Debate for Learning

Debates in real life are often less than logically tidy. Rather than exchanging established facts, they resemble a game of sharing plausible claims and passing the burden of proof back and forth (Argumentation schemes for presumptive reasoning). Most debates also involve more than one issue, so there is more than one ball in the air. In that sense, debate is a game, a conversation, and a juggling act.

The strategies and attitudes we adopt depend on the purpose of this game/conversation/juggling act. Personally, I have found it most useful to make learning the goal, although doing so is difficult. In learning mode, when I pass the burden of proof to the other person, I hope they will succeed, provisionally, in meeting it.

Through that process, I come to understand their claim better, whether it is right or wrong. I also find myself needing to come up with sharper critical questions than before. Good questions help bring their claim into clearer view and help me understand what they are saying. Whether it is right or wrong.

The thing to guard against most in this game is its ending too soon: before I have understood the other person’s claim sufficiently or made my own sufficiently clear—in other words, before we have passed the ball back and forth enough.