What It Means to Debate
We perceive debate as a heated, aggressive exchange between two sides (maybe more than two people) where someone will emerge victorious because they either have the truth and the facts on their side or they have mastered deception and manipulated everyone.
Debate is our inherited practice of critical thought and judgment, rooted in our most potent ability as humans: To communicate in ways that constitute experience. Many creatures on this planet communicate; few argue, and even fewer debate. Debate is setting up an event contrary to the heat of the moment, contrary to the experience of the now, in hopes that we will gain insight into whatever issue we are debating.
Debate is thought of as what we do after the facts. That is not the case. Debate is where we test our knowledge and reveal how little or how much we know. Most of the debates I’ve seen, participated in, or created reveal how much more we need to know to decide what side we might be on, or what we want to support.
Debates often emerge because two sides believe they are right, and both cannot be right - a site of mutual exclusivity. Debate is the best way to challenge what we think is right because it places our views against the best touchstone imaginable: Another human mind.
One of my favorite essays - probably the top essay ever written on argumentation - is by Douglas Ehninger. In this essay he argues that the value of argument reaches it’s most potent level when structured like a debate. That is, with two people engaging one another using non-coercive reason to move the other one toward the perceived “right” position to hold on the issue. As we offer reasons and arguments, we do so in a way that assumes - maybe even constitutes - our interlocutor as having a human mind at least as powerful and critical as our own. This also means that if they respond well, ask a good question, or criticize a piece of evidence, we would be willing to abandon our initial position. Ehninger says this is one of the most direct, grounded, and powerful ways to grant and practice human rights. Assuming someone has a human mind and can listen to reason and change their perspective assumes that the person is your equal, or better in terms of thought - or perhaps thinking in terms.
Most of us mistakenly think of debate as a heated defense of the truth, of burning away or purging of vile misconceptions, harmful ideas, or the darkest lies. Nothing about this is true. Debate might encourage us to participate in it under this conceit, but the advantages of debate are the two-way door that is opened. We have to examine our own beliefs thoroughly in order to offer a humane, humanistic, and proper appeal to others. Without that, our interlocutor becomes subhuman, inhuman. And then it really doesn’t matter if the monster agrees or not - the monster is not just wrong but worthless.
Attending to the most vile opponent as a mistaken human being is the only way to both defend our positions, try to create some right, justice, and good in the world while simultaneously not burning down the village in order to save it. Reminding ourselves that our political enemies are, at their core, thinking human beings is a big ask, but it’s the only starting point where we can all take advantage of the power of debate beyond using it as something to make us feel good about ourselves for “savagely dragging” some idiot. That understanding is little more than palliative care for democracy.