How and why do people sabotage discussion?

[Rami Rustom]

For those of you that have been following the discussion between Kope
and I on islam-watch.org, I need your help. My intent was to have a
discussion where we reach the truth. But somehow the discussion was
sabotaged. Kope thinks I was the cause of that.

I've noticed many discussions get sabotaged on this site. And I
thought I had figured out a way to prevent the sabotaging. But
apparently I failed. I refrained from name calling and sarcasm (even
when others did it to me -- I took the moral high ground). That
allowed me to engage with Kope/Malem/abc/Reed. But with each one of
them, discussion ended anyway. The latest discussion ended in an
interesting way. Kope said I'm debating badly. But he didn't explain
what I'm doing wrong so that I could fix it. Why did this happen? I
think I know why.

The conventional understanding of debates and debate methods is like
this. Each person chooses a side to be the truth. During their
discussion, each person is trying to persuade the other that his side
is true. Do you see the problem here? I'll explain what the problem is
by explaining something else that these conventional debaters don't
know about -- philosophical discussion.

What is philosophical discussion and how does it work? In a
philosophical discussion, each person has his set of ideas. And one or
more of one guys ideas conflict with one or more of the other guy's
ideas. So they are having a discussion in order to resolve a conflict
between their ideas. How do they do that? Well first, both people need
to understand than any of their ideas might be mistaken. That means
that by the end of the discussion, a person might change their mind
about their idea. It means that neither person should assume the
truth. The point of the discussion is to discover the truth, not to
assume it before the discussion starts. Ok, so then what? How does the
discussion play out? Here's the general steps:

(1) One guy states his theory. Another guy has a conflicting theory,
so he states it too.

(2) Each guy tries to create criticisms of each other's theory (and
their own theory). A criticism is an explanation of a flaw.

(3) Then each guy considers each others' criticisms and tries to criticize them.

(4) Repeat until no one has any more criticisms to offer.

At the end of this, what is left? Well there are 3 possible outcomes:

(i) The first guy's theory is unrefuted (that means there are no
unrefuted criticisms of his theory).

(ii) The second guy's theory is unrefuted.

(iii) Both theory's are refuted.


Now I'll recap what I explained:

(1) The theories are guesses.

(2) Each guy tries to create criticisms of the theories. Note that the
criticisms are themselves guesses. A criticism is an explanation of a
flaw in an idea (as in any one of the original theories or any one of
the criticisms). What would happen if someone stated a flaw without
explanation? It useless. Its not persuasive. So how should someone
criticize the unexplained assertion? By explaining that "Your
assertion that my idea is flawed is explanationless." This criticism
refutes the unexplained assertion. Also, he could ask for an
explanation, "What is your explanation for your assertion that my idea
is flawed?"

On another note, conventional debaters don't criticize their own
theories. Why not? Because they already assumed their theories to be
true.

(3) What happens if someone doesn't address a criticism of one of his
ideas? It means he's burying his head in the sand about his idea. This
sabotages discussion. It sabotages truth-seeking. This is called
evasion. Why do people evade criticism? Sometimes the evasion is
subconscious. Sometimes its conscious. Why do people subconsciously
evade criticism? For an explanation of that, see my article "Why do
people rationalize?":
http://ramirustom.blogspot.com/2012/10/why-do-people-rationalize.html

-- Rami Rustom
http://ramirustom.blogspot.com