I was thinking of adding “withdraw” as an option (Abort/retry/fail? Concede/refute/withdraw?), which would be like pleading no contest in a trial: it would say “I don’t necessarily accept your argument, but I won’t contest it for now”. You’d be stating your intention to act as though you had conceded it, with the caveat that you still don’t believe it’s correct. I can see some advantages of this — it might be appropriate in cases where a point is relatively minor to the subject of the debate, when it’s not worth getting into something too deeply if there isn’t already agreement — but on the other hand, we probably shouldn’t have a norm that allows people to get out of changing their minds too easily. Any thoughts on this? Perhaps the standard should just be that if you don’t expect you’ll care to continue supporting a given argument after you’ve made it and heard possible counterarguments, you shouldn’t use it in the first place.
...but a problem has just occurred to me: what if one debater is convincingly correct, but the other persists in invalid refutations? The third option might be less “nolo condere” than “I rest my case”.
To be clear, I meant “withdraw” as “I withdraw this particular argument”, not “I withdraw from the debate”. It sounds like you’re talking more about the latter. But that might be more useful anyway, now that I think about it.
Of course, in situations like that (and in debates in general), it might be helpful to have some other people observing it so there can be an outside reference for what’s “convincing”.
I was thinking of adding “withdraw” as an option (Abort/retry/fail? Concede/refute/withdraw?), which would be like pleading no contest in a trial: it would say “I don’t necessarily accept your argument, but I won’t contest it for now”. You’d be stating your intention to act as though you had conceded it, with the caveat that you still don’t believe it’s correct. I can see some advantages of this — it might be appropriate in cases where a point is relatively minor to the subject of the debate, when it’s not worth getting into something too deeply if there isn’t already agreement — but on the other hand, we probably shouldn’t have a norm that allows people to get out of changing their minds too easily. Any thoughts on this? Perhaps the standard should just be that if you don’t expect you’ll care to continue supporting a given argument after you’ve made it and heard possible counterarguments, you shouldn’t use it in the first place.
Tapping out
It sounds reasonable to me...
...but a problem has just occurred to me: what if one debater is convincingly correct, but the other persists in invalid refutations? The third option might be less “nolo condere” than “I rest my case”.
To be clear, I meant “withdraw” as “I withdraw this particular argument”, not “I withdraw from the debate”. It sounds like you’re talking more about the latter. But that might be more useful anyway, now that I think about it.
Of course, in situations like that (and in debates in general), it might be helpful to have some other people observing it so there can be an outside reference for what’s “convincing”.