Looking Back, Looking Forward: How Is LD Doing?
posted by Jon Cruz on August 10th, 2007
Thirteen years ago, Aaron Timmons wrote an article entitled “Is There Really Any Difference or Is It Our Imagination?” for The Rostrum, exploring and commenting on practices at the time that he felt were detrimental to the health and growth of the activity. One large theme was to talk about “differences” between Lincoln-Douglas debate (then more commonly abbreviated as “L/D”) and policy debate. (You can click here to access it.)
It is interesting to explore which of these practices might still be issues today. What practices outlined in the article do you feel are still issues? What other practices today might be issues as well?
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25 Responses to “Looking Back, Looking Forward: How Is LD Doing?”
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Posted from: 66.233.57.238
August 10th, 2007 19:41
i concur. stop the violence.
Posted from: 71.229.223.222
August 11th, 2007 00:05
This is really interesting, though fairly discouraging in that a majority of the problems (and all of the most significant ones in my mind - disclosure, sponsors on the nationals final round, recognition that not just anyone can judge LD) haven’t been substantively addressed.
Posted from: 67.101.67.230
August 11th, 2007 09:02
As a former policy debater in the late 80s/early 90s at Clear Lake High School in Houston, I was “brought-up” to disfavor LD debate, so Aaron’s article really reminded me of an old mindset that I once, regrettably, had. Aaron uses “learning disabled” as the unfortunate moniker for LD in the early 90s, but I was taught a much harsher one. Suffice it to say, I never even SAW an LD round when I was in high school, but I just knew that I didn’t like it. It was the feminine version of policy debate. I mean, there were no NUKE WAR impacts to weigh!! You couldn’t run Malthus or Growth against everything!!
Now that I’m a debate coach, I have since come to favor LD debate over policy (leave me alone, you CXers!!). Perhaps it’s just me: when I judge LD, I’m usually judging the very best LDers on the national circuit, but when I judge policy, I’m usually languishing in the NCX judging pool, where for the most part I want to die (leave me alone, you NCXers!).
If I have anything to say about the current state of LD debate, it is this: in many rounds I have judged, I have found that, for the most part, the negative has a consistent advantage over the affirmative because of time allotments. And if this is not true, why do I often find debaters “praying” in the hallways that they’ll go neg in outrounds. I would like to see the aff. have more than 4 minutes for their 1AR because too often the 1NR simply (albeit correctly) goes for what the 1AR dropped, and it’s inevitable that the 1AR will drop something. I would even go so far as to say this was evident at this year’s final TOC round (leave me alone, you Diehl lovers–I dig him, too). Maybe a 4 minute 1AR was sufficient when LD was created (because of its slower, more oratorical pace), but now that it’s taken on the speed and “nuances” of CX debate, I think it’s time to consider a change in time allotments. Am I crazy???
Posted from: 71.36.200.64
August 11th, 2007 13:52
I think a change in time allotments would make rounds more fair and give less of an incentive for 1AR strats that are extending a sentence from the framework, a sentence stuck somewhere in the middle of the case and another half sentence right after a card to make a syllogism.
I remember hearing about an experiment (possibly at the Skyway RR) that was a 5 min AC and a 5 min 1AR. How did that end up turning out?
Posted from: 70.216.118.227
August 12th, 2007 11:00
I agree with Travis on the neg advantage and would argue that this is the number one issue driving LD today. Affirmatives are combatting by running five minutes of framework and narrowing the debate down to ground that they want to defend. Not sure I enjoy this debate as I saw less and less “topic” debate and more and more theory.
Posted from: 63.246.171.93
August 12th, 2007 22:57
I think that there would be a few problems with making the 1AR a minute longer or something.
First, the negative would still have a time advantage–the NC remains 7 minutes against the ARs 5. Moreover, affirmatives might become lazy with the extra time, and sink further into disadvantage. Either this or the affirmative would then have the advantage because of how everyone has intensely drilled the AR to be the fastest, most efficient/devastating speech–adding a minute could unleash a tiger.
Second, where would the fun, the adrenalin rush, the “myth to be recaptured” be if we added a minute to the AR? Its definitely one of the most badass speeches there is, since everyone knows that it is ridiculously difficult.
Finally, i don’t think that the objections raised to current AC strategy (lots of framework, spikes, pre-standards) would be solved by an extra minute. It still wouldn’t eliminate the time advantage, so these devices would still be necessary, and there is a certain inertia to the current trend that makes it hard to stop this progression.
These objections aside, I think it sill might be fun to try it out… I’d be interested to hear what people thought of the Skyway RR.
Posted from: 66.233.57.238
August 13th, 2007 02:12
you made me cry.
Posted from: 216.51.179.190
August 13th, 2007 06:27
The Iowa Caucus in Cedar Rapids tried the time change several years ago, and the affirmative absolutely dominated. The time allocation for aff was 5-5-3. I don’t remember the actural numbers, but it might have approached 80%.
I love all debate and try to coach all types. What worries me about LD right now is that it is taking the turn that policy did in the 80’s with little issue debate and all kinds of tricky arguments hidden in the flow.
For the most part, this works to the advantage of those who can afford to go to camp or travel the national circuit. Good debate does not need this minutia. That is a reason to stop it, but that is not the most important reason. Last year on the health care topic, I was appalled at the lack of health care knowledge the competitors had. I judged into out rounds at the Mid-America Cup at Valley, some of the best debaters in the nation, and they had no idea how health care really wored. Maybe LD is theoretical, but I believe this lack of knoweldge limits the value of the activity.
It worries me that we have a topic area that does not need to be researched or understood to win a tournament. This happens in policy too, and I blame this lack of topic knowledge as a reason we have so few policy teams in the country today.
Ten years from now, we may see LD going the way of policy where it is a minor event at many tournaments. Public Forum is evolving, but so far its biggest draw for me is that it stays on topic.
I still believe that LD should be judged by an expert judge. I also believe the expert judge should tell the debaters how they will judge the round.
We cannot make debate an elitist activity if we want to continue to get funds from the public. We need theory work that shows that debating the issues is more important than some random aprior issue that is hidden in the second sub point of the third contention.
Posted from: 69.181.125.125
August 13th, 2007 12:35
two things:
1) i wholeheartedly agree that LDers need a much stronger empirical grounding in the topic. this might just be residual hatred from the corporations topic speaking, but i think that LD has definitely come to fetishize a very narrow philosophical focus that seeks to resolve ethical conflicts at an almost unrecognizable level of abstraction. i also think that the current focus on “truth-testing” has led to narrow-mindedly literal approaches to topics that arent conducive to good, real-world debate, although theres some momentum building up against this approach.
2) i think that the 80% statistic about 5-5-3 is a bit disconcerting, but i also think that some of the imbalance might be because negatives have been so used to volume and attrition-based strategies. over time, there’s a good chance the W/L ratio will even out as negatives realize they have to adopt more substantive, responsive strategies in order to win.
Posted from: 69.118.234.129
August 13th, 2007 13:54
i strongly agree with smitty’s #1- even if it is, as he says, just residual hatred from the corporations topic, hopefully that topic will be a watershed in the development of LD- i’d like to think that most people who judged circuit rounds on that topic saw the need for future topics with terms of art and began to dislike silly prestandards arguments.
one other thing i’d like to add is that negative presumption has gotten a little bit out of hand. in addition to time advantage, most negatives now just need to win defense against an aff framework in order to win. to me, forcing negs to justify presumption in-round and/or extend offense would be a step in right direction and help begin to even things out.
Posted from: 75.168.14.202
August 13th, 2007 15:50
I just think people haven’t learned how to affirm well. Affirmatives seem so often to try and use the strategy negatives do. And in that game, the negative will almost always win. Affirmatives need to actually use some strategy and not just try to out line by line negatives.
Posted from: 129.15.131.248
August 13th, 2007 16:17
LD needs mad help
Posted from: 69.107.88.188
August 14th, 2007 00:57
oh man i just wrote a big long post, accidentally hit a button, and it all was gone. i’ll try and rewrite it more succinctly.
many of the reasons the time advantage is so problematic are inherent to the way ld works. there is a bigger time advantage for the neg block in policy (13min to 5min in policy, 7-4 in ld), yet many policy teams prefer to flip aff in outrounds. the main reason why teams decide to flip aff seems to be better preparation, since the neg is forced to debate on aff ground (or at least link directly to the aff plan in the case of Ks, D/As, and T). in ld, negs run “offcases” that have some random link to the resolution, thus forcing the 1AR to be mainly on neg ground. any theory against it is usually worthless, as negs can use the time advantage in the 2N to dump tons of answers on the theory to deter 2ARs from going for it and then win on issues that went dropped as the 1AR had to take the time for the theory. also, policy topics last all year and policy teams don’t run nearly the number of cases lders run. in ld, the topic changes every two months and debaters are always afraid of the terrible prep-out, so they write and run tons of different cases. in policy, teams prepare huge amounts of answers and become extremely familiar with the plans they run over the course of the year.
thus the problem seems to be mainly with the way ld has come to be understood in terms of how positions can be run, and what is acceptable and unacceptable. the time advantage only fuels the problem which then fuels the time disadvantage. if policy is able to work with the huge time disadvantage for the 1AR and LD cannot, the problem most likely lies within LD itself. therefore, i don’t think that giving the 1AR extra time will really solve the neg bias problem in LD. if we really want to solve the problem, we really need to re-examine how LD works, what we allow and don’t allow, and where LD is going.
in my opinion, when judging, we need to place more emphasis on encouraging more innovation and better strategy on aff while also raising the burden of proof for accepting neg arguments as voters to prevent negs from winning off random little extensions out of the nc. and it wouldn’t hurt to force negs to actually articulate and win reasons why the judge should presume neg.
(i hope this all makes sense… im tired and was typing a sentence or two at a time while watching tv)
Posted from: 205.188.116.76
August 14th, 2007 06:22
1) I think it is funny that we now have great disdain for PFD in the same fashion that Policy kids have for us. Ironically, PFD also tries to steal things from LD to give them an “edge” in rounds. Does this not mean that the natural progression of timed/competitive debates is a policy like event?
2) More than an empirical understanding of the topic, debaters need to grasp basic philosophical concepts like the social contract, categorical imperative, etc. This is obviously not an either/or thing; rather, a good debater must do both but, teach a man about eminent domain and he will debate for a topic; teach a man about the social contract and he can construct arguments on any topic.
3) I know this is an unpopular idea but why does LD have to be accessible to everyone? I mean people have natural proclivities to many different things. I had the ability to be an offensive lineman, a competitive eater or a debater. No matter how “inclusive” the activity of jogging is…I’ll never be any good at it–trust me I’m trying real hard. Project Impact and the UDL are great programs and it is horrific that people are excluded from an activity that has given, at least me, a whole lot, for financial reasons but we live in an imperfect world.
4) Should we be surprised that we are often dissatisfied with debates in general? I mean look at the presidential debates (and they are supposed to lead us!). I think some of our dissatisfaction–at least my personal one–stems from the nature of timed, winner-take-all debates: it is simply an exercise in sophistry and not an attempt to arrive at truth (which relies on compilation rather than competition). Hope everyone is having a great time at Session 2 and enjoying the last few days of summer as they slip away…
Posted from: 205.188.116.76
August 14th, 2007 06:22
By the way…when does the new topic come out?
Posted from: 202.63.109.2
August 14th, 2007 07:46
The fifteenth of August.
I think the idea of affirming shouldn’t be proving that the idea is true, but should be proving that it should be good to believe in.
I don’t know, I’ll write it and see how the circuit responds.
Posted from: 66.233.57.238
August 14th, 2007 08:50
i really was intrigued by what swanson had to say, shortened version or not. i think the solution to the problems he raises is truly in changing our mindset, not time changes or waiting for someone to invent a bomb new strategy. that said, i feel that as a temporary corrective it would be helpful to A. buy into the idea of Aff presumption, which appears to have a little more force in policy, thus helping to offset negative shit (as in, the negative has the burden of proof on their janky offcase and theory) and B. actively attempt and allow others to attempt new methods of affirming and negating. i think the worst possible outcome for LD would be for it to stagnate, especially in this form, and stop evolving/changing. i know that one of the big fears of attempting new things is the competitive disincentive as judges won’t be familiar with them or simply won’t like them as much as things they are familiar with.
Posted from: 128.36.76.38
August 14th, 2007 14:18
A lot of the problem is that LD hasn’t articulated a coherent set of rules or standards for what it means to affirm or negate–hence, the aff gets screwed because they have to not only defend the resolution as stated, but also waste 1ar time trying to disprove the ‘truth statement’ paradigm…. so like affs get stuck with defending their right to talk about the topic directly and then on top of that, off case arguments, ks of morality/language crap, etc.
Meanwhile, negs can to pick apart any assumption of the resolution, no matter how idiotic or unfair, and win by default. This is one of the reasons I don’t use a neg default paradigm–if neither debater wins, I just intervene for the position I find more persuasive. Still, if we want debates to be about the topic we need to form some consensus rules (or even official ones) about what it means to affirm and negate. Is negating simply asking impossible epistemological or semiotic questions of the aff, or does the neg have to defend a particular policy or philosophical stance?
Lders and coaches hate prescribing a set of rules on the activity, but you can’t have it both ways: at one end, cry about the lack of substance and coherence of debates, but yet fail to give debaters GUIDELINES for
how they are supposed to conceptualize what their obligations are for the round.
Even the NFL’s guidelines fall short of prescribing their rules as ironclad, they say that their rules (outside of districts and
nationals) are “suggestions.” Why are we so afraid of giving debaters direction about what they are supposed to do?
If we want to leave LD as a rule-less, free for all activity, don’t be surprised when the rounds act like free for alls too. No wonder affs are nothing but a vomit fest of worthless and stupid assertsions about theory/framework–what the heck else are they supposed to do when they have been given NO HELP in figuring out what they are responsible for?
If I’m aff and I have to defend the existence of language OR morality OR justice AND THEN the resolution, I’d do the exact same thing.
Unless LD forms a set of rules and guidelines QUICKLY… more and more people will see it as a lost, directionless, inaccessible and pointless activity and run to public forum (despite how much I love LD and have taught it for 10 years).
Heck, I’m even tempted to shift my efforts to PFD myself…
Posted from: 24.12.175.184
August 14th, 2007 15:15
I dunno Anthony. I do think that while affs are given impossible burdens, they have plenty of ways to respond. Affs just have to be more strategic. Of course this opens us up to “bad debate,” but that can be solved over time. For instance by running fairly good theory shells on abusive a prioris you discourage negative debaters from running supposedly no risk positions. I mean, Spirtos effectively proved this when he kept on running, and winning with, the ellipses K. people have, for the most part, stopped using ellipses and have full source cites.
Oh, I was at the Skyway RR and I thought that the 5 min 1AR was nice but the 5 min AC was a great disadvantage. A lot of the extensions that you have to make in the 1AR come from how well developed the 1AC is. And if you have to cut out an entire minute of the 1AC it really messes up 1AR strat.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that negating is easier than affirming, but that has a lot to do with how we approach affirmative strategy. Simply adding “rules” to the activity will just make people despise them more and only serves to limit argumentation. Debate is supposed to be an open forum for students to discuss any issue relevant to the resolution. I think some of that problem can be fixed by wording topics significantly better. By proposing topics with fewer problems in them that negs can easily find then affs can win rounds much more often.
Over all though, I think abusive negative practices can, and should, be checked back by aff debaters and the resolutions we use and not simply by imposing arbitrary rules of “no running wittgenstein on every topic,” etc… When neg debaters realize that a majority of judges agree that their practices are too abusive then most will stop running them for sake of losing the round. When it becomes harder to defend multiple a prioris and questioning the ability of the resolution to exist then neg debaters will run strats that are more tailored to the the AC. I mean, there’s still a time disadvantage to the affirmative, but affs have to start taking advantage of their speaches. It may be that this isn’t sufficient, but its definitely a start.
Posted from: 69.181.125.125
August 14th, 2007 17:05
not that it’s important, but i refuse to believe that a 5 minute 1AC puts the aff at any sort of disadvantage. in 2003, 2004, and 2005, affirmative cases were regularly 1000 to 1200 words (some were longer, granted) and a lot of judges expected the AC to be read at conversational speed–yet affs won just as much, if not more, than they do now throughout most of that period.
“but wait”, you ask, “how can i fit everything into 1000 to 1200 words? that’s impossible!” there are several ways:
1) cut out framework arguments. believe it or not, you can make your cases shorter and more effective by saving many of your framework arguments for the 1ar, and most judges find that aff cases have way too many framework args.
“but wait, i thought ‘going new’ in the 1ar was bad.”
no. this is dumb. a complete advocacy shift in the 1ar might be bad. making theory arguments for the first time in the 1ar, not bad.
“how can i extend my spikes if they’re not in the ac?”
well, you can’t, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make the arguments and win with them. if your arguments in the 1ar and 2ar are good, chances are you can win, even if they’re not inadvertently dropped. besides, if the NC turns all your theory arguments, having them there wasn’t very helpful anyways.
2) make fewer and more strategic case arguments. if you make fewer arguments, you can cut out your worse ones, leaving yourself only with arguments that are intuitive, persuasive, and easy to advance in the 1ar and 2ar. there is no reason to have five arguments that serve the same strategic function if you can make one or two of them instead. also, the old cliche about writing cases from the 2ar makes a lot of sense, and using strategic setup arguments (carded examples to empirically deny arguments or set up timeframe/magnitude comparisons, carded arguments that serve as offense on common neg positions, etc.) makes a lot more sense than making 5 distinct arguments that all serve the same strategic function and are all turnable.
Posted from: 38.118.12.10
August 14th, 2007 18:05
I agree 100% with Alex’s post above.
I’ve never understood the fetish of stacking the AC with so many arguments in hopes one will be missed. That only makes sense in a world in which the AC is going for spreading out the NC — which is problematic given the 1AR. The strategy generally works when Aff debater is significantly faster than the Neg debater and there is a flow judge — but I suspect that the sheer efficiency would work in that case regardless of the structure of the AC. Moreover, these kind of AC’s often lead to flow messes (when there is a general parity in efficiency) and those don’t tend to favor Affs.
Seems like it makes a lot more sense to develop a couple (or one) strong argument in the AC. And, as an aside, I think those cases — the tighter positional ones — often make NC non-responsive strategies look even more absurd.
Just my 2 cents - more importantly, Alex’s post is dead on.
Posted from: 69.107.88.188
August 14th, 2007 21:23
this topic is of particular interest to me since i struggled with finding the identity and general guidelines of ld after i switched from policy to ld about a year ago.
when i first began and learned about framework, i always wrote insanely long frameworks to make my burdens as easy as possible to achieve and to hide little neg case killing pre-empts in hopes that an applicable nc would drop them. then i realized that most of the time, such giant frameworks were useless against negatives and only angered judges. i learned that frameworks should be limited as much as possible and to only include the arguments necessary to set up the case and a few arguments to prevent neg abuse. as a result i noticed a dramatic increase in my speaker points, and judges seemed to enjoy the rounds much more. what i’m trying to say here, is that i definitely agree with alex, although i still believe that these are just tiny steps toward solving a large problem.
Posted from: 128.36.76.38
August 14th, 2007 21:35
I agree with Alex and Anjan’s posts, and hopefully next year’s topics won’t be as disasterous for affirming as corporations was…
Still, I disagree with Kamil in that the capacity for the aff to win on theory shells is relatively limited.
For example, there’s only so much time the 1ar has to defend against morality doesn’t exist, or justice doesnt exist… or the “resolution is nonsensical” on top of the duty to prove the resolution. Many of the theory debates I’ve seen, you can simply spread out the aff with putting out more pre-written ink about fairness, education, etc.
Not to mention those people in the rest of the country who do LD (i.e. the ppl not in the uber-progressive circuit of the activity), who may be brilliant…and know the topic inside out, who have no idea that buzz words like “fairness” or “education” or really arguments worth talking about.
I know this after having spent 4 weeks of camp trying to teach otherwise, well experienced debaters, what the heck is going on in LD.
In the abstract this is all great and wonderful–we are expanding into new argument forms and LD is this big methodological free for all, but having to actually teach people how to understand it, and deal with it in round is another matter–not to mention having to explain the about billions of different possible permutations and bastardizations of these arguments, and how to deal with all of them. It’s no longer enough to know the topic, research it and make a clear position, you also have to be ready for defending advocacies
that are at best, tangential to the resolution, and at worst, undescribable given proper internet posting etiquette concerning professional language.
In a la-la land, we could all write the best theory blocks and answers for these kinds of positions, but that’s not how it happens. In a world of neg presumption, the aff is already behind the wall–if you beat back all the off case and “skeptic” arguments in 4 minutes (which is HARD to do) then you still haven’t gotten enough “offense” to win (the term judges on the circuit like using as an RFD, as in “you don’t have any offense left”). Therefore, you lose. (and even RVIs don’t work, because I hear from “progressive” Ld judges how “RVIs are hella lame man.”)
Now while the top debaters may handle these issues well, we have to remember that the “top” debaters are a relatively small bunch, and that LD is done by the other 98% percent of people who travel on the circuit at tournaments too. They don’t all have top-notch college kids to translate the goobleygook of “we are people before we are debaters” or to tell them what is happening when these “shells” get run on them in round, and hence, those people run to public forum, just as many people ran to LD when policy turned crazy and inaccessible.
In terms of the “make the topics better” option Kamil talks about, sure I agree, and the wording committee did a great job of it, but I saw on even two VERY CLEARLY written, ground specified topics debaters running arguments this summer that were at best, grade level applications of the theory they were used to runnings on other topics. It’s not even enough
to hear these arguments in policy to know what’s going on in LD because the methodological links are never made by “progressive” arguments to explain how they function in debate rounds. (i.e. how does CP theory or VIC theory work in a world WITHOUT A PLAN?)
I mean of course there’s a debate about if this is really a problem or not, and we’ll all disagree about that. The problem is that again we can’t have it both ways–to debate and let LD be a free for all of nonsense, and then act surprised when people vote with their feet to other activities that actually *gasp* debate about the topic they are given, instead of if “fairness is a gateway issue.”
Posted from: 128.36.76.38
August 14th, 2007 22:12
Also, on Kamil’s post, I’m not sure why limiting argumentation is a bad thing, especially given the following statement: “relevant to the resolution.”
Resolutions are generally written (again, the corporations topic is an exception here) with a particular context, and you are asked to advocate some kind of philosophical discussion within it (even if that context is flawed).
Many of the same people who oppose “rules in LD” oppose being restrained to the resolution as written. Also, many of the skeptical arguments that are prevalent on the circuit (and win… A LOT), often don’t have anything to do with the resolutional context, and hence we hear them over and over (examples of which I’ve already said).
Perhaps a little perspective is needed: in other speaking events there are rules about what you talk about: in extemp, you are held very tightly to the question you are asked, and judges will penalize you heavily by going on a tangent. In apda parli, you can write whatever case you want, but you are *explicitly* allowed to parameterize, so everyone knows what you are supposed to do as the aff (or “Government” side). In Congress you debate about the bill or resolution given, and can be struck out of order, or disqualified altogether if you give a speech irrelevant to the motion at hand.
I still haven’t heard an argument about why LD, in particular, should be so afraid to limit argumentation to the bounds given by the topic. Yes, people don’t like limits or being told they can’t scream about if people exist as their 7 minute NC. I’m still not hearing the argument as to why that’s a bad thing. If LD is really a “free forum” with no limits, why can’t I just make dolphin noises, strip to my boxers, or break dance on the floor and call that my advocacy?
There’s no reason why the position that LD is an open forum for all ideas necessarily has the restraint that Kamil says is “relevance to the resolution” in fact that claim is quite empirically denied as many of the same advocates for “super progressive arguments” explicitly defend their right to talk about things that aren’t resolutionally relevant (or at best may be super tangentially so).
In terms of the “have more strategic 1acs” idea, that’s great except, when NCs argue advocacies that make the 1ac totally worthless. For example, on a topic about health care, it really sucks if you wrote 6 minutes of well warranted and evidenced analysis, when the NC runs “abolish the state.” (even though such a position says nothing about what a state should do if it exists…and if that includes health care).
As a result, I find that later stages of debates no longer talk about the cases, and crystallization/telling a story, those are extinct concepts. As a judge, I find it hard to pay attention to cases that have, as Alex correctly pointed out (on both sides) turned into such vague levels of abstraction that they can’t be followed. In terms of in case organization, I find sometimes that cases are harder to organized and follow than reading Judith Butler. I mean this to some is great debate and that’s fine, but let’s recognize the situation for what it is, instead of acting like someone can be very big picture, win a lot
and then do all the tech/delivery skills and relevance to the resolution as we want.
A few handfuls of people can, but the rest of
the LD population gets left out.
Yes, JR is right, accessibility isn’t an inherent good, but it is an instrumental one. When people can’t follow LD rounds, when they lose the ability to know how to prepare for them, or when debates turn so esoteric that only a metaphysics prof can full articulate RFDs, we have a problem—a very, very big problem.
Posted from: 38.117.182.130
August 15th, 2007 10:45
I have always liked debate theory of a certain sort, and disliked debate theory of another sort.
I like debate theory which starts with the assumption that a deliberative being (the judge) is deciding on a certain proposition. The advocates role is to aid in that deliberation, and the resulting theory arguments impact to that deliberative process (e.g., argument x or approach y detracts or enhances the ability to deliberate on propositions).
I dislike debate theory which starts with an assumption that debate theory is about structuring a competition which declares a winner and loser, and then impacts to the fairness or “objectiveness” of that process (e.g., argument x or approach y interferes with the system of declaring a winner and loser).
The advantage of the former is that it positions debate as, as I think it should be, as a philosophical exercise. The advantage of the latter is that, unlike the former, it is not artifical - in fact, we can talk about and decide upon a set of competitive rules designed to fairly and objectively declare winners and losers, apply such rules, and then declare the winners and losers. The system is closed, but consistent.
My preference for the deliberative approach is subjective. I acknowledge that without a set of clearly defined rules applied by “experts” in the application of those rules, there is a chance that reasonable people might disagree about the “winner” and “loser” of debate rounds.
My query as to the competitive approach is why is it a desirable thing - why should we care about the winner and loser of debate rounds determined by the application of rules which are pre-set and applied only by experts in those rules? For all of the criticism of “education” (which I will acknowledge is a both loaded and meaningless term), I never really see the answer to the question about what is so damn important about the game?
My worry about rules for debate is that the two theory assumptions described above collapses in to one another…the definition of the rules and the game become in the minds of the participants what it is to deliberate on propositions (privileging immensely the “experts” who decide winners and losers). I think this is incredibly dangerous. See, e.g., every closed ideological system which purports to provide answers to meaningful questions.