Debate mapper/FRO

Frequently Raised Objections to the Debate Mapper

• Objection: People don't use reason to arrive at their beliefs ideology: they use intuition and feeling. (Shorter: People don't think ideology, they feel it.)

  Responses:

  • In the overwhelming majority of debates in which I have been involved, the basic rules of determining truth were not the issue; opposing parties seemed to feel the need to at least maintain a pretense of reasoning from evidence.
    • As long as both parties are playing by the basic rules of reasoning from evidence, they must eventually arrive at non-conflicting answers.
    • If one party refuses to produce any evidence to defend their position, or summarily dismisses the evidence produced against it, then they are basically admitting that they are objectively wrong, and their position can be regarded as invalid.
  • Even if only a few people are willing to insist that their beliefs must be reasonable (i.e. must fit the best available evidence), the Mapper is still a vital tool for:
    • weeding out disinformation
    • overcoming one's own biases
    • making it clear whether an opposing viewpoint has merit
    • achieving consensus, especially on complex issues, more quickly and definitively

• Objection: Reasoning from evidence is just one way of knowing; there are other ways, and which one is best is just a matter of opinion.

  Response: When the objective evidence shows that "other methods of knowing" are much more likely arrive at results that do not work, are clearly wrong, or cause more harm than good, the idea that they are somehow equally valid is questionable at best.