Metadebate: Is tact necessary, or helpful, in a debate?

Great Debates
21

There’s certainly no need to be unflinchingly polite in the face of what one perceives as dogged determinism to hold an opinion in the face of what seems to be perfect logic. But it isn’t great for all people. When I am faced with such a person, it becomes even more important for me to prove them wrong. Of course, what then happens is I find out I was wrong, or I find myself as convinced as ever, in which case the hostility isn’t helping, but probably isn’t hurting, either.

An adult should be able to handle being talked down to whether they think they are right or not. No?

22

I wonder which Great Debates you have been writing in. I absolutely agree with your concept of what GD should be, but what I see happening is a three-level split. The primary argument consists of people with reasonably well-founded arguments killing them by taking cheap shots at each other and being childish. I read these for a couple pages but just get tired of them and tune them out. Every eighth post or so is some complete idiot with no thought behind their opinion making an ass of themselves. These I (and it seems most others) completely ignore. They aren’t even worth the time to read let alone reply to. Under all this is a current of reasonable debate that tends to stay between a few posters only. There is some interaction between them and the first level, but they generally keep to themselves.

Just my observations, not that they have any particular priority over yours, whatever yours may be, unless of course they correspond with mine… I guess you can overdo tact too.

23

I think your definitions are a bit confused.

I always set out to “win” the debate (i.e. to convince one or more opponents of my position). To do this, one can not resort to such tactics as obfuscation, nitpicking, ignoring the opponent’s points, or going off on tangents. A skilled opponent will immediately pick up on such tactics and expose them.

Similarly, one can not dilute a good argument with personal attacks or inappropriate language. A good argument stands on its own merit, and stands stronger without such superfluous nonsense. If you feel you can not win a debate tactfully and respectfully, perhaps your position is not as strong as you initially thought, and you may wish to consider whether the topic is worth debating.

  1. State your position.
  2. State the reasons for your position.
  3. Support the reasons above with evidence.
  4. When you have weak points, immediately acknowledge their weakness (if you do it - your opponent has nowhere to go with it).
  5. When your opponent makes a rebuttal, you must address each and every counterpoint made, according to the practice above.

The net result of this may be a win, or a loss, or a stalemate. Either way, debating topics in a thorough manner ensures that the best available information is exposed, and at the very least, you will probably come to a better understanding of the issue - and isn’t that the whole point?

-FK

24

Why worry about winning the debate with style when you can win the debate with substance.

If you cant handle the ugly truth, dont enter an SD debate.

25

As someone once pointed out, flames belong in the Pit, not in Great Debates. The reason behind this is instructive – in Great Debates we are supposed to be attacking the weak points in others’ opinions, not those who make them. “Love the fallacious reasoner; hate the fallacy,” if you will. :wink:

If I am going to make anything but an OP with any degree of effect, it is incumbent on me to pay attention to what my opponent (or co-belligerent, if I’m commenting with approval on another’s post) has to say – which for me means getting a handle on where he is coming from. Arguing with a Bibliocentric Christian, I must argue from the Bible, because that’s where he puts his focus and his trust. Discussing constitutional law with Dewey, I must pay close attention to the Constitutional text and previous jurisprudence, because his style of Constitution-reading focuses on text, intent, and precedent (to what degree each is significant, I’ll leave for him to say). If I’m attempting to do metaphysics in a thread for that purpose, it’s incumbent on me to focus on what metaphysic the person I’m discussing espouses (at least as far as I can find out from what he said – and I may need to ask questions to elicit more information – what he means by “real” may not be anything I’d mean by the word!).

In addition, Great Debates is in essence a battle for the hearts and minds of the membership who read it – one must keep that in a corner of one’s mind as one writes one’s post – trying to make what you say so pellucid, so winsome, so clearly right that everyone will hopefully be willing to buy into it. Cervaise addressed this beautifully above, but I think it bears additional emphasis.

With reference to the crazy question about my supposed “goodness” and whether Christianity had anything to do with it, I am who I am because I’m a graduate summa cum laude of the School of Hard Knocks, and the walls I built to keep from being hurt were loved down by a bunch of people, some of them members here, and one in particular, by either the weirdest set of coincidences you can imagine or the Providence of a loving God, gave me the strength to be honest about who and what I am. My motivations in behaving as I do are an attempt to carry out, to the best of my poor ability, the commands of Jesus on how to behave towards one’s fellow – which are effectively humanistic. However, to say that they’re not Christian is like criticizing Hamlet as “nothing but a bunch of famous quotations strung together” in the famous old joke – they’re the tenets of modern humanism precisely because Jesus (and others, I’m quick to admit – see Gobear on the Tao) taught them as the way to live more fully and richly.

If I expect to convince you, or anyone else, of what I am trying to say, I must both speak clearly and frankly, and with respect for your dignity as another person. If I have information not available to you, I must provide it. If I see you laboring under a misconception, I must correct it (recent example: “Christianity thinks sex is sinful”) – but hopefully in a way that is sufficiently light and flip enough that you will not take offense. If I must rehearse the ABCs of something to you to stress a point you’re missing, I’ll apologize beforehand – I did this with Dewey recently to suggest that judicial interpretation of law is part and parcel of a Constitutional democracy like ours, and made the point that I was doing junior high school civics in order to stress the idea that the judicial function was an integral part of the original plan, not “undemocratic” because judges are appointed rather than elected.

Finally, for me and some others here, there is the final necessity of maintaining a courteous manner to fellow posters – with asperity appropriate as a sort of “tough love” in rare circumstances – because we’re under orders from the one we’ve taken as Lord to do so to all men, including Great Debaters.