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The Essence of Debate

I thought I would start a little thread focused on 3 questions:

What is a "Debate"?
Who would be a good participant in a debate?
and
What should a good debate be like?

As a little bit of background:
A friend and I were having a discussion a few days ago about religion and other various connected topics. He is a very religious conservative Christian....I am very far from that stance. We tend to not discuss religious issues normally but on this occasion it was warranted. After a long and friendly discussion, in which we put forth various points/counterpoints to the issue we started talking about how it was nice that we could totally disagree on certain subjects, have deep and thought provoking discussions about them, and not harm our friendship. This led us to an anecdotal discussion about what a good debate should be. And that brought me here...

Ok, I digress, and get to the Questions.

What is a "Debate"

A definition would be good so I went to our friends at Webster and looked it up:

Debate

As you can see there are 3 definitions for the noun and an equal number of verb definitions. For the sake of this post we shall think, for now, of verb definition 2b:

quote:

b : to discuss a question by considering opposed arguments

Now that we have a definition we can go on to Question 2.

Who would be a good participant in a debate?

I am of the opinion that a good participant in a debate will do their best to make informed and concise points explaining their position. A good debate participant should also be open-minded enough to at least consider an opposing viewpoint. This is why chose definition 2b.

Ok, on to the final question.

What should a good debate be like?

In the discussion with my pious friend I discussed above, we both agreed on what a debate should NOT be:
It should not be two sides saying the same thing over and over again in such an inflexible manner that it is like listening to a broken record.

Having come to that agreement we concluded that a good debate would have informed individuals who are able to be flexible with their arguments to effectively address the issues brought forward in points made by the other debaters. Thus a meaningful and intellectually stimulating discussion can take place, and no one should leave angry or bitter. While they still may not have changed their position on the issue or converted anyone to their way of thinking, they will know that the other side listened to the point they were making just as they listened to the other side.

Why did I post all this nonsense you may ask? it is simple, really. I just wanted to see what some of the people I consider to be good debaters on this board had to say on the matter.

I am pretty new here, and I really enjoy the good discussions, but the pages and pages of posts which "respond" to a counter point with nothing but the same "you are wrong" posts and the constant flamewars gets annoying.

Please, let me know what you think

I promise I won't flame you (it's not my style)

MrS

thank you for posting this. I think some people (you know who you are) will profit from this. at least i hope they do.

Re: The Essence of Debate

Good post MrSquirrel. I agree almost entirely with your conclusions, although the topic of "open-mindedness" has always been a bit of a pet peeve of mine.

While it's obviously true that one should thoroughly consider your opponent's position, the idea of being open or closed minded is thrown about far too often. In my experience it is very common for someone to accuse you of being closed-minded merely because you refuse to accept the premises of their argument. Usually, this is because they cannot demonstrate the truth of those premises, and therefore are forced to retreat to ad hominem accusations.

Admittedly, I often come off as being somewhat dismissive of the arguments of others. This is not, however, because I simply refuse to consider their position, but more likely because I have already encountered the same argument before, and have neither the time nor the desire to re-invent the wheel by disproving a faulty line of reasoning I've already dealt with many times before.

Other than that, I have nothing to add to your post. It would please me if more members of the forum took those words to heart, but I don't really think it's likely.

Finally, This is an excellent reference for identifying fallacious arguments.

Regards,

Arbiter

offline debating
you need to be articulate, charismatic and maybe flamboyant

online debating
identifying patterns in an opponents defensive and offensive technique will help you anticipate further attacks, and plan attacks that exploit their defense

knowledge of an opponents acculturation is very good for political / religious debates

exploit an opponents intransigence

plan a couple of posts ahead

incorporate captious and or ambiguous points in your posts

don't forget analogies

quote:

Who would be a good participant in a debate?

Having knowledge of psychology can be very beneficial to your debating skills

Re: Re: The Essence of Debate

quote:

Originally posted by Arbiter Good post MrSquirrel. I agree almost entirely with your conclusions, although the topic of "open-mindedness" has always been a bit of a pet peeve of mine. While it's obviously true that one should thoroughly consider your opponent's position, the idea of being open or closed minded is thrown about far too often. In my experience it is very common for someone to accuse you of being closed-minded merely because you refuse to accept the premises of their argument. Usually, this is because they cannot demonstrate the truth of those premises, and therefore are forced to retreat to ad hominem accusations.

Let me explain a little morewhat I mean by "open-minded" in this sense. (If I can lol)

I am using it for the lack of a better term, but really all I mean is that you have to be comfortable enough with your position to be willing to listen and actually consider the other position, even if you disagree with it. It is just part of the whole intellectual pursuit of "truth" so to speak. As my religious friend put it (paraphrasing): "I am interesteed in the absolute truth, and believe I have found it. But if someone were to come to me and give evidence that proves the truth is something other than what I believe, I would be the first to jump ship and change." It is that kind of open-mindedness I speak of. I guess you could call it an intellectual thirst.

I have always felt that if you really want to learn new things, you must be open to them.

Bah, I needed to wait till I had woken up fully to post this...hehe.

MrS

Research, research, research. And you can never let your oponnent trump you on the weaknesses of your argument. Stop reading the pros of your argument and focus on the essays critiquing your stance. Knowing your weaknesses better than your opponent can let you address them one by one and refute them. Then you can have fun with your opponent's

Two key points (1 from the Webster's definition, and one of my own) :

Discussion and Objectivity.

By definition, a discussion is an ongoing (sometimes formal) conversation about some subject matter. The only thing repetitive arguing accomplishes is proof of immaturity. Furthermore, by trying to maintain an objective viewpoint of the subject matter, a person should be able to take their personal feelings on the subject matter out of the argument altogether. Being objective would probably eliminate 90+% of the flaming that goes on in some of our "debates".
When I recently had jury duty, our deliberations were very civil, everyone was willing to listening to what the other juror's thought. We had a 45 minute discussion, came up with a unanimous decision, and all went home satisfied. Then again, being a jury member generally puts a person in a pretty objective position since they're supposed to know nothing about the case matter until it's presented to them at the trial. Of course there's an occasional flamer, if you will, who simply lacks the maturity to listen to the other side to see the argument from a different perspective.

I guess civility is key too, but a good discussion should, by definition, be civil.

That's my 2 cents.

Oh yeah, and like Occrider said, solid knowledge of the subject matter is pretty important unless you're into 1-sided discussions.

quote:

Originally posted by occrider Research, research, research. And you can never let your oponnent trump you on the weaknesses of your argument. Stop reading the pros of your argument and focus on the essays critiquing your stance. Knowing your weaknesses better than your opponent can let you address them one by one and refute them. Then you can have fun with your opponent's

You, my good sir, are an evil man. A very, very, very evil man.

I like the way you think

And as Shakka said, Objectivity is a key. If you let your personal feelings get out of control you can end up making yourself look like a total idiot. And proving yourself a total idiot in a moment of weakness lets the evil bastards (occrider) know it is open season.

MrS

yummy

GOOD POST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i love seeing people defining things. The basis of all things is breaking it down to its objective parts and analyzing them.

that sounds kinda weird but it makes sense

I like the scientific approach to everything. No room for personal opinion. A science proof can be from anyone from anywhere and yield the same results all the time. That is what I call something you can rely on.

newspapers are something you can not rely on, or believe for anything more then a statement about something that happened. Which I find nowadays is hard to get even!

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