[1] Despite the name, they had nothing to do with ethics or morals but rather dealt with logical formalisms;[2] the name comes from the fact that the participants were "obliged" to follow the rules.
The task of Respondens was to answer rationally to the questions from the Opponens, assuming the truth of the positum and without contradicting himself.
[1] Several styles of Obligationes were distinguished in the medieval literature with the most widely studied being called "positio" (positing).
"Obligational" disputations resemble recent theories of counterfactual reasoning and are believed to precede the modern practice of the academic "thesis defense."
Obligationes also resembles a stylized, highly formalized, version of Socratic dialogues.