Aphorisms on Counters and Responses

Counters as Evidence of Thoughtfulness: One of the most ancient rhetorical strategies – that is, strategies for persuading your audience to accept your ideas on an issue – is to acknowledge and account for the counter-arguments to your position. The idea behind dealing with counter-arguments is that you are able to demonstrate that you have examined an issue from multiple perspectives, that you have taken a careful and considered approach to your interpretation, and – after having done so – you have decided that the position for which you are arguing is the most satisfactory position.

Counters Need Responses: It is not enough simply to acknowledge the existence of a counter-argument (e.g., “I am aware that such-and-such position exists”). You must acknowledge a counter-argument and respond to it.

Counters for Qualifications: When you explore and respond to counter-arguments, allow them to change or qualify your own claims. Sometimes writers feel that they must make their position look strong by denying and rejecting any position that isn’t theirs. But, according to the Renaissance skeptic Michele de Montaigne, who invented the artform of the essay:

All the abuses in the world are engendered by our being taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance and our being bound to accept everything that we cannot refute. We talk about everything didactically and dogmatically…. It makes me hate probable things when they are planted on me as infallible. I like these words, which soften and moderate the rashness of our propositions: ‘perhaps,’ ‘to some extent,’ ‘some,’ ‘they say,’ ‘I think,’ and the like. And if I had had to train children, I would have filled their mouths so much with this way of answering, inquiring, not decisive – ‘What does that mean? I do not understand it. That might be. Is it true?’ – that they would be more likely to have kept the manner of learners at sixty than to represent learned doctors at ten.

It is a sign of intellectual strength, not weakness, to qualify your position to accommodate new evidence and other perspectives. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that you must bat down violently and absolutely any position that is different from your own, of thinking that it is a weakness to qualify your argument. It is actually a sign of intellectual strength to be aware of the limits of your claims, and to acknowledge honestly any loose ends that remain. Use counters and responses to qualify the claims of your analyses and arguments.

Counter-Evidence: Sometimes it can be more helpful to think of the presentation of “counter-evidence” instead of  “counter-arguments.” Instead of dreaming up a counter-argument that’s easily refuted (“Some might say that the yellow bottle on the table is ketchup; I have argued, however, that it is better to view it as mustard”), consider any loose evidence from your text that might not easily fit into your argument.

Counter-Evidence, -Analysis, and -Argument: In an academic paper, you should include counters and responses at both the paragraph-level and the paper-level; that is, address the counter-claims to your argument as well as the counter-claims to your assertions. Include small-scale counters and responses in terms of the analyses of evidence that you perform in your body paragraphs, and large-scale counters and responses for the overall argument that is the center of your paper.

Actual and Hypothetical Counters: Counter arguments can be actual or hypothetical: that is, they can be the actual claims that scholars have put forth in published criticism, claims that you quote, paraphrase, and/or summarize in your own paper; or they can be alternate possible positions on an issue that you can imagine a reasonable person adopting, even though you may not necessarily have seen such positions argued in print.

Don't Strawman: In terms of hypothetical counter-arguments, don't straw-man your counter-arguments; that is, don't prop up a stupid position that no one would ever seriously adopt just so you can knock it down for the sake of having gone through a counter-argument and your response to it. That tactic is transparent, and it detracts from your scholarly authority (when one of the points of doing counters and responses is to enhance your authority). Instead, actually engage with ideas you find difficult and challenging to your own.

Counters from Intelligent People: Think about counters by asking “How could someone who is just as intelligent as me, or (imagine this) even more intelligent, come to a different conclusion when looking at the same issue, maybe because he or she is approaching the issue from a different angle, or maybe because he or she is looking at different evidence?”

Counters as Possible Interpretations: When considering “counters,” think of them instead as “possibilities”: map out two or three or four possible readings, whether analyses or arguments, and then develop the reading that most fits with the evidence and your understanding of the question at hand.

Actual Counters: In terms of actual counter-arguments, make sure that (in your writing process) you have your position staked out before you go to the scholarship. If you read back through the criticism on an issue after you’ve written your analyses and arguments, you’ll find that critics are talking about some of the same bits of information that you’re talking about. In a research paper, you must include this scholarship. Use these critics in one of three ways: (1) as support, (2) as counters to refute, (3) as different perspectives that are not necessarily right nor wrong, just different.

Respond by Showing the Error of the Counter's Ways: In your response to a counter, whether actual or hypothetical, you must explain not only why your position is a more satisfying position but also where the thinking of your interlocutor(s) went off-course. Was your interlocutor’s interpretation doomed from the beginning due to a faulty assumption? Did your interlocutor conceive his or her interpretation correctly but err in its execution? If so, where did this person’s thinking “zig” when it should have “zagged”? Is there anything of value you’d like to salvage from your interlocutor’s position?

Counters to Launch Conclusions: When I write papers, I like to begin my conclusions by dealing with the trickiest counter(s) to my argument, or by reviewing several of the counter-arguments to my position. This material is usually tied to the critical community that I discussed in my introduction (specifically in my literature review) when stating the occasion for my interpretation.

Counters in Introductions: Alternately, if I am proposing an argument that I know to be provocative or objectionable, I might review and respond to the counter-arguments in my introduction, before I even get to the body of my paper, directly after having stated my thesis. Doing so allows me to preempt any holier-than-thou readers who might think I’ve not thought all the way through my argument, because of course I have, as I demonstrate by addressing the counters and responding to them.

Don't Say "Counter": When giving counters, don’t say any version of the word “counter.” Don’t say, “One counter-argument could be that …” or, “Someone could counter me by saying …” It’s clunky and mechanical. Try “Some might say …” or “It is tempting to think …” or “It is possible that …”

Be Specific with Counters: The notion that something “is open to interpretation,” and therefore yours may not be the be-all, end-all interpretation, is not a counter-argument. It is a fact of the interpretive enterprise. If so, then it does not good to make this point in a paper. Of course all sorts of things are open to interpretation, but saying so doesn’t get us anywhere. Instead, describe the specific interpretive options available to us, where they can co-exist and where they conflict, and why the position you’re arguing for is ultimately the most satisfactory.