disputation

Etymology

English dispute + -ation, from Old French disputation, from Latin disputatio.

noun

1. The act of disputing; a dispute or argument.
   And like the battles fought over baptism by sprinkling as opposed to total immersion, these modern-day disputations can be tedious. 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, page 13
2. A rhetorical exercise in which parties reason in opposition to each other over a belief or proposition.