| Use the basic features. |
A common strategy writers use to refute alternative causes is to give counterexamples. A counterexample contradicts the causal explanation and shows that the analysis is flawed or at least incomplete. We can see this strategy at work in Vedantam’s response to the cause proposed by Pamela Burns, the president of the Hawaiian Humane Society:
Paraphrase of Burns’s cause
Saving the dog, as Pamela Burns suggested to me, was an act of pure altruism, and a marker of the remarkable capacity human beings have to empathize with the plight of others.
There are a series of disturbing questions, however. Eight years before Hokget was rescued, the same world that showed extraordinary compassion in the rescue of a dog sat on its hands as a million human beings were killed in Rwanda. (pars. 6–7)
Transition cueing refutation
Counterexample
Write a paragraph or two analyzing and assessing how Vedantam refutes philosopher Peter Singer’s causal analysis: