Objection and reply
from 1641 Descartes published the first Objections and Replies with the Meditations in 1641; the form became the standard shape of a philosophy paper in the twentieth century
State the strongest case against your own position, in the words its holder would use, and then say what you are willing to give up.
- Active
- from 1641
- Where
- Paris, then everywhere
- Status
- In use
- Tradition
- Analytic tools
What it is
Objection and reply is the plainest procedure in the section and the most used. A position is stated, the best available case against it is put, and the position's holder responds — by conceding something, by drawing a distinction that lets both claims stand, or by accepting the consequence the objector thought was unacceptable.
What makes it a method rather than an argument is the obligation to state the objection well. A reply to a weakened version of the objection is not a reply, and the discipline of the procedure lies almost entirely in the paragraph before the answer.
How it works
State the position precisely enough to be attacked, then put the objection in the strongest form you can construct — the version its holder would recognise as their own, not the version easiest to answer.
The reply takes one of three shapes. Concede: the objection lands and the position narrows. Distinguish: it answers a different claim, and saying which restores the position unchanged. Bite the bullet: the consequence follows and is less unacceptable than assumed.
Then say what the reply cost. A reply that costs nothing is usually a reply to the wrong objection.
The moves, in order
- State the position in a form specific enough to be attacked
- Construct the strongest objection, in terms its holder would accept as fair
- Reply by conceding, distinguishing, or accepting the consequence
- State what the reply gave up
- Check whether the narrowed position is still worth holding
The procedure
Proposition Phones should be locked away for the whole school day.
- The position: phones go into a pouch at the gate and come out at the bell, on the grounds that attention in class recovered measurably at schools that did it.
- The objection, put at full strength: a parent needs to reach a child in an emergency, and a policy that makes a child unreachable for six hours transfers a risk from the school to the family without asking the family. This is not a complaint about inconvenience and should not be answered as one.
- The reply concedes the reachability point entirely rather than disputing it — the office phone is not an answer, because it depends on the school being the thing that is functioning.
- The reply then distinguishes: the case for the policy is about the phone in the pocket during a lesson, not about the phone existing on the premises. Those are separable, and the policy had run them together.
- The position narrows: phones are pouched during timetabled lessons and available at break, with an unpouching procedure any staff member can trigger.
Therefore The policy survives in a narrower form, and the narrowing came from the objection rather than from negotiation — the original version was defending more ground than its own evidence covered.
This is objection and reply rather than debate because the objection was constructed by the policy's own author, at its strongest, before anyone raised it. Debate rewards the weakest opposing case; this procedure penalises it.
What it is good for
Finding out what a position actually requires. A claim that has survived three serious objections is usually a different and better claim than the one that went in, and the difference is the whole value of the exercise.
Where it fails
The objector is chosen by the defender, which selects for objections that can be answered. The strongest case against a position is very often one its holder cannot see, and no amount of good faith inside the procedure will surface it — this is the standing weakness of the philosophy paper as a form.
It also has no stopping rule. Every reply invites a further objection and the exchange ends when someone runs out of time, patience or journal space rather than when the matter is settled, which lets a position that has merely outlasted its critics look as though it has answered them.
And conceding is expensive in a way the procedure hides. A position narrowed four times is presented as robust, when what has happened is that the interesting version was abandoned in stages.
Common misconceptions
That it is the same as debating. Debate assigns the sides in advance and rewards winning; this procedure assigns both sides to the same person and rewards the concession, which is why it reads as slow and unsatisfying next to an argument.
Where it came from
Descartes circulated the Meditations before publication and printed six sets of objections, from Hobbes, Gassendi, Arnauld and others, with his replies — the first time a philosophical work appeared with its opposition bound in. The scholastic disputatio had the same shape three centuries earlier, performed aloud.
What became of it
It became the default architecture of academic philosophy. A twentieth-century journal article states a thesis, anticipates objections, replies, and the referees are checking that the anticipated objections are the real ones.
Lasting influence
It is the reason philosophical writing sounds the way it does, and the reason a philosopher reading a new claim reaches first for the counterexample rather than the implication.
Why it still matters
Any proposal that will meet resistance is better tested this way before it is sent than defended afterwards. The version that survives your own strongest objection is the version worth circulating.
Put another way
A boat builder who floods each compartment on purpose before selling the hull.
Texts
René Descartes, Objections and Replies
The fourth set, from Arnauld, is the one to read: a serious objection made courteously and never quite answered.
Where to start
Read Arnauld's objections and Descartes's reply as a pair, ignoring the other five sets. Twenty pages, and the shape of every philosophy paper since is visible in it.
The surprising bit
Arnauld's objection to Descartes — that the argument is circular — is generally thought to have won, and Descartes printed it anyway, in full, at the front of his own book.
Who held it
Objections and Replies, fourth set
Connections
- Relies on
- The principle of charity, The counterexample
- Influenced
- Reflective equilibrium
- Parallel to
- Pūrvapakṣa and siddhānta, The disputatio
The verdict
The least glamorous method here and the one most philosophers use every working day.