Harris' Countering

Harris’ discussion of countering focused more on how to continue an exchange of ideas between two opposing views rather than how to merely prove the opponent wrong. He presents an example of when he realized how to effectively counter an oppenent in academic writing at the beginning of the chapter. A professor that critiqued his work said that he had simply tried to prove his opponent wrong throughout the entire paper without successfully developing a quality counter to his opponent’s work. To do this he suggests three tactics to use for developing a position of your own: arguing the other side, uncovering values, and dissenting.

He presents a question that he created to assist him with preparing a quality counter after describing his thoughts on his professor’s reaction to his paper in graduate school: “The question I’ve learned to ask myself at such times is: What do I hope will result from pursuing this disagreement? If the answer is simply that I think I can prove that the text I am reading has certain shortcomings or limits, then I try to set aside the temptation to argue.”

On one of the blogs I have been following, Daily Kos, I read a post titled ‘What Is That Orange Guy Talking About?’ that uses countering. The Minority Leader of the House, John Boehner has been persuading the Democrats to make some promises involving the health insurance reform bill. First, the post questions if Boehner may have a point, but continues on to say that, in their opinion, he shouldn’t be pursuing the issue:

"But does Boehner have a point in insisting that the floor managers, who are the chairs of the three committees with jurisdiction over the bill, and therefore will likely be the main conferees in the part of the House, can speak with some authority on what's likely to happen in conference, and could even commit if they wanted to to voting in support of the House's official position on the amendment? Sure.
Does that entitle him to such a commitment? Absolutely not."

These questions use the 'arguing the other side' tactic for countering by presenting both sides, though only one side is strengthened throughout the rest of the post.