Those who have been following my thread of contributions on ‘Right and Wrong’ might be wondering why I choose to lay any value upon the attribute of persistence. After all, I am the one who had written about the value of accepting situations where the self is in the wrong, in the name of improvement and goodwill.

This is true, and I stand by what I wrote on the topic. However one cannot ignore that quite a few of the more important achievements of humanity were only made possible through dogged persistence and a refusal to cede defeat. This seeming contradiction is not truly a contradiction however, as it is perfectly possible to be persistent and yet not contravening of one’s responsibility to cede when one is errant. Likewise it is perfectly possible to cede defeat when persistence would have been the more fruitful path to have taken.

The determining factor as to the appropriateness or otherwise of any such action is the degree to which one is proven to be right or wrong. If one is refuted in one’s claims and there is no plausible way to rechallenge  the circumstances of that refutation then it makes very little sense to persist until such a time comes when one can reasonably issue a challenge. If one is not refuted in one’s claims then, regardless of how many persons think that your claims have been refuted, it remains plausible to persist until such a refutation should come about.

Such is not to say that it is acceptable to divert attention away from the weak paint in one’s argument - such might be the crucial point which makes or breaks it. While it is possible to substitute the failure of such a point with the support of another it is generally preferable to offer up radically-altered arguments as a fresh argument on another date or instance, this allowing for the minimum of confusion between related arguments.

This, of course, presumes that the mechanisms for debate are in  good health. Unfortunately this, more often than not, is not the case. This is possibly why we witness such low quality debates in fora that are supposed to be relatively well-organized.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 1st, 2007 at 10:09 pm and is filed under A matter of perspective. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.