea against other opposingdoubts. Not only it does in areas of science or philosophy, it's also true inall the other fields like business. 固然你能指出使持相反观点的人信服是对一个结论的最好证明,不过你也必须考虑到它可能的不太好的地方,并给出合理的解释,这样才使得你自己这篇issue 能convince us |