I remember that

[PD]

Walter said a primary objective was to make your opponent's argument look good. How does that work in a presidential or political debate?

[Spikelab]

He's a university professor, he was talking in theory.

Sarcasm aside, I really think he's taking a "good person"'s position and was in fact quite impressed when I heard him saying that, I felt he was trying to teach more than just how to reason. I mean if u think of two good people arguing, why would u assume the other is lying or in general trying to cheat you? If you don't overload the conversation with your feelings the only logical position to take is that the other person's intention is good and therefore it makes sense to make their argument look as good as possible.

Furthermore, I'd argue that a political debate is not really a debate. Debating implies that you could b proven wrong and change your position, but that never happens in a political context, people go on stage solely to re-assert their positions and kill other people's argument. It was never the intention to discuss any topic.

Sent from my iPhone

On Jan 21, 2013, at 2:03 AM, PD <papa...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Walter said a primary objective was to make your opponent's argument look good. How does that work in a presidential or political debate?

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[Tracy Lippincott]

I think that we have to be careful when applying this class to real life debate. It is, after all, a philosophy class... and while the ultimate goal is to help us understand the way arguments work, we are often talking in very different terms than we would in actual discourse.

When Walter says we should try to make our opponent's argument look good, he's saying that when we consider their argument, we need to disregard our potentially conflicting opinion. We should break it down and reconstruct it so that we can see how strong their points might be. If you take every point an opponent is making, and do your best to reconstruct it in the most logical and sensible way that they could possibly have put it, then you're more likely to understand their argument, even if you don't agree with it. You are supposed to set aside your own opinions, and strengthen the argument you're looking at. Once you understand your opponent's angle, you will know what you need to say to counter it.

If you understand every facet of your opponent's argument, and they haven't prepared as well as you have, you're in a good position to win any debate against them. Knowing the strengths of the opponent's argument is far more important than knowing the weaknesses... because if you know all of their strongest arguments and are prepared with legitimate counterarguments, then you will come out looking stronger. On the other hand, if you attack their weak points without dealing with their strong points, you might end up looking like a bit of an inept jerk for only fighting the easy battles...

Unfortunately, when it comes to presidential/political debates, it is rare to find someone who is more concerned with honesty and legitimately strong arguments than they are with votes and/or pleasing their lobbys. I won't get into my personal politics, but I will just say that we are taking a philosophy class on logic.... and in my experience, politics isn't particularly logical.

Cheers,

Tracy

[PD]

Any one who believes this course was not meant to be put to practical use better review this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RttFUoptn9o