Quote:
Originally Posted by fretelöo
[...] if he leaves the definition up to gangsta, it's his own loss. Both had to shoulder their burden of proof for their side of the topic.
Semi-randomly picking this comment among the many others about the format of the debate.
My understanding going in was that this was to be an Oxford-style debate. Husker, Wikipedia and OrP covered this pretty well, but to recap:
Quote:
Originally Posted by OrP
In competitive Oxford-style debate, there is some proposition (e.g. "Faith is a virtue), and there is an affirmative and a negative side. The affirmative side would have the burden of proof and so if they failed to present a winning argument the negative would win by default.
However, to make up for this disadvantage, the affirmative would also have some advantages in making their case (mostly being able to define the terms of the debate)<snip>
OrP does then go on to say that he thinks the simultaneous posting meant that we should ignore the usual convention, but as my opening and closing remarks suggest, I was assuming standard Oxford rules. This is also why I was unconcerned about the "talking past each other" brouhaha in the lead up to the debate... if I had realised people were expecting something different I would have taken a different strategy. Not moaning, but I do feel a bit damned-if-I-do, damned-if-I-don't about this - if I'd set my own definitions and made a positive case there would have been complaints about arguing past each other and if I let gman own the terms and burden of proof I get told off for not presenting a strong positive claim against the proposition.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Freteloo
Furthermore, since half his rebuttals deal with religious faith again, it's kind of hard to see how the curtesy fo letting the other set the definition actually materialized.
Again, picking this quote among several similar. There seems to be some confusion about the relationship between faith and religion in this debate. Here's the OED definitions of faith:
Quote:
Originally Posted by OED
1: complete trust or confidence in someone or something:
this restores one’s faith in politicians
2: strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof:
bereaved people who have shown supreme faith
While it is true that in one definition the scope is entirely limited to a religious context, the first definition does not exclude a religious context. Ganstaman defended a variant of the first definition, but given that he used examples of that definition applied to theism (and the fact this is RGT) there is nothing weird, wrong or off-topic about using faith in a deity for examples - this is true for either of us... ganstaman could have provided the secular definition of faith and then exclusively used it in a religious context and that would have been fine. I probably could have spent more time on the secular Wikipedia example, but tbh I found it too silly and unsupported to do so, especially given the word limit (which I struggled to keep under
).
Quote:
Originally Posted by bladesman
I think (and I'm sure he didn't think of it this way) that Zumby pulling up a quote from Ganstaman's Life of Pi review was very poor etiquette. In such a formal debate, Gansta may simply be arguing the side he was given, or a view he didn't previously hold, and the same is true of his review.
Hmm. Citing previous claims by one's opponent is pretty standard imo. If ganstaman had ever said something more damning that he couldn't come back from like "I don't believe faith is a virtue" then I wouldn't have quoted it, as that would be a bit of a buzzkill. My feeling on that particular quote is that it highlighted a tension in the how faith interacts with several basic goods that ganstaman wants to defend (namely "trust" and "knowledge") and that he was kinda trying to gloss over that tension. The comment from OrP early in the thread about the difference between epistemic virtue and moral virtue would have been a good tack for ganstaman to take to smooth over that tension, but he didn't.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ganstaman
That is, this wasn't a discussion in which we tried to present convincing arguments and actually change people's minds. And so as long as I'm not assigned the full burden of proof, I felt it was sufficient to show that my argument held more ground than my opponent's, which was easy to do once he conceded all his arguments right away. I'd be interested in hearing from Zumby what his thoughts were during this.
Once I read your opening statement I was glad that you hadn't defined terms to be specifically theological. I do think that there are certain definitions of 'virtue' and 'faith' where it would be virtually impossible for me to argue against, and I was relieved you didn't go this route.
On some specific issues, I think that your definition would have been stronger if you had narrowed it down to "trust" rather than "trust or belief", as later on your argument relied entirely on faith being a type of (positive) trust. I also think you could have been stronger on positing a moral framework for virtue... I understand why you didn't want to lean on consequentialism, but I reckon you could have made a good case with something like the categorical imperative or some sort of contractarianism.
Overall my thoughts are that you had the burden of proof and didn't meet it. Which is kinda borne out by "I still am unsure how we should decide if something is a virtue." However, if we assume that we had equal burden of proof then I reckon you won.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ganstaman
It was fun
Agreed. Given that I don't think I've ever disagreed with any of your posts in RGT I found this a lot of fun and also kinda exhausting