--- David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b at dd-b.net> wrote: [...] > I do think that's going outside the province of > intellectual debates. *How much* somebody cares > about something *in an intellectual debate* is > completely irrelevant, except tactically. The > truth of a belief is not increased by believing it > more passionately. And intellectual debate is about > *truth*. > > Obviously, many issues that we debate with people in > day-to-day life are not issues best settled in a > purely intellectual debate. I disagree, although it is possible that your qualifier "purely" may remove my grounds for disagreement by narrowing the breadth of your claim to a subset of what I would generally consider "intellectual debate." Taking your broader claim ("*How much* somebody cares about something *in an intellectual debate* is completely irrelevant, except tactically."), I think that in certain areas of debate the strength of the participants' beliefs in certain emotional (or, perhaps, value) propositions is relevant to the truth they are seeking to ascertain. Examples include political philosophy, rhetoric, and aesthetics. First, in political philosophy, the strengths of our beliefs in certain propositions of value are, at least within some methodologies, the raw data from which we construct theories of the good or the right. I am thinking here of Rawls's concept of reflective equilibrium, in which any value proposition may be revised at any point after reasoned consideration; but all others are taken as given while consideration is given. Other methodologies insist that we proceed a priori (some utilitarians fall into this category, as does the Kantian tradition) but whichever side of that debate one takes, I do not think it is fair to say that only the latter are engaged in intellectual debate. Second, in rhetoric, the goal is to find the argument that the ultimate listeners (not the present companion with whom one is having the intellectual debate about rhetoric) will find persuasive, which will almost certainly depend on the strength of their beliefs in various propositions. The debaters therefore, again, may use their own beliefs as data on the assumption that the ultimate listeners share them, or perhaps with the intent of deriving the listeners' beliefs >from their own by adjusting for known differences in attitude. (This resembles your caveat about tactics; but here the tactical, or strategic proposition, is itself the truth the debaters seek to ascertain.) Third, in aesthetics, I suspect -- although I have little knowledge of formal, as opposed to casual, aesthetics, and so may be completely mistaken -- that even quite sophisticated arguments about what is beautiful (which I think is a kind of truth) may need to rely on beliefs about what is good or right. It may be that you will simply respond that these are therefore not subjects of *purely* intellectual debate. Then, however, I would say that purely intellectual debate, within your definition, is quite rare and restricted to a few technical subjects such as mathematics and computer science. And even there (I am neither a mathematician nor a programmer) is it really true that some aesthetic propositions -- and therefore ultimately matters of belief -- do not creep in? -- Greg __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com