The Debater Paradox

[ 05-02-2025 ] [ #debate #philosophy ]

Dear Debater,

I have known your Basic Laws of Debating for three years and a half, but only now have I been able to find the time for yhe thorough study I intend to devote to your writings. I find myself in full accord with you on all main points, especially in your rejection of personal beliefs in judging a debate and in the value you attach to arguments for the foundations of debate and of argumentation, which, incidentally, can hardly be distinguished. On many questions of detail, I find discussions, distinctions and definitions in your writings for which one looks in vain in other debaters. On motions in particular I have been led independently to the same views even in detail. I have encountered a difficulty only on one point. You assert that a motion could be of the form “This House Predict That [X]”. This is what I used to believe, but this view now seems to me dubious because of the following contradiction: Let X be the proposition “the government bench will lose this debate.” Can any bench win a debate with this motion? From either answer follows its contradictory. Let us assume that a team from the government bench wins. This means that they have successfully proved that they would lose, and thus a team from the opposition bench would win. Alternatively, let us assume that a team from the opposition bench wins This means that they have successfully prove that a team from the government bench whold not lose (i.e., would win), and thus that both teams from the opposition bench would lose.

We must therefore conclude that this is not a valid debate. From this I conclude that under certain circumstances a valid motion does not form a valid debate.

I am in the process of completing a book on the principles of debating, and I should like to discuss your work in it in great detail. I already have your books, or I shall buy them soon; but I should be very grateful to you if you could send me offprints of your articles in various journals. But if this should not be possible, I shall get them from a library.

On the fundamental questions where arguments fail, the exact treatment of debate has remained very backward; I find that yours is the best treatment I know in our time; and this is why I have allowed myself to express my deep respect for you. It is very much to be regretted that you did not get around to publishing the second volume of your Basic Laws; but I hope that this will still be done.

Yours sincerely,

tttardigrade

Note: this is an adaptation of Russell’s letter to Frege where he first articulated the set-theoretic paradox that would later be called “Russell’s Paradox”. The original letter is available in Frege’s “Philosophical and Mathematical Correspondence”.