The Apparent Irresolvability of Debates

Leonard,

If by debate you mean one of those school debates, which are more like a game or an event with a referee of sorts giving out points and than declaring someone a winner. Then yes, it is resolved when the time is up.

But in real life where people live in different worlds/paradigm altogether, and consider their own personal opinions to be facts, if not the righteous truth, than it is more like a head butting contest. To resolve these debates, we would need to homogenize.

But of course, you are right in this, there are always exceptions.

Subjectivity9

No. Not that I know of. And, of course, I see no good reason to think that debates are irresoluble, anyway. Skepticism is the view that knowledge is impossible. To repeat my example, the question of whether there was a Holocaust is not irresoluble. We know there was a Holocaust. The fact that some people happen not to agree that there was one just reflects on those people. It does not mean we do not know there was a Holocaust. What, I wonder, would lead anyone to think that because an argument doesn't persuade people, that the failure to persuade means the argument is defective. It may very well mean that the people who reject the argument are defective.

Oh my! Awesome quote there. You are so quoted!

There is no quotation here.

It means that I like(d) what you wrote and quoted you at the link location. It was definitely the best thing I read today and I've read some three hundred and fifty pages. Busy day.

Skepticism is the view that knowledge is impossible.

To repeat my example, the question of whether there was a Holocaust is not irresoluble. We know there was a Holocaust.

What, I wonder, would lead anyone to think that because an argument doesn't persuade people, that the failure to persuade means the argument is defective. It may very well mean that the people who reject the argument are defective.

No it's not, its simply the admission of unknowing. If one has admitted they don't know, it doesn't make sense to claim knowledge is impossible, it only makes sense for a Skeptic to suspend judgment on that matter.



The problem is you are already begging the question with your argument. Assuming what you are trying to prove.

Philosophical skepticism is often define as the view that knowledge is impossible. But this is, perhaps, just a verbal issue.


But it is epistemic inefficient. As the evidence you provide for an argument can always be put under dispute. So if you take a closer look at Lammenranta's paper, he said a third person in this debate would be forced to suspend judgment if they didn't have assumptions of their own and a purely logical creature. Like the common saying, a logical donkey between two identical stacks of hay would starve to death because it doesn't have a good logical reason to choose either.

I don't believe its false. I am not sure if you do or do not know. The problem is its hard to establish the premises themselves as true, whether they are true or not. It could be possible to know it is true. But how would you convey that to me as a third person, who is not sure what is true or not?

I do not think one should engage in a debate thinking there will be a "resolution".
The best one can expect is to learn something new, to consider the issue from another viewpoint or to learn to better clarify and express ones own views.
The value is not in resolving the issue or declaring a winner but in the process of the exchange of views.
Of course wheter Quinto is the capital of Ecuador is not worth a debate: by defintion it is. Charles Pierces quote on the other hand is well worth a debate.

Ahh but I am being the third person who apparently has no knowledge on things (so that should answer your final questions). So for me to accept your link to wikipedia I would have to assume it is correct in the first place over lets say someone's word. But hence you have not provided me a good reason to assume it is correct in the first place. So how would you resolve that?

It is perfectly fine to assume it is the capitol and say it is. But that does not really provide a solution to a third person in a debate does it?

Ken,

I question if there is such a thing as an authority figure within the 'actual practice' of philosophy, someone who can step forward and claim to know which side is right or owns the truth. They can only say who made the best argument in their opinion, (or who either through persuasion or amassed facts did the best job of convincing others of their case.

There are, of course, certain professors with a great deal of knowledge, and are even recognized authorities on "Who said what, and when? But that is a different thing entirely, isn't it? That knowledge, in itself, would not be a living, and breathing debate.

However, on certain philosophical issues, even these professors of great learning would have to agree that, there are particular (Complex) issues that can be debated for centuries and nevertheless remain unresolved. I daresay this is not necessarily because of some defect in the debate, or the debaters.

S9

No. There is no such authority figure. But, so what? Intelligent people, with a grasp of logic, can examine arguments, and in most cases determine whether a particular argument is sound or not. There are objective criteria for doing so, and they are easily learned if someone want to learn them. And they are all over the Internet.

Now we are getting to the meat of the matter. So what are the objective criteria, and how do they circumvent or answer to Lammenranta's interpretation?

So your criteria is the amount of evidence that determines the better argument, or is it the quality of evidence? I know in the field of science evidence at first ends up often left under interpretation, and often can be argued either way. So if evidence is the criteria for who wins debates, there must be criteria for what makes good evidence rather than the word of the debater. What would that criteria be for the evidence itself?