Have you ever read the comments section of an online article or video and wondered how it’s possible for humans to degrade so quickly to childish name-calling and ineffective bickering?

A key element of Good Soldiering is the ability to contest ideas effectively. This means that we need to know how to disagree without dragging the conversation down to the level typical of online comment sections. For this, I want to suggest the following three-step process: respect – identify – argue.

Respect

It’s important to see the end state of disagreement as discovery of the truth, or discovery of the best way forward. If your goal is merely to persuade the other person of your own opinion, you’ll be less open to the possibility that you yourself might have room to move in your opinion. So, the first step in disagreeing effectively is to respect others involved in the disagreement.

Ask yourself: why would reasonable human beings hold a different view to my own on this matter? Try to weigh alternative opinions in their best possible light. There’s nothing to be gained from demolishing a conveniently weak version of an alternative view – if you can’t counter the strongest form of that view, then why are you disagreeing?

I used to teach philosophy at university. When we held debates about ethical topics between teams, I tried requiring each team to identify the best, most convincing elements of the other team’s argument before they were allowed to express disagreement. I found this amazingly effective. Occasionally it resulted in team members changing their minds about a topic. More often, it resulted in them realising they had to sharpen their arguments, because the alternative view was not as thoughtless as they had first assumed.

Identify

A second step for effective disagreement is to identify the critical issue(s) of disagreement. The critical issue might not be what first appears to be the most pressing issue. Let’s use the controversial topic of euthanasia. An advocate of euthanasia might argue, ‘it’s about dignity’; while an opponent of euthanasia might argue, ‘it’s about murder’. These are weighty, emotive issues – how could these people ever have an effective discussion about the issues?

One way is by logically teasing out their views. For ethical issues, this can often be done by identifying the general moral motivation for a position (a ‘moral premise’), identifying a key assumption about the specific topic (a ‘nonmoral premise’), and seeing how these two premises logically result in a specific moral conclusion (‘inference’). For the advocate of euthanasia, a simplified way of teasing out their argument might look like this:

Teasing the logic of the argument out in this way might enable participants in a disagreement to see that their disagreement is not actually about whether or not human dignity matters – presumably both will agree that human dignity is important. Rather, their disagreement might be about whether it is always acceptable to act against nature to preserve human dignity, or whether euthanasia in fact preserves human dignity.

Turning to the opponent of euthanasia, one simplified way of teasing out their argument might look like this:

Again, logically teasing the argument out in this way might enable participants in a disagreement to identify the place(s) of their disagreement and avoid having emotive assertions obscure the issues at stake.

Of course, it may be that you have an intuition that a particular position is right or wrong, but you remain unable to articulate why, logically. If so, you may be onto something – much in life is more complex than can be reduced to analytical arguments. This calls for humility and patience – you may need to simply state your disagreement and admit that you cannot explain it at this time. Simply bringing this unease into the public contest of ideas can be useful – it might draw out alternative perspectives.

Argue

Once you have respectfully understood the position(s) you’re countering and identified the key issue of disagreement, it’s appropriate to make a case for your position. There is no singular way of achieving this, but it will generally be useful to start with common ground and demonstrate how evidence supports your conclusion. You should also be honest about any shortcomings or counter-evidence. This communicates that you are not being unreasonable, and it may encourage those who oppose your view to take you seriously.

Conclusion

Let’s come back to the issue of comments at the end of online articles or videos. Of course, it would be much too cumbersome to go through a detailed version of the process above if you wanted to express disagreement in this sort of context. But it wouldn’t be hard to put its impulses into practice: you can make sure you’re responding to the strongest version of the position that you’re countering (respect); you can zero in on the key issue at stake rather than get distracted by side issues (identify); and you can show how the weight of evidence leads you to your own position (argue).

If Good Soldiering involves the healthy contest of ideas, then it will pay to develop a practice of disagreeing fairly and constructively, whether in online comments or in face-to-face discussions. As the Army in Motion document says, ‘The first place we contest our ideas cannot be on the battlefield’.