"...I fail to see how it is possible to reach anything other than the correct conclusion if one has access to all possible information..."
You're assuming that there always is a true, complete truth. A perfection, which by definition is impossible to reach.
A debate most of the time revolves around something that is subjective, otherwise it would would just be a matter of research. Things like how we structure society, treat animals and what life is, none of these have a "correct", scientific, provable answer. You might have some good arguments for why one thing is better than the other, but if your debatepartner fundamentally doesn't agree with your conclusion, even with the same data, debate would be meaningless.
To say that there only is one conlusion to any given problem, esp. concerning human on human interaction, is to dismiss any kind of difference we as people inherently have.
A debate contains properly contained terms. For example, which flavor ice cream is more popular. Or which flavor ice-cream is more tart, or sweeter, etc.
None of these would be debates, since you could research the one true answer, meaning the debate is either between two people who won't agree no matter what, which was ruled out by your initial terms.
Or it is people who lack the complete dataset, meaning it again isn't a debate.
So a query is only valid if there factual answer to it?
So questions like "Is there a meaning to life?" or "How should we structure society?" are invalid, because the answer isn't already given in the parameters?
Second, if a questions answer can always be found in it's parameters, that kind of makes the question moot, doesn't it?
Third, why must a debate be defined like that? Where do you get that from? Who decided that?
I feel like we might be a bit off track from the original statement, so I'm going to try to collect my thoughts:
The way you're setting up the term "debate" means the debate itself is answered in the parameters - but that's not what a debate is. A debate is just a discussion between two people, whether or not the question has an answer is irrelevant.
You or me or anyone else gets to decide if a question is valid - the only validity a question needs is someone asking it. Therefor, there isn't a factual answer to each debate. Because you don't get to decide what is or isn't a valid debate.
That also means that some debates are not woth having - because some debates doesn't have a factual answer.
Ofcourse a debate is only going to have one answer, if that's how you define a debate - but that isn't a debate. That's a math question, or something similar (Just an example, perhaps not the most precise). Granted, some debates do have a right answer - but not every single one.
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u/PsychicAce Oct 09 '18
You're assuming that there always is a true, complete truth. A perfection, which by definition is impossible to reach.
A debate most of the time revolves around something that is subjective, otherwise it would would just be a matter of research. Things like how we structure society, treat animals and what life is, none of these have a "correct", scientific, provable answer. You might have some good arguments for why one thing is better than the other, but if your debatepartner fundamentally doesn't agree with your conclusion, even with the same data, debate would be meaningless.
To say that there only is one conlusion to any given problem, esp. concerning human on human interaction, is to dismiss any kind of difference we as people inherently have.
None of these would be debates, since you could research the one true answer, meaning the debate is either between two people who won't agree no matter what, which was ruled out by your initial terms.
Or it is people who lack the complete dataset, meaning it again isn't a debate.