If you can't defend an idea in an open and honest debate with someone, do you even really believe it?
Discussion
If you can't debate the idea well. You don't understand it
Defend, or successfully defend?
Depends on how you define success. I've had plenty of what I consider productive debates, where I feel like I learned something and the other person learned something, but we didn't necessarily come to accord. So I don't mean "win", if that's what's meant by success.
Some people are better debaters than others. Having belief in an idea doesn’t always mean you have to be able to defend it.
The thing is, it’s not even really about whether you can defend it to others. It’s whether you can defend it to yourself. That’s intellectual honesty. If all one does is listen to people they agree with, and read arguments that re-inforce their belief, and block out countervailing viewpoints, I think that’s tantamount to lying to one’s self.
It depends on the subject. Are we talking about things like crypto projects or are we talking about “how do you know good thing is good” type of stuff?
With the latter, knowing is different from showing.
I like Common Sense Realism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_common_sense_realism
Well, I subscribe to Hume's moral skepticism, and I am not generally a fan, like Hume, of a priori reasoning at all. So I think the view generally can apply to everything.
Obviously, I'm not interested in debating whether the sky is blue. But when it comes to ideology, politics, culture and ethics ... I take nothing for granted in these domains.
I think this kind of “evidence based virtue” is how you end up with a whole host of heinous ideas. Just look how the 20th century french philosophers ended up haha
yes, defending an idea in a debate has nothing to do with belief
A belief that can't be defended, seems like a pretty empty concept to me.
maybe, or maybe someone else who believes the same thing is just a more skilled debater and would be better at that task of filling in the concept for you
I don't think being able to defend a belief has anything to do with being a skilled debater. Because the point is not about being able to win debates. It's about being able to defend your beliefs, by showing that they have consideration, and some rational foundation. It's not even about convincing people. It's about convincing yourself. But more importantly, being brave enough to consider you might be wrong.
To double down on this: I would probably consider a lot of "skilled debaters", con artists and bullshit artists. People who can win debates through pure emotional appeal and fallacies that average people fall for. I wouldn't consider such a skilled debater to be having an open and honest debate. So this is really not my point.