Debating Society

9.1.2023 – 6.4.2023
Centria
Teachers Peter Finell and Timo Viitala
[email protected]
[email protected]
Last time
A debate is a structured contest over an issue or policy. There are two sides - one supporting, one opposing.

To structure an argument, follow these steps:

• Claim - present your argument in a clear statement.
• Evidence - the evidence supporting your claim, such as, statistics, references, quotes, analogies etc.
• Impact - explain the significance of the evidence - how does this support your claim?
• Rebuttal

Provide evidence whenever you can and not your personal opinion.
• You must put aside your personal views and remain objective when you debate so your argument remains logical

Important skills for debating:

• Voice
• Confidence
• Language

Benefits of debating include:

• Allowing you to think about aspects and perspectives you may not have considered.
• Improving public speaking skills.
• Learning how to create a persuasive argument.
How to construct a good
argument
Constructing a good argument
Writing an essay or debating something on social media, knowing how to construct a good argument is a
useful skill.

When we’re deeply convinced of the rightness of our points, putting them across in a compelling way that will
change other people’s mind can be a challenge.

If you feel that your opinion is obviously right, it’s hard work even to understand why other people might
disagree. Some people reach this point and don’t bother to try, instead concluding that those who disagree
with them must be stupid, misled or just plain immoral.

It’s almost impossible to construct an argument that will persuade someone if you’re starting from the
perspective that they’re either dim or evil.

In the opposite set of circumstances – when you only weakly believe your perspective to be right – it can also be
tricky to construct a good argument. In the absence of conviction, arguments tend to lack coherence or force.
KISS principle

Almost all good arguments focus on a single powerful idea.

• If you can see twenty different reasons why you’re right, it’s tempting to
put all of them into your argument, because it feels as if the sheer weight
of twenty reasons will be much more persuasive than just focusing on one
or two

• Someone may be able rebut a couple of reasons, but can they rebut all
twenty?

An argument with endless different reasons is much less persuasive than one
with focus and precision on a small number of reasons.
• The debate in the UK about whether to stay in the EU was a good example
of this. The Remain campaign had dozens of different reasons.
• Car manufacturing!
• Overfishing!
• Economic opportunities!
• The difficulty of overcoming trade barriers!

The Leave campaign boiled their argument down to just one: Leaving EU means taking back control. Despite most expectations and the
advice of most experts, the simple, straightforward message won. Voters struggled to remember the many different messages put out by
the Remain campaign, as compelling as each of those reasons might have been; but they remembered the message about taking back
control.
Strawman Fallacy - Fair to your opponent
One commonly used rhetorical fallacies is the Strawman Fallacy.
• Construct a version of your opponent’s argument that is much weaker than the argument they use themselves, in order to defeat it more easily.
• Example of an everyday conversation:
Alice: Taking a shower is beneficial.
Bob: But hot water may damage your skin.
Bob attacked the non-existing argument: Taking an extremely hot shower is beneficial. Because such an argument is obviously false, Alice might
start believing that she is wrong because what Bob said was clearly true.
Her real argument, however, was not disproved, because she did not say anything about the temperature

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMzY_-ZZJaA

If your argument includes a Strawman, then you will immediately have lost credibility by demonstrating that either you don’t really understand
the opposing point of view, or that you simply don’t care about rebutting it properly.
• Instead, you should be fair to your opponent and represent their argument honestly
Avoid other fallacies
Argument that rest of fallacious foundations can be more easily demolished. (may not apply on social media)

Some fallacies are straightforward to understand, appeal to popularity (everyone agrees with me, so I must be right!)

“Raises the question”

• For example, politician X has defended terrorists, which raises the question – can we trust her?, the fallacy it refers to is a bit more complicated.
It’s when an argument rests on the assumption that its conclusions are true.

Someone might argue that soft drinks shouldn’t be banned in schools, on the grounds that they’re not bad for students’ health. How can we know
that they’re not bad for students’ health? Why, if they were, they would be banned in schools!
• The flaw in this approach is obvious, but you can imagine how you might fall for it. Teachers would have objected to hyperactive students,
parents would have complained, and we can see that none of this has happened because they haven’t yet been banned.
Make your assumptions clear
Every argument rests on assumptions
• Some are so obvious that you’re not going to be aware that you’re making them

• For example, argument about different economic systems that rests on the assumption that reducing global poverty is a good thing. While very few
people would disagree with you on that, in general, if your assumption can be proven false, then the entire basis of your argument is undermined.

A more controversial example might be an argument that rests on the assumption that everyone can trust the police force
• For example, if you’re arguing for tougher enforcement of minor offences in order to prevent them from mounting into major ones. But in countries
where the police are frequently bribed, or where policing has obvious biases, such enforcement could be counterproductive.

If you’re aware of such assumptions underpinning your argument

• Tackle them head on by making them clear and explaining why they are valid; so you could argue that your law enforcement proposal is valid in the
circumstances that you’re suggesting because the police force there can be relied on
Solid foundations
Good argument has plenty of evidence
• Find something that genuinely backs up what you’re saying;

• Don’t fall back on uncertain statistics or fake news.

• Research can be time-consuming but to ensure that your evidence is solid. You remove another basis on which your argument could be
challenged.

If you can’t find any evidence for your argument

• The first thing to consider is whether you might be wrong

• If you find evidence against your position, and minimal evidence for it, it would be logical to change your mind.

• If you’re struggling to find evidence either way, the area is under-researched. Prove what you can, including your assumptions, and work from
there.
Use evidence
Focus on what it takes to make an argument persuasive.
• Choose evidence with your audience in mind.

• For example, if you’re writing about current affairs, a left-wing audience will find an article from the Guardian to be more persuasive (as they’re more
likely to trust its reporting), while a right-wing audience might be more swayed by the Telegraph.

This principle can be useful in terms of sides in an academic debate as well.

• For example, You can bear in mind the demographics of your likely audience – it may be that an older audience is more sceptical of footnotes
that consist solely of web addresses.

The focus of your evidence can take your audience into account
• For example, if you were arguing that a particular drug should be banned on health grounds and your main audience was teenagers, you might want
to focus more on the immediate health risks, rather than ones that might appear years or later.
Avoid platitudes and generalisations, and be specific
Platitudes are meaningless and uncontroversial statements.

If you argue something like “because family life is all-important” to support one of your claims, you’ve slipped into using platitudes.
• Platitudes annoy without helping because they’re meaningless and uncontroversial statements, using them doesn’t tell your reader anything
new.

• If you say that working hours need to be restricted because family ought to come first, you haven’t really given your reader any new
information. Instead, bring the importance of family to life for your reader, and then explain how long hours interrupt it.

Similarly, being specific can demonstrate the grasp you have on your subject and can bring it to life for your reader.
• Imagine that you were arguing in favour of nationalising the railways, and one of your points was that the service now was of low quality.

• For example, saying “many commuter trains are frequently delayed” is much less impactful than if you have the full facts to hand, In Letchworth
Garden City, one key commuter hub, half of all peak-time trains to London were delayed by ten minutes or more.”
Understand the opposing point of view
You can’t construct a convincing argument unless you understand why someone might think you were wrong, and you can produce reasons other
than them being mistaken or stupid.
• We all target them same end goals, whether that’s wanting to increase our understanding of the world in academia or increase people’s
opportunities to flourish and seek happiness.

• For example, justice, equality, authority, sanctity and loyalty have some value for everyone, different political persuasions value them to different
degrees. Someone who opposes equal marriage might argue that they don’t oppose equality – but they do feel that sanctity is more important. An
argument that focuses solely on equality won’t influence them, but an argument that addresses sanctity might.
Changing your mind
It’s not easy to change your mind

Perhaps to preserve our pride, we frequently forget that we ever believed something different.
• 54% of British people supported invading Iraq in 2003

• 2015 , with the war a demonstrable failure, only 37% were willing to admit that they had supported it at the time. The effect in the USA was
even more dramatic.

It would be tempting for anyone who genuinely did oppose the war at the time to be quite smug towards anyone who changed their mind,
especially those who won’t admit it.
• But if changing your mind comes with additional consequences then the incentive to do so is reduced. Your argument needs to avoid vilifying
people who have only recently come around to your point of view; instead, to be truly persuasive, you should welcome them.
Video
• Structuring an argument - Akademiskt skrivande/Academic Writing
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvhQ-eNuJ8I

• The 7 Building Blocks of Effective Arguments - Chris Gatt

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmKGMOFON0g