I’ve been thinking about the value of negotiating, which is fundamentally arguing effectively and influencing people. I’ll be the first to admit I’m no great debater or arguer, but having been exposed to such for so long its easy to notice how far I am beyond the vast majority of drones around me. I find it exciting to argue and I’d like to participate with like minded people. Absent the resources to join a local debate class, I naturally turned to the internet. Some ideas came to mind that I might as well put out on front street, you guys can take it or leave it.
Is anyone interested in participating in threads which are debates/role plays geared toward helping each other improve our thinking strategies? Anyone is welcome to contribute ideas. These would be public and on record for quite some time, naturally. Anyone can be judges or whatever type of positions we end up with, but it has to be structured with limits established before each “session” if you will. We will take positions we are comfortable with, and positions we are uncomfortable with, not for the sake of being right which is so often what this forum is about, but for the sake of having fun with peers, learning to argue a point effectively. We could say you have to use X amount of sources per post, or not. You have to point out X amount of logical fallacies, or not. X amount of types of arguments/reasoning by name (inductive, et al), or not. You have to respond in context or you’re penalized, or not.
The topics could be related to political philosophy, or at least to something we can relate to, or not. The idea is to take a break and basically play a game with peers. We will do what we love, but in a way where we don’t have to take our positions so seriously and where the goal is to improve, to teach our brain to considers different perspectives and to maintain lines of reasoning and to identify fallacies and hopefully to become more effective negotiators.
Playing the devil’s advocate is actually a good way to make someone rethink their own stance on an issue (if you pull it off correctly.) I had a global affairs class in high school where we had to do debates every other week, and ironically enough every topic I received was one I did not agree with (something like arguing in favor of going to war, etc.) Even then I still managed to “win” the debates and argue my topic effectively (I don’t think it’s hard to compete with a bunch of teenagers in a public school who probably never think out the box.)
A place to test your arguments and play some devil’s advocate. Come to sharpen your intellectual sword.
Concisely worded. I like where this is going.
I would start with something like “red hair is good, black hair is evil”. But if this deserves attention then let’s let the thread go for a day or so and see what sort of structure we can come up with.
As I mentioned, its my intention learn to debate, so I don’t claim to be great by any measure. To that point, maybe we should stress using and identifying types of fallacies and reasoning by name. For example, supposition, ampliative, defeasable, indefeasable, inductive, deductive, abductive, probablistic, statistical, and so forth, just to name random types of arguments from wikipedia. Anyone knows you can find lists of fallacies anywhere.
My input would be to treat it like a game. You get credit/points/whatever for meeting certain goals for example “use 2 inductive arguments, one defeasable, one indefeasable” or “argue a deductive argument from 2 fallacies, A and B”, literally any scenario is possible. And then, if for example the rule may be to argue logically, then you would be penalized if your opponent can identify fallacies.
Stuff like that.
EDIT: Maybe there are no penalties, to give judges less power. Suppose you only get points for meeting goals and calling out fallacies. This would also act to reduce fallacies, as nobody wants to hand points to the opponent.
Whoa…point system and possible penalties? Sounds like fun in theory, but I’d be afraid it might be too complicated to structure something like that.
We might just do it on the fly, and have the creator of the thread/ starter of the debate set up the “rules” to gear the discussion toward what he’s looking to practice dealing with. For example, if you have a problem spotting fallacies when they come in discussions on taxation, when you start your thread you might say “try to use informal fallacies as much as you can. Lemme see if I can spot em. I get a point for each one I get, you get a point for everyone I miss.”
That’s cool that people are interested. I couldn’t be the only one. Awesome.
Clayton that’s the spirit. Yes.
John James, I’m enitely for a sort of freestyle, impromptu, improv argument with spectators, and obviously anyone is welcome to try it. To me that seems very much like a regular thread though, just whatever arguments come out and winner takes all.
The idea of giving it a structure is what makes it like a game—and to some extent a regular forum is like a game with its post count and points system.
I’ll be willing to go with whatever to get something started, but my input is that some sort of basic structure, say, X judges and X goals, is mainly what differentiates the idea from any other thread. I’m really into arguing things like shoes are invisible or completely useless things like that so there’s no seriousness whatsoever except to the point of practicing using and identifying arguments and fallacies.
I don’t even know if we need judges. Do debates have judges?
Ha! I’ve seen that before. But, with regards to the threads purpose, how does that disprove the ancient aliens theory? It just proves that man could do it…
In the spirit of this thread, it does not mean that man can disprove the ancient aliens theory - it just proves he can provide an alternate explanation! Now, let’s see you off some proof in favor of the ancient aliens theory!
Non sequitur! It does not follow from the two premises that Ancient Aliens necessarily created Stonehenge.
Regarding:
A deductive argument is either valid or invalid. An inductive argument can be referred to as a strong or weak argument, but inductive arguments don’t prove anything logically.
Maybe this is a good place for this, I have been thinking about the supremacy of logic over all other arguments. As I see it, there are actually five types of arguments: logic, referring to a causal relationship between events; emotional, “this will make you feel these good emotions”; empirical, “experience has taught us that such and such is the case”; evidentiary arguments, meaning scientific experiments and forensic analysis; and appeals to authority. Notice that every argument implicitly refers to a cause/effect relationship, except for the appeal to authority, whose authority must be established by some argument. so I would really like to know what great philosopher has already worked all of this out, so I can read it.
Yes, this would be a valid argument. For anyone who wants more info, it’s a categorical syllogism.
It’s better, but still does not prove ancient aliens did it. You would need different premises, as what you have now still doesn’t necessarily prove that ancient aliens did create it. There would still be other possibilities such as God, neanderthals, etc. So, in order to logically prove that ancient aliens did it, you would have to add a premise that would demonstrate that it was necessarily done by ancient aliens.
Also, I think this may have been an accident on your part, but your third premise is false:
We already established earlier that it is possible that ancient man could have done it. Perhaps you meant to say that “there is no evidence that ancient man did do it.”
Aristotle comes to mind. He contributed to a theory of persuasion, which contained the idea that there are three modes by which a speaker may persuade an audience - ethos, pathos, and logos. (Paraphrasing loosely) Aristotle’s idea was that we can be persuaded, First of all, by a speaker’s personal attributes, including such things as his or her background, reputation, accomplishments, expertise etc. Aristotle referred to this mode of persuasion as ethos. 2nd, a speaker can persuade us by connecting with us on a personal level, and by arousing and appealing to our emotions by a skillful use of rhetoric. This mode of persuasion Aristotle termed pathos. And third, the speaker may persuade us by using information and arguments—what he called logos.
