Debates

A good debate is one in which a proposition is supported or opposed by "evidence" and external references and not merely by personal opinion. Problems can arise (a) with the status of such evidence and (b) the assumptions of shared meanings of key words. In this forum (a) can manifest as rejection of the "divine" status of religious texts and (b) over words like "knowledge" and "truth".

Good explanation from Fresco. To add, in public debates one must also take care (obviously) not to make derogatory comments about other proponents appearance, way of speaking, or give an aggressive response rising to something the other team has stated (if you were offended).

In formal debates it is also very important that you don't look directly at the opposing team as it's not them you are convincing or arguing against, it is their points and you are presenting them to the people present and to an adjudicator.

I must also restate the importance of defining your terms and sticking to the definition you make. It is SOOOOOO important as often the definition must be stipulated and both parties have to agree on the definition before you can debate anything.

You may find you end up with a sub-debate on defining your terms.

THanks for your information you two. Cause I do wish to represent my cases in what everyone would like to see here a more logical manner. I am just not that great at debating, better at arguing. (lol). Anything else that you could think of like how to go about setting up the structure of a debate.

What I mean, is there like a good basic outline that you could follow.

Heading?
Case?
Definitions?

Any ideas on this would be greatly appreaiated also.
Thanks again you two for responding.

P.S. My post was moved from the spirituality and religion area to this one. It is there most of my posts are, and I wish to improve my debating skills.

Thanks again.

Scott,

When I taught young students debating skills I had them write down arguments both for and against a proposition and then pick the student at random to argue for a particular side of the case. The purpose of this is to instil awareness of specific sub-arguments and their counter arguments.

To take a sample proposition...."Drugs should be legalized"
we might examine this under various headings such as such as social/political/financial/moral etc. "Social" arguments for the proposition might include attacking drug related crime and those against might argue that increased usage would bring increased social strife of a non-criminal nature...etc. "Social" aspects might merge with "moral" aspects when we discuss "liberty of the individual" as pro versus "effects on others" as con ....etc. Note that the word "drugs" must be qualified if evidence from "prohibition days" is going to be cited.

As already mentioned , the problem with some propositions is that we cannot assume agreement or even delimit the meaning of key words. In the above, "drugs" is relatively simple to deal with compared to say "reality". As stated by Mintcake above, this may become a sub-debate far more intricate than one a young student might be expected to handle.

(LATER EDIT This problem of definition is a key feature of Wittgenstein's position on "philosophical debate" in general in which he said much nonsense was talked when "language went on holiday")

fresco wrote-



No wonder they shifted it from S and R then.

There are a number of useful resources on the internet concerning the rudiments of debate and argument...

Logical Fallacies and the Art of Debate is intended to be a sort of practical guide to debating; it outlines the different kinds of fallacies that occur in debating and tells you how to avoid them and, in some instances, how to use them.

The Fallacy Files is more of a compendium and dictionary of common fallacies.


These particular sites have more to do with what makes a bad debate rather than a good one, but good debating is largely dependant on avoiding the kinds of problems presented here.

Thank you all for your sound info.
Shapeless I will check out those links when I have the time.

Thanks again everyone who posted.

"Debate", as such, is actually a rather primitive form of exploring a topic.

If one party has evidence against them, will they tell the other? Of course not.

I take this mainly from "How to have a Beautiful Mind" by Edward de Bono.

I have very littlel interest in debates, mainly because the loser may be right and the winner wrong. I like philosophical forums for the opportunity they afford people to express their understandings and for others to expose themselves to those understandings. Victory is no prize; learning is.

JLN,

Yet there is some aspect of debate which involve "learning". To some extent the debate is "internal" between different aspects of "self" . It the realization of internal inconsistencies and hopefully their transcendence which we might call "learning" perhaps.

If they are intellectually responsible, they will, and I've encountered enough such people to give me a little more optimism than that about the idea of debating.

Yes, Fresco. When others disagree with my opinions, they put those opinions to the test requiring that I either refine or reject them. It's the refinement that is the prize in this case. I am very unlikely to give up opinions when they are rejected from the perspective of a different paradigm.

a good debate should have an interesting thought-provoking question (hypothesis?) eg what is more important nature or nurture?

also the question should be one which has a definite yes or no/ for or against - i mean where people cannot say that both parties (for and against) are right to an extent and that something in the middle is the best answer- i HATE those kind of debates

debates should ALWAYS start with defining terms and analysing the statement/question- i have witnessed many debates where the two opposing teams are arguing completely different debates

i will think of more things later

If a debate is founded on an arbitrary polarization of some issue, then there's no reason why a debater shouldn't point this out.

but if the debate is polarized unnecessarily then what is the point of arguing it?

Bingo. Nothing is more ridiculous than watching a debate over an issue that doesn't divide neatly into the categories that the debaters think it does.