Unit 9 · Topic 9.2

9.2 Conceding part of an opposing view

To concede is to grant the other side something: that its point is partly or fully right, that it holds in certain situations, or that your own argument has limits. A well-placed concession shows that you're fair-minded and well informed, which makes readers more willing to trust the rest of your argument.

Key terms

concession
counterargument
opposing view
limitation
credibility

Three ways to concede

Type of concession	What you grant	Example
Part of the claim is right	Some or all of the opposing point is correct	It's true that a later start costs more for buses.
Right in other circumstances	The opposing view holds under different conditions	For students with long commutes, online classes do make sense.
Your own limits	Your argument doesn't cover everything	This plan won't solve the problem for rural schools on its own.

Why conceding helps

Readers who disagree with you already know the best points on their side. If you pretend those points don't exist, they'll stop listening. If you admit them, you show that you've thought about the issue honestly, and you earn the right to explain why your view is still stronger.

Conceding also helps you control the opposing argument. When you state it yourself, you decide how it's framed and where it appears, then you answer it. A concession is usually followed by a turn: "That's true, but..." or "Even so...". The concession plus the response is what persuades (9.3).

Concede without giving away your argument

A concession should grant something real but limited. If you concede the whole opposing argument, your thesis collapses. If you concede something trivial, readers will notice you're avoiding the real objection. Choose the strongest point on the other side that you can still answer.

Concessions also work in small doses. A single "although" clause at the start of your thesis ("Although the plan costs more, ...") can concede and argue in one sentence (7.3).

On the synthesis essay, the sources hand you concessions ready-made. If one source raises a fair objection to your position, cite it, grant the part that's true and explain why your position still holds. That shows readers you've weighed all the sources, not just the convenient ones.

Spotting concessions when you read

In reading passages, concessions often begin with "admittedly," "granted," "it is true that," "to be sure" or "some will say." A writer may also grant an opponent's good intentions while rejecting their conclusion, as Alexander Hamilton does in Federalist No. 1 when he admits that opponents of the Constitution "may be actuated by upright intentions" (8.2). When you analyze a concession, explain what it grants, how the writer turns from it, and how it makes the writer seem to the audience.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
Paine's concession in Common Sense
Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense (January 1776) urged American colonists to declare independence from Great Britain. Many colonists believed Britain had protected them, especially in wars against France. Paine answers that view (public domain; text from Project Gutenberg): "But she has protected us, say some. That she has engrossed us is true, and defended the continent at our expence as well as her own is admitted, and she would have defended Turkey from the same motive, viz. the sake of trade and dominion." (She means Britain. Engrossed means took over or monopolized, here referring to Britain's control of colonial trade. Viz. means namely.) Explain how Paine uses concession to strengthen his argument.
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: State the opposing view: "she has protected us." Paine introduces it as what "some" say, which marks it as a view he's about to address.
2. Step 2: Find what he concedes: Britain did defend the continent; that "is admitted."
3. Step 3: Notice what he adds while conceding: Britain defended the colonies "at our expence as well as her own," so the protection wasn't a gift.
4. Step 4: Find the turn: Britain "would have defended Turkey from the same motive," which reframes the protection as self-interest ("trade and dominion"), not loyalty.
5. Step 5: Explain the effect: by admitting the fact his readers believed, Paine seems honest, and then he changes what that fact means.
Answer: Model paragraph: Paine concedes the fact his readers cared most about, then strips it of the meaning they gave it. He admits that Britain "defended the continent," a point loyal colonists could have pressed against him, so he gains credibility by granting it openly. But he folds two qualifications into the same sentence: the defense came "at our expence," and Britain "would have defended Turkey from the same motive." The comparison to a distant, unrelated country is pointed: if Britain would protect anyone useful to its "trade and dominion," then its protection of America shows self-interest, not affection. By accepting the fact but rejecting its meaning, Paine turns colonists' gratitude into a reason for independence.

Common mistakes

Conceding so much that your thesis no longer stands. Grant a limited point, then answer it.
Conceding a weak or silly version of the opposing view (a straw man). Readers trust you more when you address the strongest objection.
Ending a paragraph on the concession. Always turn back to your own argument.
Mixing up conceding (granting a point) with agreeing with the other side's conclusion.

On the exam

On the argument essay, a body paragraph that concedes a strong objection and then answers it shows the kind of nuanced thinking readers reward, and it can contribute to the sophistication point if it's developed rather than just mentioned.
Reading questions may ask about the function of a sentence beginning "Admittedly" or "To be sure." The answer usually involves acknowledging an opposing view before responding to it.

Connected topics

Videos

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Check yourself

4 questions on 9.2 Conceding part of an opposing view. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, and denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the state of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgement that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being. The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or write. When you can point to any such laws, in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that, while we are reading, writing, and cyphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men—digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and, above all, confessing and worshiping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave—we are called upon to prove that we are men!

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look to-day in the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What! am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow-men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system, thus marked with blood and stained with pollution, is wrong? No; I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

Frederick Douglass, formerly enslaved abolitionist, from an oration delivered at Rochester, New York, on July 5, 1852, the day after the Fourth of July; as printed in his book My Bondage and My Freedom (1855). Earlier in the speech, Douglass harshly condemned American slavery.

Question 1 of 4

The opening sentence of the passage ("But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say...") primarily serves to

Question 2 of 4

Douglass's handling of the objection most strengthens his overall argument by

Whatever people believe, on subjects on which it is of the first importance to believe rightly, they ought to be able to defend against at least the common objections. But, some one may say, "Let them be taught the grounds of their opinions. It does not follow that opinions must be merely parroted because they are never heard controverted. Persons who learn geometry do not simply commit the theorems to memory, but understand and learn likewise the demonstrations; and it would be absurd to say that they remain ignorant of the grounds of geometrical truths, because they never hear any one deny, and attempt to disprove them." Undoubtedly: and such teaching suffices on a subject like mathematics, where there is nothing at all to be said on the wrong side of the question. The peculiarity of the evidence of mathematical truths is, that all the argument is on one side. There are no objections, and no answers to objections. But on every subject on which difference of opinion is possible, the truth depends on a balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting reasons. Even in natural philosophy, there is always some other explanation possible of the same facts; some geocentric theory instead of heliocentric, some phlogiston instead of oxygen; and it has to be shown why that other theory cannot be the true one: and until this is shown, and until we know how it is shown, we do not understand the grounds of our opinion. But when we turn to subjects infinitely more complicated, to morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the business of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every disputed opinion consist in dispelling the appearances which favour some opinion different from it. The greatest orator, save one, of antiquity, has left it on record that he always studied his adversary's case with as great, if not with still greater, intensity than even his own. What Cicero practised as the means of forensic success, requires to be imitated by all who study any subject in order to arrive at the truth. He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination.

[. . .] To abate the force of these considerations, an enemy of free discussion may be supposed to say, that there is no necessity for mankind in general to know and understand all that can be said against or for their opinions by philosophers and theologians. That it is not needful for common men to be able to expose all the misstatements or fallacies of an ingenious opponent. That it is enough if there is always somebody capable of answering them, so that nothing likely to mislead uninstructed persons remains unrefuted. That simple minds, having been taught the obvious grounds of the truths inculcated on them, may trust to authority for the rest, and being aware that they have neither knowledge nor talent to resolve every difficulty which can be raised, may repose in the assurance that all those which have been raised have been or can be answered, by those who are specially trained to the task.

Conceding to this view of the subject the utmost that can be claimed for it by those most easily satisfied with the amount of understanding of truth which ought to accompany the belief of it; even so, the argument for free discussion is no way weakened. For even this doctrine acknowledges that mankind ought to have a rational assurance that all objections have been satisfactorily answered; and how are they to be answered if that which requires to be answered is not spoken? or how can the answer be known to be satisfactory, if the objectors have no opportunity of showing that it is unsatisfactory? If not the public, at least the philosophers and theologians who are to resolve the difficulties, must make themselves familiar with those difficulties in their most puzzling form; and this cannot be accomplished unless they are freely stated, and placed in the most advantageous light which they admit of.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859), from Chapter II, "Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion." The bracketed ellipsis marks omitted text.

Question 3 of 4

In paragraph 1, Mill's reply "Undoubtedly: and such teaching suffices on a subject like mathematics" mainly serves to

Question 4 of 4

The phrase "Conceding to this view of the subject the utmost that can be claimed for it" introduces a move in which Mill

0 of 4 answered