I always look in wonder at how americans are so in argumentation. I mean, you even have a whole set of tools and now a "markdown of sorts" for argumentation.
Americans are dualists [1] who believe there is both good and evil, and the best thing is to have both (all) sides fight it out to see who wins.
You can see this throughout the culture, from the legal system, to robust support for free speech, to the quite frankly Christian morality (a belief that there is original sin in the body politic that must be atoned for) that permeates even the most hardcore progressive, atheistic left.
You're half right. It's best to consider all sides of an argument, however the people that believe that there are only two sides are generally considered idiots. The fact that there are only two major political parties is just a mathematical consequence of the election system, not a reflection of the population's actual beliefs.
It's not just a mathematical artifact though. Political affiliation has deep cultural significance in the US. It permeates every aspect of a person's life and affects all of their relationships. There are plenty of Americans who will demand to know what you think of the president, on first meeting you, and then decide whether or not they like you based on the answer to that single question.
You don't see this in countries with many political parties that each grab only a small piece of the pie.
> There are plenty of Americans who will demand to know what you think of the president, on first meeting you, and then decide whether or not they like you based on the answer to that single question.
There are plenty of americans who will form their opinion of you based on which sports team you like, as well.
I think your observation is not so much one of politics permeating all aspects as it is that our current culture is superficially tribalistic in nature, with many tribal signifiers being used.
> There are plenty of Americans who will demand to know what you think of the president, on first meeting you, and then decide whether or not they like you based on the answer to that single question.
This is a relatively new phenomenon that will hopefully not be around for long.
As an American, I was taught that our style of debate, with its understanding of dialectic and rhetoric, was ultimately grounded in ancient Greek traditions. I don't know how true that is, though.
Most public policy debate is so empty as to be worthless, and these tools don't change that. The typical English-language dialectic debate suffers from poor metaphysics and ontology, and in the USA this is compounded by a society that shuns math and logic skills. The typical USA debate is about feelings, not about evidence.
There are two investigations into philosophy, namely speech acts and pragmatics, which happened in English-language philosophy first, and may be due to English itself.
The main centres of argumentation research are in Europe (Amsterdam, Switzerland, Lisbon, and several groups in Germany and the UK) and in Canada (Univ. of Waterloo). In the US, there is a heavier focus on "critical thinking" as a pedagogical tool.
I'm reluctant, because I don't think the discipline as a whole has many scientific merits, except for the more formal work in computer science. Anyway, here you go:
* Pragma-dialectic school (Amsterdam, F. van Eemeren) [1]
* Argumentation Schemes & Informal logic, Univ. of Windsor, D. Walton [2,3]
* Rhethorics and Argumentation, Univ. of Waterloo, C. Tindale [4,5]
* Switzerland, Lugano Group (IALS) [7]
* Lisbon ArgLab Group, New Univ. of Lisbon, M. Lewinski, F. Macagno [6]
* Germany, Research Group for Nonmonotonic Logic and Formal Argumentation, Univ. Bochum [8]
* Germany, KIT Group, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology [9]
The last two groups are more to my taste, and there is also Chris Reed and his team in the UK. The prevalent theoretical traditions are argumentation schemes and informal logic in Canada, developed by Walton and his scholars, and the pragma-dialectic tradition in Amsterdam, developed by van Eemeren and his many scholars.
Eh, I think most people of science in general are into argumentation because it allows you to flesh out ideas more.
I don't think, looking at the history of fields like logic, people from the US (guessing you meant that, not Americans in general) have more representation than other countries. Take a look at this list for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_logicians
Yeah. Debates are weird, and IMO poisonous to mind.
Taking a topic, splitting into two teams and fighting it out with words until the victor remains is the exact opposite of what you want to do to reach any useful conclusion on any topic.
Perhaps an alternative is to split into guilds - many of them - and pose an Epic Quest; game moves are contributions to a dialogue (conversation) map which, first, responds to the quest (a deep question) with position/answer statements to be followed by evidence fields the guilds collect to support their position. Other guilds can come in and gain game points by adding support to the game moves of others, or, for that matter, challenging them with evidence to the contrary. Game moves include Questions, as well as answers and pro and con arguments. Thus, this is not a simple Pro-Con ecosystem, but, instead, a conversational one. This, in theory, can be viewed through several lenses, two of which are "debate" and "learning conversation". To the extent that the epic quest is one which, effectively, crowd sources the world views expressed by guilds, and to the extent that rules of engagement mean that the pugnacious arguments remain inside the guilds and what comes out forms valuable contributions to the conversation which is the quest, then "all boats rise". John Seely Brown did a 6 minute Youtube with the opening sentence: "I would rather hire a high-level World of Warcraft player than an MBA from Harvard", and that point is evidence to support the model I'm suggesting here, something like "World of Warcraft meets Global Sensemaking". JSB's point is that guilds perform magic on humans; less tendency to argue, more tendency to find ways to remain on truth seeking missions rather than "selling" personal versions of truth.
Yeah, I was in a debate team in high school. I suppose it is good training for people who end up becoming lawyers and have to defend people that they may or may not really believe are innocent, but as someone who ended up going into science I see how it is a bit grotesque -- the idea in competitive debates is that rhetoric matters more than actual factual information and that a good debater can argue either side with equal ease.
I'm an European CS student, and I was a part of debate team in high school as well. You are certainly right that lawyers will get most of them, since they are closely related to actual lawyer work.
On the other hand, I don't think rhetoric matters more than facts. At least in my country, most of the arguments in the debate have to be based on some data/studies to be taken seriously. You still have to be a good speaker, of course, because you have to get the point across, but you can't win the debate without a prepared case just because you are charismatic.
Lots of times we had to argue for both sides during the tournament; the topics were chosen accordingly, as not to be "solvable". Of course in normal world you probably want to find some kind of compromise, but to be able to do that, you have to assess what each course of action will achieve. And debating helps you build the skillset to do just that.
Sure. It helps if you can formulate the pros and cons of each course of action, though, because that's the first step of finding a proper compromise. From my experience, that is what debate teaches you.
For example, most of the debates we have done in high school we did from both sides; I don't think the general message was supposed to be "just argue loud enough and you'll be right", but rather "hey, look at this problem from these two sides. Crazy how both of them are partly true, isn't it?".
I think the human default is to stick to whatever your opinion is at the moment. Most of the people will never look from other POV. Maybe they won't even realise that the other POV can be right, when they are so sure they themselves are right.
> Taking a topic, splitting into two teams and fighting it out with words until the victor remains is the exact opposite of what you want to do to reach any useful conclusion on any topic.
I agree only if the debate's intention is to declare a winner and a loser. Having a formal session to discuss topic with opposing sides allows for well-planned arguments. OFf-the-cuff discussion, while useful, can only get you so far.
Winner/loser mentality is one half of the problem; the other half is that pretty much nothing in real life can be productively split into exactly two opposing sides or views.
You can see this throughout the culture, from the legal system, to robust support for free speech, to the quite frankly Christian morality (a belief that there is original sin in the body politic that must be atoned for) that permeates even the most hardcore progressive, atheistic left.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualistic_cosmology