3 3 8C H A P T E R 1 7 ■ R e f u t a t i o nbe given to those who commit some lesser offense. The first speaker could
respond in several ways, because this reductio depends on background as-
sumptions that the first speaker could question. First, he might deny that
the most severe crime should receive the most severe penalty possible. If the
first speaker sees life in prison as too cruel to be inflicted on anyone, then he
might call for the abolition of life imprisonment and keep the death penalty
as the most severe punishment. Alternatively, the first speaker could claim
that, even though the death penalty is less severe than life in prison, it is
still fitting in some other way for the most severe crime, first-degree murder.
Finally, of course, the first speaker could simply accept the supposedly ab-
surd result and apply life imprisonment to first-degree murder, while using
the death penalty for lesser crimes. In fact, however, the first speaker was
unwilling to accept any of these alternatives. He simply tried a rhetorical
trick and got caught.
These reductios are fairly good, but other reductios fail for a variety
of reasons. To succeed in refuting a claim, a reductio ad absurdum argu-
ment must meet two main requirements. First, the result must really be
absurd. Often opponents try to reduce a view to absurdity but really only
draw out implications of the view that are not absurd at all. For example,
in a famous debate in which Thomas Huxley defended a theory of evolu-
tion, Bishop Wilberforce asked Huxley whether he had descended from
apes on his mother ’s side or on his father ’s side of the family. This question
was intended to draw laughter from the crowd, and it did, partly because
they and Wilberforce thought that any answer to the question would be ab-
surd. Nonetheless, Huxley could respond that he had descended from apes
on both sides of his family. Because that response was not really absurd—
regardless of how absurd it seemed to Wilberforce—the bishop’s attempt
did not really refute Huxley’s claim.
In other cases, one cannot deny that a certain result really would be ab-
surd, but the reductio still fails because the claim to be refuted does not re-
ally imply that absurdity. For example, opponents sometimes say that the
theory of evolution implies that animals are constantly evolving, so they
cannot be divided into separate species. This would be absurd, because it is
easy to observe distinct species. The theory of evolution, however, does not
really imply this absurdity, so this reductio fails to refute that theory. It fails
to meet the second requirement for successful reductios, which is that the
claim to be refuted must actually imply the absurdity.
Finally, it is important to notice that reductios can be deep or shallow in
much the same way as counterexamples. Sometimes a claim really does im-
ply a result that is absurd, but it can be modified in some minor way so as
to avoid the absurd result. For example, if a fan says, “Tiger Woods is better
than any golfer ever,” someone might respond that Woods is himself a golfer,
so this claim implies that Woods is better than himself, which is absurd. Of
course, the fan meant to say, “Woods is better than any other golfer ever,”
so this reductio is shallow. The reductio does refute the original form of the
claim, but the main force of the claim is restored by the minor modification.97364_ch17_ptg01_333-350.indd 338 15/11/13 11:12 AM
some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materiallyCopyright 201^3 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights,
affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.