When I listen to a debate, I want a winner and a loser. If this is unlikely, I want the debate to go on long enough for the opponents to agree on what the real disagreement is, in other words, to reach the irreducible crux of their irreconcilable differences. One idea would be for the debaters to switch sides. If Tom could argue Harry's case against Harry using Tom's case, and somehow defeat Harry, what would this mean? Rather than prove the utility of Harry's arguments wouldn't this instead demonstrate the strength of Tom's original positions? Example: Tom is anti-war. If Tom can argue the pro-war case sucessfully, shouldn't his anti-war positions gain in strength and standing? This shows that Tom understands the pro-war arguements well, but in the end these arguements do not persuade him. Call me impressed. I propose that people switch sides for intellectual sport. Behind all this is a conversation between William Hazlitt and James Northcote that has stayed with me over the years. Please excuse the length as I quote the Passage:
Northcote: I sometimes get into scrapes that way by contradicting people before I have well considered the subject, and I often wonder how I get out of them so well as I do. I remember once meeting with Sir--, who was talking about Milton; and as I have a natural aversion to a coxcomb, I differed from what he said, without being at all prepared with any arguments in support of my opinion.
Hazlitt: But you had time enough to think of them afterwards.
Northcote: I got through with it somehow or other. It is the very risk you run in such cases that puts you on the alert and gives you spirit to extricate yourself from it. If you had full leisure to deliberate and to make out your defense beforehand, you perhaps could not do it so well as on the spur of the occasion. The surprise and flutter of the animal spirits gives the alarm to any little wit we possess, and puts it into a state of immediate requisition.
Hazlitt: Besides, it is always easiest to defend a paradox or an opinion you don't care seriously about. I would sooner ( as a matter of choice) take the wrong side than the right in any arguement. If you have a thorough conviction on any point and good grounds for it, you have studied it long, and the real reasons have sunk into the mind; so that what you can recall of them at a sudden pinch, seems unsatisfactory and disproportionate to the confidence of your belief and to the magisterial tone you are disposed to assume. Even truth is matter of habit and professorship. Reason and knowledge, when at their height, return into a kind of instinct. We understand the grammer of a foreign language best, though we do not speak it so well. But if you take up an opinion at a venture, then you lay hold of whatever excuse comes within your reach, instead of searching about for and bewildering yourself with the true reasons; and the odds are that the arguements thus got up are as good as those opposed to them. In fact, the more sophistical and superficial an objection to a received or well-considered opinion is, the more we are staggered and teased by it; and the next thing is to lose our temper, when we become an easy prey to a cool and disingenuous adversary. I would much rather (as the safest side) insist on Milton's pedantry than on his sublimity, supposing I were not in the company of very good judges. A single stiff or obscure line would outweigh a whole book of solemn grandeur in the mere flippant encounter of the wits, and, in general, the truth and justice of the cause you espouse is rather an encumbrance than an assistance; or it is like heavy armour which few have strength to wield. Anything short of complete triumph on the right side is defeat: any hole picked or flaw detected in an arguement which we are holding earnestly conscientiously, is sufficient to raise the laugh against us. This is the greatest advantage which folly and knavery have. We are not satisfied to be right, unless we can prove others to be quite wrong; and as all the world would be thought to have some reason on their side, they are glad of any loop-hole or pretext to escape from the dogmatism and tyranny we would set up over them. Absolute submission requires absolute proofs. Without some such drawback, the world might become too wise and too good, at least according to every man's private prescription. In this sense ridicule is the test of truth; that is, the levity and indifference on one side balances the formality and presumption on the other...