eristic

• What he wanted to do was to study the truth for its own sake, without having to think of and be hindered by the exposure of errors; and above all, to seize it in all its breadth and all its depths, to have done with this blighting and irritating eristic, and to reflect in a vast Mirror the whole and purest light of the sacred dogmas. —  Saint Augustin
• When does it collapse into the Babel of trolling, the pointless and eristic game of talking the other guy into crying "uncle"? —  The Moderate Voice
• They are adept at campaigning, and despite awareness of the tactics, adopting Rove's guidelines remains an effective, albeit eristic, tool for them. was merely the exectution and staging of a speech she didn't write. —  Zennie62: The Blog Report On CoLoursTV - Politics News Media Tech Blog
• The first book forms in truth an eristic, a destructive or negative, Dialogue (such as we have other examples of) in which the whole business might have concluded, prematurely, with an exposure of the inadequacy, alike of common-sense as represented by Simonides, and of a sophisticated philosophy as represented by Thrasymachus, to define Justice. —  Plato and Platonism
• Or it lapses into "eristic"--into an argument for its own sake; or sinks into logomachy, a mere dispute about words. —  Plato and Platonism

Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms