The best test of an argument is the argument’s ability to convince someone with an opposing viewpoint.

The best test of an argument is the argument’s ability to convince someone with an opposing viewpoint.

Speaking of techniques and performances in the debate, quite a lot of people are usually in favor of the presenters with more persuasive viewpoint and fluency in elucidation. It sometimes becomes a confusing common sense that the best argument should always be showing off their ability to convince someone with an opposing viewpoint. I’m not concluding that the speaking techniques are not relevant to how an argument is demonstrated, but I beg to differ, with the mistake of the true meaning in debate and argument.

A gradually enriched argument reflects a person’s critical thinking. It needn’t be persuasive enough to muffle the opponents, but should be fully developed, building on the knowledge previously accumulated. The process of arguing is about the development of one’s ability to correlate the truth and also, about the analysis and deductions of the given topics. If some people come up with skeptical views in that an argument should always consider two poles in adversary, I could explain that by comparisons and the competitions of two opposed sides, one could tap into his potential to revise his opinions and, usually put himself in other’s shoes to consider what other persons construct their viewpoints and thoughts. Sometimes a good argument is concerned with logical loopholes finding, it’s a kind of progress both to reshape other’s perspective and make one’s opinion more full-fledged and reasonable.

And there might be a quite confused and controversial facts from our earlier philosopher, who did his best to persuade the opponents and made their perspective more widely-accepted. In my opinion, this kind of phenomenon is just like our initial sages’ the incipient step for truth chasing. There was a time when we are still entrapped by the metaphysical idea without the critical thinking and dialectics, the world, in their eyes only includes right and wrong, both for facts and for the unknown, both for consciousness and the oblivion. What is the real truth? At least from the current opinion, our world, our mind are not totally divided into the two controversial parts. It’s universally acknowledged that, just like what our greatest tutor Marx once put it, the two controversial sides are in the form of contradiction and uniformity. We are not blurring the boundaries, but we are gradually a step closer to what essentially the world should be and a step further to what eventually our society should evolve into.

So, to sum up, the best test of an argument is never its ability to convince someone with an opposing viewpoint. It’s not a process of one side beating the other, but a process where two sides either reach a higher ground, and stimulate more novel ideas to be taken into considerations, while make their own opinions more full-fledged and convincing. Or in other words, the audiences and other listeners are not expecting a thoroughly brilliant victory of either side, but a paradigm where both sides prove others’ value in the competition and reach a clearer and further cognition.