The article quotes studies claiming that people who grow up with conflict in their personal lives are more likely to be comfortable with differing opinions and certain forms of creative debate.
Since there's seemingly some benefit of exposure to these kinds of negative experiences, they mention advice on how to mitigate the negative aspect of conflict.
But I think it's actually great advice to teach children/students these civil, but pseudo-adversarial skills as general purpose cooperative reasoning tools completely independent of conflict-management. From the article:
• Frame it as a debate, rather than a conflict.
• Argue as if you’re right but listen as if you’re wrong.
• Make the most respectful interpretation of the other person’s perspective.
• Acknowledge where you agree with your critics and what you’ve learned from them.
These behaviors correlate very strongly with the people I personally have found most intelligent and productive in group settings.
* be upfront about how willing you are to be wrong / change your mind (I phrase this as "what would have to be true for you to accept I am right" and vice versa for my beliefs).
I really like the part about agreeing on words, and I'd riff on a bit more with two sub-patterns i've found useful
1) "I see when you say X you mean [specific definition]. Given that definition I agree with you, but I disagree with the definition"
2) "When I say X it seems it means [specific definition] to you. Rather than fight over the definition I will avoid saying X and use different terms so we can keep moving"
> be upfront about how willing you are to be wrong / change your mind (I phrase this as "what would have to be true for you to accept I am right" and vice versa for my beliefs).
This would often be a highly productive way to start the discussion, because very often the situation is that one side or the other is vehemently not willing to have their mind changed, which I'd argue is the case with most arguments you'll see on Facebook or Reddit.
One way to handle it when the two of you have different meanings for a word is to keep using the word, but add a different qualifier in front for each meaning, i.e. logical proof versus empirical proof.
>• Argue as if you’re right but listen as if you’re wrong.
On the listening side, something that often helps is what is often called active listening. This is where you say back to the person what you think they are saying, and they agree you got it right or correct it until you do. It is amazing how this can often lower the emotional level and make the disagreement more productive.
Note that being comfortable with differing opinions and being comfortable with certain forms of creative debate are two different things. A debate should be a voluntary contest between parties and is only possible if they both share and agree upon a base set of principles as the foundation for the debate. If an atheist and a theist "debate" the existence of God(s) it isn't a resolvable argument since their divergence of principles is at a fundamental level and the only thing they share are certain derived points that accidentally coincide. In this case the parties must either be comfortable with the fact that they differ in opinions or they are not. This does beg the question as to when one should be comfortable with a differing opinion. I suspect that those who have encountered real conflict having a larger comfort area for differences due to their understanding that conflict invites real costs.
In the case where legitimate debate can occur, the rules I usually try and follow/enforce are:
1. Establish the goal all parties wish to achieve (i.e., define success).
2. Establish the point at where our agreement on methods diverged.
3. All ideas should be orphans in that they have no privileges purely due to parentage.
4. Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence or ignorance.
5. Be ruthlessly honest about your own position, to include disclosing the weaknesses you know or suspect as well as disclosing the strengths of the opposing position (especially if the parties holding that position do not know it or present it themselves).
Personally I become uncomfortable when there is unanimous agreement on positions I know to be legitimately debatable, even if I hold that position. In those instances I will promptly switch sides and argue against my own position to insure it has been properly vetted.
In my experience the point that most reliably invites emotional response is failure of #3 since it's hard to move from "my idea" to "the idea." The most insidious failure is at #1 due to either misunderstanding or dishonesty since it corrupts the entire effort but can be very difficult to discover.
The best debates aren't about winning at all. They are about getting at the truth and broadening your understanding of a topic by exposing yourself to different points of view which can cast light on personal blind spots or holes in your knowledge.
If you define Truth as being "the thing that actually happened", rather than the more definite "Mathematical truth" I believe that the best you can get at is an understanding of somebodies opinion of what happened, along with the bias that leads to that opinion.
Reading your comment again, I see that you do emphasis "different points of view", so I'm guessing that are actually approaching the same understanding from different directions. I believe outside of mathematics, truth is in most cases just an option depending upon point of view.
I am not talking about the truth regarding a specific incident. I am talking things like more accurate mental models.
My oldest son sees the world extremely differently from me. When we hash things out, there is a lot of added value in hearing the other person's take on a problem space. If we both agree on the same solution having come at it from opposite directions, we can be confident it is a solid solution and not merely an expression of personal bias.
Indeed, but unless you're all operating from a common shared set of principles and a goal there is no argument about means and you're not actually debating but instead just having a pep rally reinforcing tastes.
I believe green is the best color, the opposing side believes red is the best color. There is no argument to be had here since we don't agree on a definition of "best" other than "my color."
The last time i had a conversation with an american trained in "debate", it was quickly obvious that reality and truth were the last thing on his mind, but scoring rethoric points was the first.
The rest of your points are good, but i think if you start it out with the word debate, many americans are going to mentally short-circuit to that style of conflict, instead of "respectful conversation".
From a discusion on here a while back hs and uni debation seems to have not much conection to real world parlimentray debates and would fail outside its own artificial world.
In professional politics, debate is an open charade, an excuse to get on camera and rally your supporters. High school and university debate actually care about argumentation, for example, and the electorate very much doesn’t.
I haven't found any nationality to have exclusive rights to turning civil debate into a partisan shouting match. But I agree that some people do have that tendency.
Still, such people seem even less likely to be productive if they approach the situation as open conflict — hence the advice to reframe conflict as debate, not to insert debate where it is otherwise unnecessary.
I mention it specifically because, in all the nationalities i have talked to, i.e. in my personal experience, the USA is the only one to have a high school debate club culture that's widely spread.
Decades ago, 70's & 80's, saw a progression from the more respectful, objective debate style to the linguistic attack scoring style popular today. It's too bad, because back in the "early days" it taught how to collectively arrive at a solution. Today, not really.
At a minimum, I personally know of active school/university debate societies in the United Kingdom and Australia. And while it sounds like you've had some bad experiences, my personal sense is that the majority of people with formal debate experience are actually better, on average, at staying within the bounds of civil discourse.
Having said that, there is indeed an overly aggressive subset of the population that is, as I think you're suggesting, attracted to debate for all the wrong reasons. But based on the literally hundreds I've met, I'd say as a population they are on average more civil and more likely to follow norms of "fair argument". They are much more likely to aspire to be erudite policy wonks than to be angry talk show pundits. YMMV obviously.
Notably both of these countries are english majority. I went looking for german debate clubs and found that we have some, but also that they're relatively young (the national debating org in germany was formed only in 2001), and were mainly formed based on inspiration by the english language sphere.
I'm also curious what exactly you mean with civil discourse? I don't know which style you're referring to, but i've seen people who cared primarily about discourse being "polite", even if the most horrible ideas were being presented as valid.
There are many norms of civil discourse represented in debating traditions, but there is substantial variation. Still, two that are enforced in all formal debate I know are:
1) all participants have equal access to present their views, usually uninterrupted for at least some portion of time
2) all participants have equal access to rebut their opponent's views, so neither side has an opportunity to present an uncontested idea
These are important norms to keep more powerful, obnoxious, or charismatic people from having (as much) undue advantage in the contest of ideas.
I see these formal characteristics as orthogonal to whether someone has horrible views. Without guarantees of this kind you may find yourself on the wrong side of a power imbalance, and then you have no right to challenge said ideas in a fair contest.
‘Debate’ does seem to have strong connotations of a rhetorical fight. ‘Discourse’ has been the preferred word among philosphers and other circles that discuss this sort of thing.
"Debate" has a long tradition of meaning a formalized presentation of opposing views, each represented by a person or team, for the purpose of evaluating relative merits.
"Discourse" is a much broader term and does not imply formal structure, opposition, merit evaluation, or that advocacy of particular ideas is associated with particular speakers.
IMO "Debate" is absolutely the right term for what the advice suggests, which is to reframe a conflict situation into a situation where there are norms of fair argument and expectations of equal access to present opposing views, with the hope of evaluating the merits of said views.
You're right that historically debate was more noble. But meanings of words change.
The problem with debate as it exists today in the english sphere is that it refers to a sport where teams try to argue for views they don't even hold regardless of what they themselves even think about it. Due to the idea that regardless of the actual merits of an idea debated, either team needs to have an equal chance to "win", the whole "evaluating merits" part has in more recent times been deemphasized.
Could you elaborate on why you think the meaning of the word has changed?
If I'm understanding you correctly, it sounds to me like you think the current use of the word in the USA is restricted to one narrow activity of debating societies (formal tournaments where neither side is, a priori, invested in a particular idea and in fact doesn't even know which side of the debate they'll have to represent). This is just one of many things debating societies do, and yes it does have a sport element as you and others suggest.
But, based on my experience (and I have quite a lot with debating societies in both the USA and the UK) I don't think this one activity has come to dominate what "debate" means in the USA. I would be surprised if the average citizen thought in this way.
So I wonder what makes you think this activity has come to be the meaning of debate in the USA, as opposed to just one thing debating societies do?
P.S. purely as an aside I think there may be misunderstanding about the value of people advocating "views they may not even hold". This is only characteristic of tournaments, and is a feature not a bug. Since you don't know until quite late which side you will represent, it forces you to be prepared to do an equally good job representing either side. This is, in my opinion, an excellent mental exercise. At the moment the debate happens, you are arguing something one-sided you may not believe — but in the preparation for the debate you are carefully evaluating the best arguments for both sides.
You're certainly right about the long tradition behind 'debate', and yet, it does still carry the connotations I mentioned earlier, to the extent that one would likely have to say "let's a have a fair and honest debate about X" in order to temper some of the unproductive tendencies that tend to arise in a debate.
for discussion/debate? Unfortunately the word has largely Hegelian and/or Marxist connotations nowadays doesn't it?
Anyway, with (Plato's) Socrates, dialectic doesn't seem to have been two people candidly searching for the truth either - usually it was Socrates expertly pretending to do that, while actually showing some expert just how much he didn't know about his chosen subject.
For me, dialectic and derived words mean Hegelian dialectic. That's 99.99% where I've heard the words used.
Good points though the term debate has become a dirty word to me. I frame it as preferring "dialogue" over "debate" where dialogue refers the kind of exchange you laid out and debate is more of a conflict or competition where the aim is to win rather than advance truth. That's why it's so important to be transparent about your goals and values in an exchange. It's frustrating to let your guard down for a dialogue and find out via blindside that the asshole on the other side of the table only knows how to debate.
The problem is that a "debate" where winning is the aim and truth is not are pretty common.
Certain exposure to them, understanding their basic mechanics, and the skill of telling them from a truth-seeking "dialog", would be valuable for kids.
It's important for the same reason why understanding cognitive biases is important.
If you're just talking about how one word or another primes people's behavior I have no quibble; in fact I may even support such a substitution in some cases.
But I think you are too harsh on the idea of winning as inherently bad. If you are a saint and your opponent is a nazi, you fundamentally disagree on what the truth is. The way you advance truth is by winning (i.e. persuading an audience, or perhaps even your opponent, that your views are correct).
I agree that in general it's best to avoid zero-sum framing. But some ideas are simply incompatible with other ideas, and in those cases the pursuit of truth is inextricably tied to winning a contest.
In my experience, there isn't a whole lot of "winning" in scenarios of fundamental disagreement. Sides just dig in and entrench. Not much to be done there I think. My debate vs dialogue distinction is more about the priming of behavior, as you call it, in the more common scenarios that are well short of fundamental disagreement -- scenarios at risk of turning in to a contest instead of maintaining the spirit of a mutual truth expedition.
"Argue as if you're right but listen as if you're wrong."
How about arguing and listening as if you know exactly as much as you do and nothing more? It's not hard to imagine a case in which both arguing "as if you're right" and listening "as if you're wrong" would be inappropriate or down right foolish.
Since there's seemingly some benefit of exposure to these kinds of negative experiences, they mention advice on how to mitigate the negative aspect of conflict.
But I think it's actually great advice to teach children/students these civil, but pseudo-adversarial skills as general purpose cooperative reasoning tools completely independent of conflict-management. From the article:
• Frame it as a debate, rather than a conflict.
• Argue as if you’re right but listen as if you’re wrong.
• Make the most respectful interpretation of the other person’s perspective.
• Acknowledge where you agree with your critics and what you’ve learned from them.
These behaviors correlate very strongly with the people I personally have found most intelligent and productive in group settings.