Hey what’s up Thinkers! Kathy Gibbens here…
Today we’re going to be doing part 4 in this little mini-series on How to argue & debate and do it well. But first, let’s do a quick review of a fallacy we’ve already covered earlier in this season called Reification. Feel free to hit pause for a minute and see if you can remember what reification is. Reification is when an abstract belief or an idea is treated as though it’s a real, concrete, sometimes even a living thing or event. It is also sometimes called the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness. an example of Reification: “Open your heart to love and love will find you.” Really? Is love out there looking for you? Is love a little cupid-like creature scouring the face of the earth for someone to shoot his heart-shaped arrows at? Of course not. Love is an abstract concept, a choice, an emotion, a commitment…it’s a lot of things, but it’s not something that is out there looking to find you. That’s Reification. As with Personification, it’s often used figuratively and even as a literary device to make things more interesting & relatable, but there are instances when it’s an outright fallacy, which I cover in the original episode on Reification.
The question to ask yourself when facing Reification is this: “Is the action really coming from that concept or is there someone else behind it?”
If you want to hear more about this fallacy, check out Episode 68.
Today’s episode is sponsored by my e-book! What? That’s right, I’ve compiled an e-book of fallacies. One of the questions I get most often is whether I have a printable resource that people can access to help them learn or review the fallacies covered in the podcast. I’m happy to tell you that now I do! When you purchase the Logical Fallacies e-book, you’ll get immediate access to print it off and begin using it right away, and you’ll also get all future updates for FREE. I’ll eventually be including all the fallacies that I cover on the podcast, and I’m not done yet. So, when you buy the e-book, you’ll get all the updates as I continue to add fallacies as I continue working through them here on Season 1. I’ve already heard from several families who are printing off the book to use in their homeschool to reference & review the fallacies they learned in the podcast. And I’ll tell you this - I even use the e-book to help ME remember & review! There’s a lot of fallacies, and when I come across memes & headlines & bad arguments online, I don’t always remember all the names of the fallacies. Well, I’m easily able to flip through the book and find the fallacy, the definition, a quick example and the question to ask. It helps even me! I don’t even have a special page for it on my website yet, I’m working on it, but I’ll put a link in the show notes where you can go and buy the e-book and have access right away.
Ok, let’s dive into Part 4 of How to Argue & Debate…and do it well. So far, I’ve told you that to Argue & Debate well, you have to study both sides of the issue; that you should have evidence, and it should be credible; and I’ve told you that it’s ok to argue values, but it doesn’t work to argue feelings. So today, part 4 is:
4. You can’t argue well if you don’t listen well. You can’t argue well if you don’t listen well. In formal debate, you can only prepare one of your speeches ahead of time- the very first one where you’re formally presenting your case. The rest of the time you’re listening to and responding to the arguments your opponent is making. If you don’t listen to what the other person is saying, you won’t be able to respond to it! It’s as simple as that! And most people who get into arguments are really bad at listening. They’re spending all their time thinking about their own thoughts and the points they want to make that they don’t spend much time listening well to the other person, understanding where they’re coming from & what argument they’re trying to make. The result is that, at best, you have two people who just continue to spout their own thoughts & opinions. They never actually are able to address the OTHER person’s arguments…b/c they haven’t even heard them. This is incredibly frustrating for anyone watching the debate b/c it’s boring! You don’t really learn anything, since there’s no meaningful dialogue happening, no winsome arguments are being made and any evidence brought up is being ignored & unaddressed. At worst, these types of arguments & debates devolve into shouting, crying, name-calling and sometimes even violence.
Think about it. When you’re arguing a point or debating an idea, what’s the goal? The goal is to convince or win the other person over to your side…or to win over to your side someone who is watching the debate. It’s to give the other person some new things to think about, to present new evidence and to speak up for values & ideas that are being misrepresented or ignored. You can’t do any of those things if you don’t listen to the other person. And, now this is my own personal opinion, but to me it makes the person look kinda dumb if they don’t listen to what the other person is saying and therefore aren’t able to reply to the arguments being made. It makes it seem like they’re ignoring the other person or like they don’t actually have any good responses to their arguments…they may, but if they’re not listening, they can’t respond to those arguments.
Listening is an incredibly important skill to have, not just so you can debate well, but so you can truly learn. Look, no one person knows EVERYTHING or has the corner market on ALL truth about everything. We all have things to learn…SO MUCH to learn! And if you are so locked into what you think about something that you can’t even listen to opposing viewpoints, that’s a problem.
Ok, y’all, that’s it for today, join me in the next episode for Part 5 of this little mini-series, and
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
