Got a great question along with a great article from a friend last month, now I’m finally getting to it.

The simple response is, yes of course! But the more complex response is to examine how we should determine what debates are not worth having, and the criteria for this choice should be based not on debate’s limitations, but debate’s strengths.

Deborah Tannen’s best-selling book The Argument Culture might be somewhat dated now (it came out in 1999 I think) but it holds up thanks to people’s addiction to cable tv news programs, even if they are on YouTube.

The argument of the book is simply this: Bad models of debate are harmful to our ability to construct meaningful and useful social policy. Somewhat like the idea that taking too much or too little of a helpful medicine will kill you, debate, poorly dosed out will indeed destroy our ability to reason collectively, think through complex issues (which often requires more than one human mind I’m afraid), and make sure we have the appropriate perspective on whatever it is we are trying to sort through, evaluate, judge, enact, or any number of other verbs.

Tannen’s criteria is what we hope to avoid here. We don’t want to prop up reasons to not have debate based on debate’s weaknesses. We want to be able to say that debate’s strengths are why we should not engage it on every issue that seems like it would fit in the debate slot. Very much like kitchen equipment designed for certain purposes, using debate to make something that it’s not meant to make will render something inedible. This simple realization is lost on debate-critics who think that debate ruins what it touches no matter what you try to make with it.

In the article from Psyche Malcolm Keating provides an excellent explanation of how Naya philosophy in the 10th century did exactly what I’m looking for: Established a conception of choosing to debate because of what debate can provide, not in spite of debate’s limitations, faults, or nature. Naya philosophy prescribes some very good reasons to debate because of what debate provides or forces upon us when we agree to do it.

One of these is being open to changing your mind. Debate absolutely requires this, and the Naya philosophers accept this too. This isn’t simplistic zero-sum gaming, but the idea that what is said in the debate should influence how you articulate your views and hold your views from that moment forward. Douglas Ehninger in my field of rhetoric wrote beautifully about this in his essay “Argument as Method” which was published in 1970 (this definitely still holds up).

In that essay Ehninger isn’t discussing debate, per se, but he sets up exactly what you’d want in a debate to make it work. His model of the “corrector” versus the teacher or the authority figure is essential to the model. He argues that debating someone else must be predicated on the idea that you are as susceptible to quality reasons and believable evidence as the person you are engaging. In short, the rules apply to everyone. If something is convincing either way, it should be accepted by both. Please note how Plato’s Socrates seems to lampoon this model in most of the dialogues. We never see him alter his point of view although he does pretend to be surprised quite well like you would in front of a jury or something.

The point is that this model of debating excludes all topics that one couldn’t imagine holding up to that standard of conviction. There might be some issues we feel so strongly about that we would be unwilling to change our mind about them even given a lot of great evidence. In cases like this, we can soften that feeling by engaging in “switch-side” debating (as it’s called in the United States) where you are assigned a side of a topic and are supposed to craft arguments for something you might not believe or (even worse) don’t care about that much. This practice helps us make a stronger connection to the ideals of Ehninger-style argument as well as inform us about the various things going on in a number of controversies worldwide.

Keating does fall into the philosophical norm of viewing debate through a Platonic lens as a given, not a choice. Rhetoric, sophistry, and debate are all dismissed as packing materials for philosophy’s fine and delicate pieces because of these deeply held Platonic ideologies; there are very few who would consider the Sophists philosophers of any kind, even educational philosophers, because of this deeply held bias. Here we see it in characterizations of “unreflective” debate being ironically this very clever attempt to deceive, trick someone, or score points (all of which involve a lot of planning and strategy, so I never really get how or why these assumptions are made about it). To decieve someone you really have to get to know them, or get them to place a lot of trust in you, which requires at the minimum a workable model of human motives based on acute and accurate observation and study.

Philosophy’s attitude to debate is always, “We can debate in spite of the failings that people have.” The rhetorician’s attitude is, “Let’s talk about all the different ways we can debate.” It seems to me that without the Platonic ideology framing the Naya discussion of types of debate, these philosophers are perhaps more rhetorically inclined. Who else would come up with different kinds of debate for different purposes, then tell us to either do it or not based own what we think the value of the exchange might be? Keating seems to miss that truth is not a prerequisite here, but something that may or may not come out of one of the various modalities of debating these philosophers practiced. These are not opposed models, but different levels of practice that serve the purpose that all debate practice should have: To prepare the mind to change given the appropriate conditions.

Debating any topic at all with no conditions does not prepare the mind for much, only fuels the anger and frustration that we inappropriately aim at debating itself. As far as what topics do not qualify for debate, those we cannot subject to the ethics of good debate, i.e. “I’ll change my position if I find really good reasons to do so” are off the table. We can soften up that conviction by practicing the rival conviction, that of rhetorical reasoning, through doing some of the “lesser” forms of debating as Keating seems to want to call them, which give us a lot of insight into how human motives, language, and speech are intertwined in complex ways. This combination of various moving parts help us understand the complexities of commitment, and further our desire to hold the principle of rhetorical reason through debate as primary, and being right second. That’s the only way we can ensure that a topic will be treated appropriately and fully.

Keating’s essay has made me want to investigate these thinkers more as I think they can offer a very complex, necessary, and wonderful discrimination of modalities of debate that all serve the same purpose: To answer the question of what to debate and why to debate it. There’s no hierarchy here, only different modes of speaking for different purposes and people. This is the heart of the Sophistic position. It’s also a very human-centered ethic about how to change minds, given that it forwards how complex people are in their attitudes and beliefs.

So how do we know a topic shouldn’t be debated? I think we have to first get comfortable with the idea that there’s not just one “debate” out there, and we can thank Keating for that in this great essay. Secondly, we need to be honest about whether we are debating for the benefit of the topic and our own minds. Are we debating to correct course, or are we giving orders? Topics that we feel don’t require a course correction are difficult to debate unless we do a lot of low-stakes practice frequently with one another (which seems to be what the Naya philosophers were doing from what little I glean here). Low-stakes practice helps you see how wrong you can be and how often it can happen, encouraging an increased faith in the method of debate. Finally, there are topics that we might not want to debate that come up so often because we are bored, or tired, of having those debates. Audiences are good indicators of whether this is true or not. Often once we have engaged a topic many times we feel there’s nothing left to explore. But this is indicative of failing to uphold the debate ethic. We can only feel we’ve fully explored a topic if we think of the reasons and topic as being “out there” somewhere and not “here with us” in the form of audience. We also fail to uphold the debate ethic if we feel we have it right and couldn’t have it better through a re-articulation of our reasons before others who are mulling over those reasons, or who have a stronger hold on their convictions rather than on how they got to those convictions.