Out-argued in what sense? Do you think that you wouldn’t be able to see why their arguments were wrong, or just that you wouldn’t be able to persuade an impartial audience that you were more right?
On subjects that I hold strong beliefs in, I anticipate that I could not be out-argued in the first sense. If someone was able to offer such arguments, I would either have to conclude that they were right, or that I didn’t understand the topic as well as I thought I did in the first place, and would have to revise the strength of my beliefs.
I’m not certain that the dividing line between those two senses is as crisp as you make it sound, but I guess I mean something like the latter sense. That is, I can imagine someone articulating their arguments for -P in such a way that their arguments are more compelling than mine are for P, even when P is true.
The dividing line comes from the fact that an impartial audience is not at all the same thing as a rational audience, and there’s a lot more to rhetoric than making arguments that are logically sound and tenable.
Out-argued in what sense? Do you think that you wouldn’t be able to see why their arguments were wrong, or just that you wouldn’t be able to persuade an impartial audience that you were more right?
On subjects that I hold strong beliefs in, I anticipate that I could not be out-argued in the first sense. If someone was able to offer such arguments, I would either have to conclude that they were right, or that I didn’t understand the topic as well as I thought I did in the first place, and would have to revise the strength of my beliefs.
I’m not certain that the dividing line between those two senses is as crisp as you make it sound, but I guess I mean something like the latter sense. That is, I can imagine someone articulating their arguments for -P in such a way that their arguments are more compelling than mine are for P, even when P is true.
The dividing line comes from the fact that an impartial audience is not at all the same thing as a rational audience, and there’s a lot more to rhetoric than making arguments that are logically sound and tenable.