Rather than approach debate primarily as a form of interscholastic competition, this unique book identifies it as an activity that occurs in many settings: scientific conferences, newspaper op-ed pages, classrooms, courts of law, and everyday domestic life. Debate is discussed as an integral part of academic inquiry in all disciplines. As in all fields of study, various competing views are advanced and supported; Debate and Critical Analysis is designed to better prepare the student to assess and engage them. This text posits four characteristics of true debate -- argument development, clash, extension, and perspective -- which form the basic structure of the book. Each concept or aspect of argument covered is illustrated by an example drawn from contemporary or historical sources, allowing the reader to actually see the techniques and strategies at work. All popular forms of competitive debate, including "policy, " "Lincoln-Douglas, " "value-oriented, " and "parliamentary, " are discussed in detail -- as embedded in the actual topical controversies with which they are concerned. In this way, the student can learn the structures, reasoning processes, and strategies that may be employed, as well as the practical affairs of debating, from brief-writing to the flowsheet.
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Human beings are opinionated creatures. We hold strong beliefs about such diverse matters as who should be elected President of the United States, what is the best restaurant in town, or whether women should have access to abortion on demand. Whatever our opinions may be on any given matter and no matter how strongly we may hold them, we should recognize that these opinions are, in fact, argumentative claims, subject to dispute.
Debate is the process by which opinions are advanced, supported, disputed, and defended. Debates are not always formal or even adjudicated. We engage in debate when we argue with friends about the meaning or merit of a movie we have seen, or with an employer about some matter of company policy. Debates need not be oral exchanges. Brilliant debates have been conducted through the exchange of letters and through the publication of scientific papers, for example, in which different scientists may refute the experimental findings of others or challenge theoretical claims advanced in prior research.
These varied exchanges share certain characteristics that identify them as debates. In debate, an opinion must be clearly stated, supported by reasoning and evidence, and defended against conflicting views. “If argumentation is the art of convincing others of the truth or falsity of a disputed matter,” wrote Raymond Alden in 1900, “debate may be said to be the art of doing this under conditions such that both sides of the case can be heard and that the advocates of each side can reply directly to those of the other” (Alden, 1900, p. 1). Debate is thus a matter not only of declamation, in which conflicting opinions are aired, but of resolution, in which these conflicting opinions are compared and tested against each other in the process of decision making.
The process of debate raises certain fundamental questions about our opinions: How did we arrive at them? Why do we hold them? What alternative opinions exist and how do they compare with our own? The ability to pose and answer these questions has long been considered the hallmark of a truly educated person. In his essay On Liberty, political philosopher John Stuart Mill (1859/1947) identified the ability and willingness to subject opinions to debate as a prerequisite for the attainment of wisdom and, ultimately, of liberty itself.
In the case of any person whose judgment is really deserving of confidence, how has it become so? Because he has kept his mind open to criticism of his opinions and conduct. Because it has been his practice to listen to all that could be said against him; to profit by as much of it as was just, and expound to himself, and upon occasion to others, the fallacy of what was fallacious. Because he has felt, that the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner. (p. 20)
Mill distinguished between “received opinion,” uncritically accepted by an audience from some figure of authority, and an opinion formed through controversy and critical deliberation. It is only through the latter process, Mill argued, that the individual should be able to hold and express an opinion with genuine conviction. An untested opinion, he insisted, even if it happens to be true, “is but one superstition the more accidentally clinging to the words that enunciate a truth” (p. 35).
There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right. (p. 19)
For Mill, debate is a process by which firm convictions on important issues are formed. These convictions may not be the opinions that one took into the dispute, for these may be proven partly or completely wrong through the process of debate. Yet one may expect to emerge from the process of debate with a far more detailed and accurate understanding of the issues involved and with far greater confidence in the conclusions one has drawn from the dispute. “The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others,” Mill insisted, “so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just reliance on it” (p. 20).
Mill was himself a person of strong opinions tested through disputation. He debated many of the great issues of his day and some of the timeless issues of the human condition, such as the responsibilities of representative government, the nature of human freedom, and the dynamics of power and oppression in the subjugation of women. But Mill did not view the proper scope of debate as limited to political or legal questions or its proper forum as limited to the formal deliberations of organized bodies. He instead conceived of debate as a “habit of mind” that should be cultivated by individuals for application to all affairs, whether personal, religious, political, scientific, or those drawn from what he termed “the business of life.” “On every subject on which difference of opinion is possible,” Mill insisted, “the truth depends on a balance to be struck between two sets of conflicting reasons” (p. 36). We should withhold our confident endorsement of opinions until they have withstood the test of reasoned disputation. We should, he advised, issue “a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded” (p. 21) and not be satisfied until that invitation has been accepted.
Willingness to subject one’s opinions to disputation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the achievement of true debate. For an opinion to be truly tested, it must first be given the strongest possible expression. The best available arguments for the opinion must be advanced, and supported by the most powerful evidence and reasoning that can be mustered. It is not enough to hold an opinion that turns out to be true; one must have come to that opinion for the best reasons. Furthermore, for an opinion to be truly tested, it must be confronted with the strongest possible counterarguments, also supported by the most persuasive evidence and reasoning that can be found.
The clash of varying opinions is best achieved through genuine debate, in which the conflicting positions are advocated by different parties who are committed to them. The presentation of different views by a single speaker is no substitute for real debate. Although it is possible for a single speaker to both support a given position and describe and refute contrary views, such a presentation is likely to produce a lesser challenge to the position being advocated than would an actual debate. In an ideal debate, Mill wrote, the opposing sides would be defended by knowledgeable persons who earnestly believe the positions they advocate in the dispute. Mill recognized, however, that such disputants are often not available to discuss matters of immediate importance. In order to provide the best possible disputation of ideas in this common circumstance, Mill endorsed a form of academic debate familiar to modern students: a debate in which the participants skillfully defend positions that do not necessarily represent their own personal beliefs. “So essential is this discipline to a real understanding of moral and human subjects,” he insisted, “that if opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil’s advocate can conjure up” (p. 37).
The abilities to identify the strongest positions and counterpositions on a given issue and to support and defend them in the best ways possible are precisely the skills of debate that this text aims to enhance. It is designed to familiarize students with the range of argumentative resources and strategies that are available to the skillful disputant and to describe the processes of reasoning and critical analysis through which these strategies may best be employed. This text is conceived as a practical guide to the persuasive and sound expression of one’s own opinions and to the powerful refutation of the positions one may oppose.
Most of the skills, strategies, and purposes that guide today’s debaters are ancient in origin. The importance Mill placed on the intellectual activity of debate was hardly novel. Indeed, it reflected a centuries-old understanding of debate in many cultures as a hallmark of civilization, social order, and knowledge. The remainder of this chapter will explore the development of formal debate in a variety of cultures and ages. Among the questions to be pursued are these: Why have most of the world’s cultures placed such a high value on debate?; How have conceptions of debate differed among cultures?; and, How have ancient and global traditions of debate influenced the modern practice of disputation? At the end of this chapter we return to the question raised but not fully answered by Mill’s essay On Liberty: What are the characteristics of true debate?
A BRIEF HISTORY OF DEBATE
Debate has been an important part of most cultures and ages. Indeed, in lands ranging from ancient Athens to India and modern America to Eastern Europe and Africa, debate has been central to the culture’s social operation, intellectual discourse, political life, and self-image.
Although it has been argued that debate is only possible in a democracy and that it is the distinctive flower of Western civilization, neither claim holds up under scrutiny. Democratic societies, it is true, may place a particular premium on public debate as the basic means by which citizens participate in the formulation of policy. But debate has played important roles in even the most feudal, doctrinaire, and totalitarian societies, if only among the privileged elites. Comparatively closed societies may place restrictions on who may debate, the topics that may be debated, and what may be said about the topics, but debate nevertheless persists even in such societies.
In a broader sense, debate may be viewed as the process of decision making in which alternative choices are expressed and compared. The decisions-to-be-made range from the highest questions of state (Should we go to war? How should we administer a system of criminal justice?) to matters of scientific inquiry (Does the sun circle the Earth? What causes AIDS?) to personal decision making and choices of the most mundane and rudimentary sorts (Where is the best hunting to be found? How should we invest our money?).
Most cultures have developed systems of organized debate. Debate may be organized in the sense that it occurs on scheduled occasions, is available to designated participants, considers particular subjects, and is conducted according to a specified format. Debates may be organized according to very different principles, as is apparent when one examines the history of debating around the world.
Understanding what subjects have been set aside for organized debate, with what constraints, and who has been permitted to participate in them provides invaluable insight to the character of societies and their ages. It also tells us a great deal about the assumptions and practice of modern debate.
Greek and Roman Debate
Debate has long been regarded as a form of verbal warfare, a fight to the finish between combatants armed with reason and evidence. In fact, the Latin root for the terms debate and battle is the same: battuere, “to beat.”
The Iliad, perhaps the oldest surviving work of Greek literature, is a record of great battles and tragic losses, peopled with heroes who bridge the worlds of gods and mortals. It is also, however, a record of the debates on diplomacy and military strategy that led to and guided these battles. Homer contrasted the resolution of disputes by weapons and by words throughout the Iliad, attributing the greatest follies to those occasions when debate and reasoned discourse have been swept aside by primitive impulses.
Homer paired each of the most important military leaders with a great debater: Hector with Poulydamas and, to a lesser extent, Achilles with Nestor. Poulydamas was “Hector’s comrade, and born in the same night,/he was better with words, Hector with weapons” (Homer, Book 18, lines 251–252). Similarly, Achilles debates with “soft-spoken” Nestor, “the clearest orator in Pylos,/from whose tongue speech could run sweeter than honey” (Book 1, lines 247–249). At critical moments of decision making, the warriors debate the orators and hold sway. Despite their superior arguments, these skilled debaters lose the battle for the minds of their audiences when confronted with the warriors’ appeals to base instincts.
So Hector spoke; the Trojans roared. Poor fools,
For Pallas took their wits away from them,
They gave applause to Hector’s evil counsel;
Poulydamas, who’d made good sense, got none. (Book 18, lines 310–313)
Homer vindicated the “losing” debaters, proving their counsel wise and their reasoning correct. Those who fail to abide by the “good sense” of the superior arguments in the Iliad’s debates do so at their peril.
At least in the realm of intranational disputes, the Iliad emphasizes the virtue of debate in preference to impulsive decisions or actual violence. “Come, stop this squabble!”, wise Athena counsels Achilles; “Do not draw your sword./ Attack each other, if you will, with words” (Book 1, lines 210–211). The ability to resolve disputes through reasoned discourse is presented in the Iliad as the mark of a truly advanced culture.
The contrast of cultures dependent on warfare to settle disputes and those willing and able to do battle with words is clearly drawn in Homer’s description of the great shield of Achilles, the extraordinary central image of the Iliad. The shield is etched with depictions of the vast range of human activity set amidst a vision of the cosmos. At the center of the shield are images of two cities, one peaceful and joyous, the other fraught with warfare and treachery. In the city of peace and order, Homer described a scene of legal disputation:
The people thronged the forum, where arose
The strife of tongues, and two contending stood:
The one asserting that he had paid the mulct,
The price of blood for having slain a man;
The other claiming still the fine as due.
Both eager to the judges made appeal.
The crowds, by heralds scarce kept back, with shouts
And cheers applauded loudly each in turn.
On smooth and polished stones, a sacred ring,
The elders sat, and in their hands, their staves
Of office held, to hear and judge the cause;
While in the midst two golden talents lay,
The prize of him who should most justly plead. (Book 18, lines 497–508)
Despite the bitter issue that has motivated the dispute, the principals (serving as their own advocates, as was the custom of the time) were able to entrust their disagreement to an orderly process of resolution, to substitute the “strife of tongues” for the clash of swords. Thus Homer implied, according to critic Kenneth John Atchity (1978), that “even intranational strife can be beneficial, as long as it is expressed within a customary, social framework; it may even be a progressive factor, since peaceful settlement automatically becomes a precedent, an example for others to follow” (p. 185). The proper social framework for the resolution of disputes is verbal, not martial. In the Iliad, the development of social institutions capable of providing such customary recourse is a hallmark of cultural advancement. “The unstated sources of the orator’s prize,” as Atchity observed, is “the ideal, orderly society itself (pp. 185–186).
Oratory and debate were common features of early Greek literature and historical writing. As classicist George Kennedy (1980) noted, the historical treatises of Herodotus and Thucydides employ debates to enliven their discussion of various topics, such as the consideration of possible constitutions for the Persian Empire...
Table of contents
Cover
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication page
Contents
Preface
Chapter 1 The Nature and History of Debate
Chapter 2 The Structures of Advocacy and Opposition
