@ Ubereil
The answer is to try and apply this guide to your online (and offline, for that matter) debating. And to try not to focus so hard on winning.
I do believe you are right about how we should ideally act, though I would simply describe it as acting with the same respect and sportsmanship as you do in any other game or contest involving opposing players, be it chess or tennis or fencing.
Contrary to those other form of contest and games, however, many thingies are left to perception in debate. So even when debating with the people closest and dearest to me sometimes we need to call for a third person, or several, to arbitrate because what was just idly fooling about outrageous claims got us in a rhetorical stump in which we don't know who won and who lost, or because we just can't decide whether this maneuver was a justified argument or a total fallacy.
Once we throw in the other side being made of strangers whose mannerisms and attitude you can't read other than superficially all bets are off and things usually get hostile and personal very fast. It's totally not easy to avoid it even when we know we should avoid it, as this thread clearly shows.
"That's just your opinion" is what is known as an argument stopper.
Technically denying a claim or declaration as opinion will only be accepted against arguments that aren't backed by formal reasoning. Like, I can't say "your opinion has been noted" if your reasoning is solid, as you have demonstrated your opinion is actually backed by facts or logic and thus I have to refute at least one of the rhetorical, logical, or factual pillars upon which your claim sits.
But any argument that isn't actually backed by formal reasoning, and any whose reasoning has obvious breaches and flaws on it, can be freely countered by "Your opinion has been noted. Can we move to your arguments, now?" and be done with it. Some would even argue actually presenting an argument against an unsupported opinion means you made a tactical mistake by getting trapped in a distraction maneuver you could have simply denied with a handwave and a smug smile.
It's just another way of saying "Back that up or GTFO!" You could call it an argument stopper, yes, but otherwise you would have to take even the most ridiculous claims seriously. We are kind of left with a choice between taking all arguments as true until they have been disproven or taking all arguments as false until they have been proven, as all other options would require us to include a great deal of personal judgement into the process.
What exactly is well-being, though? To be honest, I'm not quite sure. I've got a vague idea, but the idea is (as I said) vague. I'm sure you have some vague idea yourself.
I do recognize the importance of well being, and I actually used it on my first argument on this thread. The point of contention is whether or not a criminal, someone who already violated the right to well being of others, can be trusted with not doing so again.
It is impossible to know for certain whether a given criminal can be rehabilitated or not. Thus every single criminal that returns to society is a risk to the wellbeing of others, as they have already shown they don't care about it as long as it suits their own ambitions. This is quite important: In the united states, for example, recidivism rates are said to be somewhere between 50% and 70%. And those numbers only mention those who are again arrested by a crime less than three years after being released. In other words, under current conditions
Each 1000 criminals released back into society create a bare minimum of 500 new victims before even three years have passed. That number takes the lesser rate and assumes both that every one is caught after only one crime and that every crime committed had a single victim.
Isn't their wellbeing important?
Now, according to the numbers I already offered the carcelary system spends X amount of money, where X is a ridiculously huge amount. That amount could be spent in improving the wellbeing of law abiding society. Thus, by spending that amount on keeping criminals alive
you are removing potential wellbeing from society. A potential wellbeing that can be measured, actually, and requires no wild assumptions of the "But they may cure cancer if given a chance!" kind.
Thus by protecting criminals from Vii Zafira's
shoot pickaxe 'em up legal philosophy you are removing potential wellbeing from society. What does society obtains from it? The loss of actual wellbeing.
What I actually believe someone should try is to actually show is:
1. What would society win from rehabilitating criminals? In a concise, informative, to the point manner that requires no wild assumptions.
2. How does that compares to what it will lose from both the resources being currently spent on criminals and all the extra resources rehabilitation would require? In a concise, informative, to the point manner that requires no wild assumptions.
3. How would they solve the problem of innocents being hurt given the huge recidivism rates? Again in a concise, informative, to the point manner that requires no wild assumptions.
We have shown numbers both related to the money and to the recidivism rates. I expect more than "I believe that…" and "Maybe if…" for an answer.
I am sorry if that did sound hostile, it wasn't my intention. And again, this thread has already gone to places so I don't want to keep arguing this. I just presented this argument as an example of how wellbeing could be disputed, not trying to actually dispute your claim and get into a new argument.
This reminds me of a philosophy joke my brother once told me:
That was pretty fun. :lol:
And yes, that's a problem of all deduction and thought. One could argue that's why following the form and method of debate is so important, beyond the sportsmanship and the fun logical games: It gives a framework by which an opinion can be elevated into something else. Into a form of, say, perceptive truth, for example. Or conditional truth.
Outside of debate groups, people with an interest in rhetoric and logic, and some of my tutors, most people who get to argue with me does think I am extremely technical when arguing with all the weird names and the fallacies and stuffies and thingies.
However, I see it the other way around: Being technical it's the entire point behind a lot of formal and informal fallacies, by which the point is made that it isn't about how nice an argument sounds, nor how agreeable it is, nor who says it, nor who thinks it is cool, nor what emotions it provokes, nor anything other than how technically correct the argument is and how well it can survive crashing against other conceptual structures.
Jesus, conceptual structures? That did sound so bloody pretentious.
Anyway, otherwise we have no framework and everything goes back to "delusions and opinions everywhere."
I still believe we should all just hug and call it a day, though.
)
