Truth, Comparison, and Justification in LD Debate
A New Article by Eric Palmer
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — At the start of the month, Adam Nelson — director of debate at the Harker School in California — published an article entitled “Towards a Comprehensive Theory of Lincoln-Douglas Debate.” That article generated some discussion here on VBD and elsewhere.
Today, Eric Palmer — director of debate at Mountain View-Los Altos — contributes his thoughts on the debate over debate in a new article.
Full text follows:
Lincoln-Douglas debate characteristically faces periodic and largely intractable identity crises. This is perhaps natural, given that LD is often defined merely in terms of its perceived opposition to its older sibling, Policy Debate. This sentiment finds its most obvious expression in the oft-lampooned mantra “this is LD not policy!” What is needed to give sense to this expression is an account of what exactly makes LD distinct from Policy, or any other form of debate, for that matter. This issue is, in my view, at the heart of recent disputes about the role of debate theory, “pre-standards” issues, skeptical argumentation, and perhaps critiques as well. To be sure, these disagreements are likely amplified by the factious (and thoroughly regrettable) culture which currently plagues national circuit debate, but perhaps one might hope that efforts towards furnishing an intellectual center for LD might help us regain our lost sense of unity otherwise.
These broader aspirations may be hopelessly naïve, but it is still, I think, worthwhile to consider the prospects of grounding LD in some fundamental picture of what counts as good or worthwhile debate. One such proposal is the “comparing worldviews” paradigm, most recently defended by Adam Nelson. The animating notion behind this position is that the burden of the affirmative is not to defend the resolution as true (and consequently, the burden of the negative is not to say that the resolution is false), but rather to argue that it would be good for people to use the resolution as a principle governing conduct. This idea is not unique to him: Michael Mangus developed a similar proposal roughly a year ago. My aim here is to state some potential problems for this view and to recommend a potential alternative.
The comparing worlds paradigm is distinguished by two basic elements. These are:
(A) The supposition that debates should not concern whether or not the resolution is true or false, but whether or not people (or governments, depending on the wording of the topic) should act on the resolution. In other words, we should compare which world (affirmative or negative) we should want to live in.
(B) A repudiation of standards debate in favor of the “direct comparison” of impacts.
It is worthwhile to note that these elements are logically independent of one another, that is, acceptance of one does not entail acceptance of the other, and vice versa. One might think that debates ought to concern whether or not we should act on the resolution without supposing that the best method of ascertaining what we should do follows from a “direct comparison” of the impacts of acting on the resolution or failing to do so, and one might likewise reject the value criterion model without supposing that resolutions are not truth-apt. My own view will involve a rejection of (A) coupled with a qualified acceptance of (B). I share the comparing worlds view’s rejection of standards debate, as it is currently conceived, but I think the notion of “direct comparison” of impacts is suspect.
To unpack the first claim, it is worthwhile to consider precisely what proposition the truth-testing and comparative paradigms commit the affirmative to defending. Mangus says that this claim requires that we debate about whether “[the resolution] would be a good maxim for people to follow.” To make sense of this idea, consider the resolution “It is just for the United States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations that pose a threat.” What the truth-tester thinks the affirmative’s basic position can be given as follows:
Truth-Testing: The sentence “It is just for the United States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations that pose a threat” is true.
For the comparative view, I suggest the following parallel analysis:
Comparing worlds: We ought to act as though the sentence “It is just for the United States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations that pose a threat” is true.
This analysis requires some further modifications. For one, the word “we” requires the specification of a referent for the thesis to have any significance. The operative “we” could be human beings or rational agents in general, or one might want to replace the expression altogether with the agent embedded in the resolution (in this case, the United States). I assume this problem can be rectified by considering particular topics. Topics which do not state an agent of action may be read in the broader, unrestricted sense (as applying to human beings or rational agents generally).
Now one might naturally ask why I have implied that the comparativist should hold that agents ought to act as though the resolution is true. There is a straightforward route to this conclusion. Mangus’s claim that the resolution should be affirmed if “it would be a good maxim to follow” may be interpreted as stating that the resolution should be affirmed if it would be good for us to believe. This is because of the action-guiding character of beliefs: when we accord with a principle in action, it is presumably because we believe that principle to be true. If I pull a drowning child from the water and say that I did so because I accept the principle “save innocent lives,” my action and my avowal of the principle guiding my actions are (at least in normal circumstances) to be explained by my belief that I should save innocent lives. Now, one functional characterization of what it is to have a belief runs as follows: an agent believes a proposition p only if that agent acts as though p is true. To see why this is so, consider the previous example: I am credited with believing the proposition one should save innocent lives because I act as though that proposition is true. I prevent kids from drowning, and I assert things like “one should save innocent lives.”
With this analysis on the table, we can state an objection to the view. Call this objection no difference. One of the touted benefits of the comparing worlds theory is that it allows us to undercut skeptical arguments about whether, say, objective moral norms exist. Even if there are no objective moral norms, it might be desirable for us to act as though there were, or so the reply goes. The problem is that the claim which the affirmative defends on the comparative view (“we ought to act as though the resolution is true”) is still false if there are no moral norms. The “ought” which occurs in the proposition expresses an objective, action-guiding requirement for rational agents (or whatever other agent is substituted). If there are no facts about what we ought to do, then the affirmative cannot show that we ought to act as though we believe some proposition to be true. In other words, the comparing worlds paradigm only pushes the problem back from the direct question of whether a certain principle governing how we ought to act is true, to the second-order question of whether it is true that we ought to act as though a certain principle is true.
At this point a defender of comparing worlds might reply: “sure, by winning a moral skepticism argument the negative might successfully undermine the affirmative’s reasons for thinking that we should act as though the resolution is true, but on our account, to negate requires showing that we should act as though the resolution is not true, so the negative has only succeeded in showing that there is no reason to affirm or negate.” The immediate problem with this reply is that it allows debaters, whether affirmative or negative, to immediately force a resolution of the round via presumption by winning a moral skepticism argument. The affirmative could do this by extending the negative answers to the affirmative case then answering the negative case with “the NC says we should not act as though the resolution is true, but there are no facts about what we should and should not do, so decide on presumption” and winning the skepticism arguments. This is a ridiculous outcome for the comparing worlds view.
The broader issue with this reply is that thus far, most of the defenders of the comparative view have said little about what negation actually is, according to their view. There are three ways of understanding negation if we take affirmation to constitute an endorsement of the proposition “we should act as though the resolution is true,” depending on what scope the negation operator takes with respect to that proposition:
(1) It is not the case that (we should act as though the resolution is true).
(2) We should not act as though the resolution is true.
(3) We should act as though the resolution is not true.
Under (1), there is no way of making this reply to the no difference objection, since it is not the case that we should act in any particular way if there are no facts about what we should do. (2) permits the reply, but doesn’t give the result which most comparativists seem to want. For example, if the resolution is “It is just for the United States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations that pose a threat,” then the negation “we should not act as though ‘It is just for the United States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations that pose a threat’” could be true either because it is unjust for the US to act as the resolution prescribes, or because even though it is just for the US to act in that manner, there are good reasons to act contrary to justice in some circumstances. (3) likewise does not give the right result: it might be good for us to act as though the resolution were false because it is good to act contrary to justice sometimes, because the action prescribed is unjust, or because say, state action in particular is never just nor unjust, and as a result states should act on the basis of self-interest. In short, if the expected result is that the negative should defend that preventing acquisition would be unjust, on no reading does the comparativist thesis deliver.
I turn now to the issue of “direct comparison” of impacts. As I understand it, the idea works something like this: the affirmative says that acting as though the resolution is true leads to some good result x, the negative says that doing so would lead to some bad result y. The affirmative argues that x outweighs y. Now, this basic schema works well in Policy Debate, but this is because Policy generally presumes a form of utilitarianism (at least until this is challenged with some critical framework). One can say that extinction due to environmental collapse is worse than genocide, or vice versa, in utilitarian terms simply by comparing the expected utility of the two impacts. Expected utility is given by magnitude of effect multiplied by the probability of those effects occurring. Now, utilitarianism lets us state all impacts within the framework of expected utility because it supposes that all impacts are reducible to a common metric of evaluation in which all outcomes can be compared: outcomes are good if they cause more pleasure than pain, and outcomes are bad if they cause more pain than pleasure. If we do not assume that all values are commensurable, and that all values are measurable, then no such metric is readily available. Regardless, there is no reason why we ought to proceed in lockstep with our policy brethren and presume that utilitarianism is true, because as every debater knows by now, there are many good reasons to think that it may not be (at least in its crudest form).
Adam Nelson suggests what may be an alternate tack. He backs up his recommendation to switch to “direct comparison” of impacts with the claim that in our everyday lives, we often give weight to both deontological and utilitarian considerations. This may or may not be true. If it is true, then there are at least two explanations for that fact. It may be the case that in general, people do not have any form of systematic ethical theory in mind when they deliberate. If this is true, so much the worse for people in general, since this means that their decisions are motivated by disparate and incompatible justifications. There is no need for debate to cater to that fact. Alternately, it might turn out that there is an ethical theory which gives weight to both utilitarian and deontological considerations (such as Tim Scanlon’s Contractualism or Sam Scheffler’s hybrid theory) which can account for all of the average person’s seemingly disparate moral beliefs. If this explanation is right, then it seems like what is happening when one “directly compares” impacts is tacitly relying on an ethical theory, but without the aid of an explicit version of that account for the purposes of correcting errors in moral judgment. So it seems like Nelson’s alternative results either in adopting a fragmented picture of how to evaluate impacts, or an under-theorized version of something which could actually be made explicit as a standard.
My last objective is to sketch a possible alternative to both traditional truth-testing and comparing worldviews. For lack of a better name, call this the best justification paradigm. The animating idea behind this paradigm is the thought that the job of the affirmative is to justify accepting the resolution as true, while the job of the negative is to justify rejecting the resolution as false. The judge ought to affirm if the resolution is better justified than its negation, and vice versa. Returning to our now well-worn example, this yields the following analysis of the affirmative position:
Best Justification: The sentence “It is just for the United States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations that pose a threat” is better justified than the sentence “It is not the case that…”
There are two basic advantages of this account over traditional truth-testing. For one, truth-testing generates the problem of wayward “pre-standards” arguments. If, for instance, some argument which claims that the resolution is self-contradictory is dropped, truth-testing requires a negative verdict because the dropped argument entails the falsity of the resolution. On the best justification picture, however, the fact that the dropped argument entails the falsity of the resolution merely provides some evidence that a belief in the resolution is unjustified. How strong that evidence is depends on how strong the dropped argument was. If the argument was particularly well-developed, this may warrant a negation, but if the argument was a mangled blip, then it may be better to hold that the arguments developed by the affirmative are sufficient to justify the resolution’s truth in spite of the drop. To get a better grip on how this is supposed to work, consider a mundane case. My friend drives me to work one day in a Volvo. Suppose I have every reason to believe that she owns this car: I’ve seen her drive it many times, her family members all say it belongs to her, and I have seen her registration papers. On the basis of this evidence, I infer the proposition “my friend owns a Volvo.” Now suppose that someone else tells me that in fact she does not own that car; she was just borrowing it from her brother. For the sake of the example, assume that I have no way of discounting this evidence. Now, if true, my evidence that my friend was just borrowing the Volvo entails the falsity of my belief that “my friend owns a Volvo,” but given my preponderance of evidence to the contrary, it seems plausible to assume that I am better off retaining my belief and discounting the conflicting evidence. We can treat underdeveloped skeptical or other “pre-standards” issues in much the same fashion (note, however, that I do not want to exclude skeptical arguments altogether; if you want that result then find another paradigm).
Another advantage of the best justification paradigm over traditional truth-testing is that it preserves something like the offense/defense distinction employed in Policy. If the negative is not providing proactive reasons for thinking that the resolution has got to be false, then there is no reason not to accept the affirmative’s argumentation. The same more or less holds true for particular arguments. An argument may provide a good justification for some claim even if there are standing reasons for thinking that argument might be false in the event that the initial justification is more powerful than the reasons standing against it. This is more or less the moral of the “Volvo” example.
The account I have sketched thus far is compatible with the traditional value-criterion model, and nothing about it turns on whether or not we reject that model. I do think, however, that there is good reason to doubt the soundness of standards debate as it is currently practiced. My reasoning is somewhat different from that offered by defenders of the comparing worlds view. Oftentimes debaters will present warrants for a standard which are in truth, impacts to another standard which they are taking for granted. For example, consider a negative case which makes the following claims: (1) oppression can lead to genocide, genocide is bad, so the criterion is preventing oppression, (2) affirming allows the construction of threats, which stifles some criticism of the state; (3) not being able to criticize the state is a form of oppression. Given the supposition that sometimes oppression does lead to genocide, this NC is able to warrant the criterion “preventing oppression.” This in turn allows the negative to win off of the tiniest link to oppression, even if that form of oppression is probably not sufficient to lead to genocide, which is the real reason why we are supposed to be worried about oppression in the first place, according to this case. This is clearly a bad result: what this case has done is smuggled in a link to genocide which has virtually no probability of occurring. Additionally, the first premise of the case is clearly unwarranted without appeal to some genuine ethical framework. The case does not tell us why genocide is bad; it just takes it for granted. Of course, it is not particularly hard to prove that genocide is bad in virtually any ethical framework; the problem is just that one is not entitled to assume that without appeal to some ethical principle which tells us why genocide is a particular type of action which we should count as immoral.
The obvious remedy to this problem is to insist that standards express ethical theories. A better version of the case in question should fix on some ethical framework and then argue that the affirming is likely to lead to some form of oppression which is likely to lead to genocide, which is bad in terms of the given framework. Some might object to this suggestion on the grounds that it generates an unacceptable situation in which all standards debate devolves into a hackneyed dispute between deontology and consequentialism. This is not so: there are not only a wide variety of versions of each of those ethical theories which are designed to cope with the familiar objections, but there are also some alternative moral theories which break the deadlock altogether. I have already mentioned a couple options. If any reader is interested in hearing some suggestions about where to learn about these theories or others, don’t hesitate to email me.
One parting thought: some have suggested that there is no reason to have a comprehensive theory of LD because part of what is best in debate is that students are able to challenge assumptions about what standards should be used to evaluate arguments. I am partly sympathetic to this point: it seems like debaters ought to be able to argue in-round that any judge should set aside some aspect of their default paradigm in order to make space for some particularly unusual sort of argument (a performance, for example). It is problematic, however, to suppose that we could get by without any fundamental picture of how arguments should be evaluated at all. How could judges evaluate a debater’s reasons for adopting a different paradigm for the purposes of a round at all without taking for granted certain assumptions about how arguments ought to be understood? At root, debate is a social practice which is constituted by the norms we choose. If no norms remain fixed, if there are no rules for the game at all, then judges would have no resources to use in evaluating proposals to adopt new norms. Judges must take some principles for granted when they approach rounds, and reflection is needed to determine what exactly those principles should be.
Thank you to Jon Cruz for posting this piece, and to Wade Houston, Michael O’Connell, Michael Mangus, and Mike Spirtos for comments and suggestions.
—
Eric Palmer is the director of debate at Mountain View and Los Altos High Schools.
Popularity: 9%
test
Posted from: 128.135.194.126
April 15th, 2008 09:28
throwing this out:
Pimp picture of mr. palmer
Posted from: 71.42.73.162
April 15th, 2008 10:24
also available:
http://ldtheoryjournal.blogspot.com
Posted from: 66.240.48.106
April 15th, 2008 11:08
Since I’m at work right now, I won’t have time to engage a more comprehensive discussion of Eric’s article until later. But, until then, I wanted to raise a question about a particular claim he makes.
Eric writes:
“The immediate problem with this reply is that it allows debaters, whether affirmative or negative, to immediately force a resolution of the round via presumption by winning a moral skepticism argument. The affirmative could do this by extending the negative answers to the affirmative case then answering the negative case with “the NC says we should not act as though the resolution is true, but there are no facts about what we should and should not do, so decide on presumption” and winning the skepticism arguments. This is a ridiculous outcome for the comparing worlds view.”
I’m not sure this is so obviously a ridiculous outcome. If presumption is an issue which can be debated in-round, and if, as my discussion of a comparative model suggests, debaters’ strategic choices both before and during the round can influence that debate, resolving such a round on the basis of presumption strikes me as preferable to a paradigm that would always award the ballot to the negative in those circumstances. As I explain in my article, such an approach seems more likely to more nearly equitably divide ground.
I’m also not sure this is the outcome prescribed by a comparative model. If a skeptical argument has offensive implications, namely some reason why it is undesirable to ignore the skeptical objection and affirm the resolution anyway, that impact would become part of the impacts the debaters would have to engage and compare. The skeptical argument would be neither excluded nor ignored.
Am I missing something here? I honestly haven’t had the time to consider Eric’s argument enough to rule out that possibility.
Also, Eric writes:
“Adam Nelson suggests what may be an alternate tack. He backs up his recommendation to switch to “direct comparison” of impacts with the claim that in our everyday lives, we often give weight to both deontological and utilitarian considerations…. If this explanation is right, then it seems like what is happening when one “directly compares” impacts is tacitly relying on an ethical theory, but without the aid of an explicit version of that account for the purposes of correcting errors in moral judgment. So it seems like Nelson’s alternative results either in adopting a fragmented picture of how to evaluate impacts, or an under-theorized version of something which could actually be made explicit as a standard.”
Again, I’m not sure this is an accurate description of the implications of a comparative approach. Sure, bad debaters might under-develop or under-theorize about the underlying framework for comparing impacts that they advocate, but I would argue that good debaters would, under a comparative model, articulate and more clearly develop and justify the underlying basis for their comparative calculus. The only difference between the comparative approach as I see it and the current use of the value and criterion in this regard is that the alternative requires direct comparison of impacts; it does not allow for the outright exclusion of certain arguments merely as a result of some decontextualized impact debate at the top of the flow. The result may be the same as in the status quo, where deontological impacts are evaluated to the exclusion of others, but, as I have written before, the route to get there is, educationally speaking, preferable. The impact calculus is, to some extent, fragmented. But, if I understand Eric’s meaning correctly, it is only fragmented to the extent necessary to give debaters flexibility in fleshing out those details, thereby achieving the unique educational benefits I describe while also maximizing fairness.
Again, I haven’t had enough time to engage a more comprehensive discussion of the article, so I apologize if my arguments aren’t entirely clear, or if my understanding of Eric’s arguments is not entirely accurate. I’d be happy to clarify things when I engage that more comprehensive discussion after work.
Posted from: 67.155.35.66
April 15th, 2008 12:25
I’d be interested in hearing how it would play out in a round as follows.
On the current resolution.
1AC reads 6 minutes as to why US military action to stop the spread of weapons saves lives.
1NC concedes US military action is key to stopping the spread of weapons and saving lives and then explains for 7 minutes why although why there is nothing problematic with this action, the labeling of the action as just is problematic.
How would this debate be evaluated under a best justification paradigm?
Does the best justification paradigm allow for the negative debater to embrace the entirety of the 1AC action and simply criticize the evaluative term in the resolution?
One parting thought: Where can I find that shirt in an XL?
Posted from: 136.152.150.69
April 15th, 2008 13:01
Before I jump into the rest of this stuff, my main question is what the best justification paradigm adds to the truth-testing model. The only distinction I can see is the following statement:
“If the argument was particularly well-developed, this may warrant a negation, but if the argument was a mangled blip, then it may be better to hold that the arguments developed by the affirmative are sufficient to justify the resolution’s truth in spite of the drop.”
In other words, if the a-priori argument sucks, don’t give it much weight.
A couple thoughts:
1. While this is a good addition to any paradigm, it hardly seems to create an entirely new paradigm.
2. This does not solve any of the theoretical problems that many people have with apriori’s. The problem is not MERELY that aprioris are often undeveloped (although they indeed are).
The MAIN problem (at least, in my criticism of aprioris) is the fact that apriori arguments do not create reciprocal or even ground. When the affirmative argues that some action is good, she not only stakes claim to the advantages of said action, she also leaves herself vulnerable to criticisms of that action (i.e. turns and disadvantages).
In contrast, when the negative takes what Eric calls a “skeptical” position, the negative risks nothing, since the position would negate if true, but wouldn’t affirm under any circumstance. Examples of such no-risk skeptical positions include the numerous critiques that show the lack of logical
rigor in ethics, and more alarmingly, the many negative positions which set a “necessary but insufficient” criterion (this by definition creates an argument where the negative can win, but the affirmative literally and absolutely cannot).
The “Best Justification” paradigm completely fails to fix the problems with these positions.
3. “Best Justification” operates on a level completely different from the criticism above. The argument above says that apriori’s are problematic regardless of development quality, while Best says that if an apriori is well-developed, it is acceptable.
I will post a lengthy paradigm shortly, with a not-so-nifty name as “best justification”, but hopefully, a stab at fixing the problem.
Posted from: 136.152.150.69
April 15th, 2008 13:26
The GROUND DIVISION paradigm:
The resolution serves to distinguish actions which are affirmative ground from those that are negative ground. The negative may select any action (or inaction) that is not resolutional, and defend it as preferable to the affirmative action. If there is debate about whether the negative or affirmative should have right to certain ground, the standards for evaluation should be equal division of ground or fairness.
I could easily try to preempt major objections, as Eric does, but I don’t have the space of a full article. Instead, I’ll let people make the objections, and do my best to keep up.
Also, bear in mind, the biggest change between this and other paradigms is that this one doesn’t view the topic as the focus of debate. The debate is between two competing advocacies, and THE ONLY REASON THE TOPIC EXISTS is to prevent overlap of advocacies, impose an agent/context, and impose a perspective from which desirability of advocacies should be evaluated (i.e justice). This means that the truth of the resolution is irrelevant.
Posted from: 136.152.150.69
April 15th, 2008 13:27
I decided lengthy was not the way to go for that paradigm, by the way.
Posted from: 140.247.103.21
April 15th, 2008 13:53
A couple of quick replies:
Adam raises three points:
1. It may not be bad to award the ballot on presumption - I’d always give it to the neg
re: The problem is that the neg can then win the round on presumption by winning any skeptical argument, since any argument like that would undermine the truth of the affirmative’s argumentation. All you have done is change the way in which skeptical arguments win the debate.
2. There might be offensive reasons to endorse skepticism
re: I’ve always been confused by this idea. Someone is supposed to defend “(for moral reasons), we should not act morally”. Doesn’t this seem like an obvious contradiction, or like they are attacking some particular brand of morality and giving it the label “morality”?
3. People can use justifications from moral theory when comparing impacts
re: This is fine in principle, but that just means you’ve shifted the moral standards which actually do the work of telling us which impacts matter from the “criterion” section of the case to the impacts of particular arguments. The danger here is that if this becomes a form of weighing, standards debate might not be introduced until say, the NC (when there are actually arguments to weigh between) which makes the debate less resolvable as there are fewer speeches to resolve it in.
Duby: If the idea is that the neg argues that the act in question wouldn’t be “just” but would be something else, then sure, if the neg wins that debate, then I think they’ve shown that the negation of the topic is better justified than the topic.
Jay makes a couple of points:
1. You overhype. This is not different from truth-testing
re: On one hand, you’re right that this position is not radically different from truth-testing, but part of my point was that even comparativism is not radically different from truth-testing, it is just second-order truth-testing.
On the other, you’re missing two other differences between my view and trad t-t. (1) The question becomes not if the resolution is in fact true, but whether or not we are justified in believing it. This means that any drop which entails the falsity of the resolution does not immediately result in negation - it’s weight depends on the evidential merits of the argument. This means that debaters can weigh the probability of the truth of arguments in later speeches to suggest that they have still shown the topic to be reasonably false. This also means that debaters don’t have to outright refuse skepticial arguments, they just have to show we are well justified in rejecting them. (2) I incorporate offense-defense.
2. You don’t bar skeptical arguments wholesale
re: That is correct, and I explicitly say as much. I think if you want to argue that a skeptical argument should be excluded, you should explain specifically why that argument is bad for debate (kills turn ground and whatever) , or why an evaluation of the debate presupposes the notion they are attacking (i.e. some people think that the sentence “The present king of france is bald” is not false if the sentence “There is no king of france now” is true - the first sentence just does not have a truth-value. One might argue the same thing about critiques of justice or whatever). I think debaters should be allowed to defend the merits of skeptical argumentation, and that there is no quick-fix at the level of paradigm.
3.GROUND DIVISION -
re: So the affirmative picks an action and says “we should do this”. Can’t the negative just say “no, it’s not true that we should do it, because there are no facts about what we should do” and then you just get the presumption problem I’ve argued the comparative view runs into?
Posted from: 66.240.48.106
April 15th, 2008 14:07
Eric:
1. I’m not sure you’re interpreting my argument correctly. My point is that I would not always vote negative on presumption. I would presume for the status quo, which accesses the fairness and educational benefits I describe. Yes, that just changes how skeptical arguments win the debate. But that was my point: I object to winning on skeptical arguments without offensive implications, not the substance of skeptical claims.
2. It is if you phrase it that way. But there’s no reason why the offense generated by a skeptical argument would have to be “it’s moral to not act morally.” It could be the skeptical argument explicitly rejects morality-driven offense in favor of a different kind of calculus. And that issue would just be debated in the round. That doesn’t strike me as problematic.
3. I think this gets to the heart of our disagreement. I think it’s good to delay “standards debate” until the NC. It doesn’t make sense for me to force the AC to commit to an impact calculus before she knows what the negative’s claims/impacts will be. I tend to think the status quo, in which affirmatives commit to that calculus in the AC, is bad for debate because it allows negatives, who already have significant structural advantages, to be even lazier: they get to know the affirmative’s impact calculus going into prep and therefore don’t even need to leave themselves options in the NR, in case the affirmative does something unexpected regarding their impact calculus in the 1AR.
Posted from: 66.240.48.106
April 15th, 2008 14:13
“It doesn’t make sense for me” should read “It doesn’t make sense TO me.”
Also, in response to Jay, Eric writes:
“On one hand, you’re right that this position is not radically different from truth-testing, but part of my point was that even comparativism is not radically different from truth-testing, it is just second-order truth-testing.”
I think this is very insightful. I think people too often overestimate the practical differences between a truth-value model and a comparative one. They’re both forms of truth-testing, it’s just that a comparative model changes the debate to one explicitly about the desirability of competing world-views. And, more important, it makes the debate explicitly comparative.
Sorry for the double-post.
Posted from: 136.152.150.69
April 15th, 2008 14:23
Eric says in post 8 responding to me in post 5/6:
1. There are some differences between TruthTesting and Best Justification
re: fine, I’m not too worried about this, I’d rather talk about the other stuff.
2. Barring skeptical args not necessarily justified, possibly not fixable via judge paradigm.
re:
A. I’ve made an argument (precisely the turn ground argument you said I might/should make)
B. You’re right, this is definitely not a pure paradigm issue, and neg args in favor of skepticism shouldn’t be ignored on face. However, it is a paradigm issue as far as how we by default at the resolution. I propose that we should not look at the resolution as truth-focused, and instead as ground focused. See POST 6 PARAGRAPH 3. The neg should ahve to make truth testing GOOD arguments, rather than getting that ground by default.
3. You say the negative should be allowed to say we shouldn’t do this, because there are no objective facts.
RE:
A. You’ve given no offense whatsoever as to why the neg have this ground. Your argument was a rhetorical question (and isn’t that the point? Rhetorical questions often rely on the naturalistic fallacy). See POST 5 POINT #2 for offense why the Neg shouldn’t be allowed to say this (the turn ground argument).
B. At minimum, I see no reason why the negative should be allowed this ground by default (which is what truth-testing and Best-Justification do). GROUND DIVISION merely shifts the focus of what default debate is. I’m willing to hear why that shift is worse than the status quo.
Posted from: 69.153.197.246
April 15th, 2008 14:29
i have a question regarding this paradigm in addition to mangus’ and adam’s, and i have a feeling my question is going to be fairly unclear, so i apologize in advance:
is it a comparing worlds paradigm, or one that suggests that reading the resolution as is and doing what you want with it the ‘norm’ right now? i have seen both approaches [to debate] utilized in many, many rounds over this past year, and i am confused as to the function of this/other paradigms in relation to others. is it suggestive as to how we ought formulate the activity, or is it simply personal viewpoint? these questions lead me to asking another one: is it valuable to form a paradigm justifying use of the resolution as the object of our valuation?
Posted from: 136.152.150.69
April 15th, 2008 14:38
My mistake, Eric’s last point in Post 8 had one more argument I missed, which was the problem of presumption that comparative frameworks must face.
In response:
1. Presumption is a purely abstract theoretical concern. Rarely does it come up, and judges could always vote without presumption in a comparative framework by comparing quality of evidence, quality of argument, strength of link, etc. Presumption really actually only comes up when A-Priori’s are involved (ironically)
Also, Note that even if comparativeness is second order truth-testing it still forces the testing to occur on more even terms.
In first order truth-testing, the AC must prove a truth, and the neg must prove that truth false. (even BEST-JUSTIFICATION says that the neg needs only give GOOD reasons why the aff is not true, and that bad reasons are insufficient). It is SO MUCH harder to prove something true than prove something false.
Second order truth testing forces both sides to prove something true, evening the game.
Posted from: 140.247.103.21
April 15th, 2008 15:14
A few more replies:
Adam:
1. My point is that it doesn’t matter how you work out what we presume (whether its neg, aff, neg until a cp is introduced, or status quo), you still let whichever side gets presumption win by winning a skeptical argument. This doesn’t mean they’re winning because they’ve shown the skeptical world is better, they’re winning because they happened to get the side that gets presumption and then won some skeptical args. You still let people win off of skeptical arguments, they just don’t win because they’ve disproven the resolution or whatever, they win because they’ve forced the debate to presumption.
2. I think moral requirements just are objective requirements governing action. I think a system that says “act on self-interest” IS a moral system - it says people are objectively required to act as their interests dictate. So I guess I just don’t see what the neg would say is better than morality (in order to generate the offense) that isn’t itself a moral system.
3. So the idea is, the aff says that unless we prevent acquisition, terrible things will happen. The neg says those terrible things don’t matter because we’d have to violate side constraints to fix them, and deontology says that’s bad. The 1ar is then supposed to lay down a bunch of arguments for utilitarianism? I guess I just don’t think it’s very feasible for the aff to do this (4 minute speech, after all) and that this solution would replicate all the problems people have with 1ar theory (except worse, because you can’t even blame the neg for this situation - the neg had to weigh and needed a framework to do that).
Jay -
2. Yes you made an argument for barring skeptical args on theory grounds, and I realized my initial statement of my point was really unclear. My point was not that you the theorist should make that argument, but that debaters should make those arguments in round. I don’t think it’s obvious that running any skeptical argument is inherently unfair. If someone runs 7 minutes of moral skepticism, it is much harder to argue against that then a storm of 20 a prioris.
3. You are missing the point. My argument was not “negs have the ground to just say skepticism true therefore negate”. My argument was that if the neg wins a skeptical argument, all of the affirmative offense is neutralized because it depends on the existence of normative truths. If there is no offense in the round, you vote on presumption, however that breaks down.
Now you add that you don’t have to look at presumption. What, then, do judges do to resolve the round in this instance? Say the neg’s cards for moral skepticism are incredibly good. Do they win the debate because they have better cards?
4. Best justification does require the neg to prove something. They have to prove that the negation of the resolution is better justified than the resolution. This isn’t the same as just saying there are justifications for the negation or something.
Quinn - I guess this paradigm mirrors pretty closely how I evaluate rounds, unless I am given reasons to think otherwise. I was just hoping that the points I made here might be useful to other judges and might help motivate more discussion of these issues.
Posted from: 136.152.149.37
April 15th, 2008 15:43
Eric, only two Args I’m making:
1. By assuming skeptical arguments are ok until proven otherwise, we substantively put aff’s at a disadvantage. Why shouldn’t a judge walk into a round, and say “I will decide based on the ground division paradigm unless the negative justifies why the debate is about the truth of the resolution.” You keep saying that the aff should have to make these arguments, but what’s wrong with assuming that the resolution only assigns ground? That’s what policy does…
2.On presumption:
A. You’re missing the arg that presumption issues usually come up in A-Priori debates, not comparative debates. Your example in post 14 is on an apriori issue. Still, if I had to, I’d say as long as my paradigm was clearly posted before the tournament as Ground Division, I’d have no problem voting aff because the neg didn’t justify truth-focus.
B. Your paradigm resolves the presumption issue by disadvantaging the Affirmative… how is that good? It would be better to have a comparative debate, reach the presumption conundrum (and that’d be rare in a comparative debate), and arbitrarily pick one argument you like. (To be clear, this wouldn’t be a good thing, but it’s better than advantaging the NC in every round from the start).
C. In a comparative debate, resolving tough debates is usually doable. It involves tough choices, and judges saying things like “I don’t think you did enough here” or “I felt like that was basically a wash”. Subjectivity is involved, but presumption is not the issue.
2
Posted from: 136.152.149.37
April 15th, 2008 15:45
To be clear, I am in favor of aff’s making arguments about how the resolution functions in the AC. Eric’s point that Aff’s should do some of this work is true.
I just want to know why judges are assuming the truth framework by default, and putting the entire burden of theory on the aff.
Posted from: 140.247.103.21
April 15th, 2008 16:03
Jay -
1. I think making the aff make theory arguments in the 1AR actually advantages them in a lot of circumstances. If it’s pretty clear that the negative strategy is abusive (i.e. 20 a prioris, or several independent skeptical arguments) then it should be really easy for the aff to generate an offensive theory issue. This happens all the time in today’s debates.
2. Presumption puzzle - sure it’s true that in most debates about the topic presumption is irrelevant, but my point was that any smart debater will figure out where presumption lies (given your paradigm) and let loose with every skeptical argument they have, given that they know that if they win any of these, they win the round on presumption. You can’t rule this strategy out with your paradigm or Adam’s, so if debaters are going to beat this strategy they are going to have to push the theory debate on alternative grounds (i.e. kills turn ground and whatever else). The neg doesn’t have to justify truth-focus here because they are not winning on proving the resolution false. They are winning by neutralizing all offense. That’s why I said that if presumption goes aff, then aff could use this strategy too by extending the neg answers on their AC then dumping skeptical args as responses to the NC.
3. I haven’t taken a stance on presumption, so I don’t know how my handling of presumption disadvantages the affirmative. Really I think in a best justification format the issue of presumption rarely arises, because the judge just goes with whose arguments have been defended best. Even a position with many dropped arguments on it can turn out to be better justified than any other position in the round, given certain circumstances. This is fairly similar to how you talk about presumption in comparative debates. I guess you might think of best justification as comparative truth-testing.
Posted from: 71.236.67.195
April 15th, 2008 16:26
i have finals until the end of next week so i am not going to follow this thread all that closely. i’ll be offering a full-fledged reply hopefully around TOC. for now, i want to point out that i think eric has made a very important move in emphasizing the importance of crafting broad theories of debate. two facets of my reply that i will hint at now but dont have time to fully develop:
1) i dont think its necessary to abandon the value/criterion to embrace the comparing worlds approach. as i pointed out in my original defense of the position, i think there is ample room under the value comparison approach to make arguments about the value/criterion as a mechanism to determine what it means for one world to be more desirable than another. it is my *personal opinion* that the value/criterion is pretty useless, but the defense of that opinion will be left for later. i think eric and i are largely in agreement about the root issues there.
2) i think it is possible to accept eric’s argument for a ‘best justification’ paradigm while still maintaing the most important aspects of the value comparison approach (e.g. reliance on an offense/defense approach to debate). there is probably need of a broader discussion of how paradigms function, and when i get some free time i will try to locate (and, to an extent, contrast) value comparison and the best justification view within such a meta-theoretical framework. i think on the most important issues, they share important commonalities which can be a rallying point to put the old, broken truth-testing model out to pasture for good.
Posted from: 71.236.67.195
April 15th, 2008 16:45
i will also point out that unlike adam, my view of presumption is based on strength of warrant (much like erics general paradigm).
Posted from: 128.54.54.105
April 15th, 2008 16:47
I’m not really interested in getting into this long thread too much, but I did just want to make a point on the standards debate issue.
As Eric points out in the top of the article, the LD community does wish to define itself from other categories of debate. In this sense, the one defining characteristic of LD debate is that it posits a value and criterion. This is important not only from a debate perspective but from an educational perspective. By showing a value and a criterion we make explicit the underlying warrants for the arguments we make and establish a coherent framework for evaluating the round.
I always found it odd that the framework in policy is given at the end of the case instead of at the beginning because you operate under the framework and that is how the round is evaluated. It would make sense to make the framework explicit from the beginning. Also, Policy does use a value, its just that it would be one of ’societal welfare’ or like standard. i think making the value explicit and figuring out standards for its evaluation is critical to understanding the operative terms in the resolution as well as recognizing the importance of finding the underlying grounds for arguments.
How this ties in to comparative world views theory: I just think that we go back to basic values debate and comparing impacts back to the value and that any ‘prestandards’ argument would have to either show how they link to the value before the VC or why they posit another value that is superior. Just like a criticism would provide an alternative framework for evaluating the round, it would just give a value and criterion (or just a dif criterion).
Either way, values and criterions are inherent to any determination of action, and we might as well make the academic effort to make those explicit and preserve a concept of LD that is important to developing critical thought.
Posted from: 207.47.45.12
April 15th, 2008 17:15
Eric:
1. Fair enough. I don’t see that as problematic though. In my experience, it is inevitable that some debates will have to be resolved on the basis of presumption. And I think the presumption method I advocate is preferable for the reasons I’ve already articulated.
2. Given that, I’m frankly not sure how a skeptical argument such as the one you imply would be relevant to a debate. If there is no ability to say one statement is better than another, there is no way to describe either the truth or desirability of that statement, and there is no way to vote affirmative or negative except on the basis of what seems to me to be a much more subjective evaluation of which debater has done a better job defending their arguments. I suppose the alternative you advocate therefore solves that particular problem better than one that is comparative, but I’d rather debaters be forced to find some offensive implication for skeptical arguments, even though that might not be entirely “true” to the “objective” substance of those arguments, than give up the fairness and educational benefits of a comparative model. To be completely honest, that’s ultimately why I reject a truth-based conception of the resolution: because I see debate as having the specific purposes I outline in my article, I think those fairness and educational benefits are more important than the “truth” of the various arguments made by debaters and their implications. Very few of us are experts in philosophy, or whatever topic literature is relevant to a given topic, so I think focusing too much on teaching the substance of those disciplines would do our students a disservice, as very few of us would be able to ensure those students were learning those subjects accurately.
3. That is definitely a potential challenge for the 1AR. Accordingly, I think it will be important for those using the paradigm I describe to give affirmatives a little leeway in the 1AR, namely by not requiring the kind of extensions we normally look for when affirmatives continue to go for arguments that are being conceded by the negative. This shouldn’t hurt the clarity of the affirmative’s advocacy, though, given that the time will instead be spent on contextualized comparative analysis that will likely give a much clearer picture of the affirmative world-view than the strings of extensions with links to the standard(s) they are currently forced to spend time on.
By the way, thanks so much an excellent article and discussion, Eric!
Posted from: 24.6.237.64
April 15th, 2008 17:17
great article and an interesting read…I’ll have to think about this “best justification” thing for a bit before making any determination. I do, however, have two cents to add:
My objection to Eric’s argument comes from the formulation presented of the CWP. Eric argues that comparativists are holding that the affirmative world is one in which individuals act as though the resolution were true. However, this is not necessarily the case.
For instance, the comparative paradigm might best be served by interpreting resolutions as imperatives…which, of course, don’t have truth-values. For instance, the utterance “save innocent life” isn’t really ‘true’ or ‘false,’ strictly speaking.
Sure, we can reformulate this as a descriptive statement (“everyone should save innocent life,” or “I should save innocent life,” maybe), but there is no justification proffered as to why such a reformulation is valuable, useful, or defensible. In other words, Eric’s example (and thus his argument) is fallacious because the agent does not believe “one should save innocent life,” he follows the imperative “save innocent life.” Until and unless Eric can prove that the distinction I’m making is a meaningless one, we may not simply assume that this difference is so easily overcome.
The consequence of rejecting this step is obvious. If the CWP frames resolutions as imperatives and not as descriptive statements, Eric’s claim that there is no meaningful difference between it and TS is false.
The easy objection to my argument is: resolutions like the current TOC topic are pretty hard to read as anything other than descriptive statements. I’m not so sure this is true, though. We can interpret the current resolution, for instance, as follows: the affirmative world is one where the US uses preemptive force (in other words, does the resolutional action), and the negative world is one where it does not. This has the consequence of turning the resolution into an imperative (where the affirmative is defending the world in which the statement “US, do X” is followed). We may then compare these worlds – taking note of the evaluative term of the resolution in doing so, of course – and choose one of them.
While this formulation of the CWP alternative is admittedly somewhat fluid, the only assumption needed to make it sensible is that there is such a thing as a “resolutional action” that can easily be determined by examining the resolution. While this is an assumption that TS does not need to make, as it simply considers the resolution as a descriptive proposition in the most general sense, it doesn’t seem a particularly troubling one…at least, I can’t think of a resolution that resists such a formulation.
Posted from: 66.65.110.61
April 15th, 2008 17:23
I am up to my neck in work, and I likely will be unable to post actively on these kinds of lengthy conversations until the end of the weekend, but I wanted to take a moment to thank Eric for submitting this article to VBD. His article, Adam Nelson’s article, and Aaron Timmons’s conversation-starter are generating interesting conversations that are really important for the LD community.
Posted from: 71.202.108.208
April 15th, 2008 20:05
Jesus Christ
I read this article
And Eric IS ‘efin’ GOD.
i understand the problems with truth and comparative world policy, but what would be the structured hierarchy for determining who MORE PROACTIVELY proved their side. What stops the AC from SHIT DUMPING 70 blip warrants, or 7 good warrants without a “truth/criterion” to sift through them. This would put us back to the truth testing paradigm.
Posted from: 140.247.103.21
April 15th, 2008 21:30
Adam:
1. I guess I just worry that if you’re letting debaters use skeptical arguments and other “a prioris” to win rounds off of presumption, then the paradigm doesn’t really do what it’s promised to do. Is there some other major benefit you have in mind?
2. I don’t think saying that a sentence is true and another isn’t requires the assumption that there are moral norms. A sentence is true just in case it corresponds to the world, or what is the case. There doesn’t seem to be anything normative about that, or claims which point out that things are true or false. On the other hand, if you want debaters to say that morality is bad so we ought to act in some other way, it seems like one does have to make a normative judgment, since they’re saying what should be the case and not merely what is.
3. I guess I just don’t see affs being able to implement direct comparison if doing so requires developing some ethical theory in the 1ar. You might also worry that affs could do things like, read a storm of divergent impacts in the AC, then read some new standard that precludes most of those impacts and all of the neg impacts in the 1ar (and only go for what escapes the new standard) then defend the new standard like crazy in the 2ar. Fun strategy, but probably not very good debate, at least in my opinion.
And yes, thanks for writing the original article. I thought it was very insightful and I’m glad there are people pushing LD towards figuring out what LD even is.
Ankur -
You raise a very interesting point; unfortunately, I don’t think it works. The problem with your suggestion that we should read resolutions as expressing imperatives is that you can’t really disagree about imperatives in the relevant sense. If I tell you “Ankur, clean my room”, you can’t say that my command is somehow wrong or incorrect, all you can say is that you don’t want to follow it, or that you don’t feel like you should follow it. Likewise, one cannot offer reasons for commands themselves, one can only offer reasons why someone should comply with commands. This is just because commands aren’t representational; they don’t tell you something about the world, they express what I want you to do.
Debate topics don’t have the form of imperatives. Saying “A should do x” is not the same as saying “A, do x!”. Saying that someone should undertake some action is saying that they have a reason for performing that action, and that is an act of assertion, not command.
Posted from: 24.6.237.64
April 15th, 2008 23:44
since all the cool kids are numbering, i’ll do it in my responses to eric, too…
1. I lay out at the end of my initial post how we might frame the resolution as an imperative of sorts. What causes this vision of debate to fail?
2. What do you mean when you say “one cannot offer reasons for commands themselves”? It sounds like you’re saying that commands cannot be justified, but that seems quite silly. It’s possible that my confusion stems from a misunderstanding of what you mean by a “reason,” so clarifying that might be appropriate.
3. Why is it a bad thing to frame debate in terms of whether or not we ought to comply with a given command (the one that the resolution contains)? I mean…if I think I shouldn’t comply with your command to clean your room, and you think I should comply, only one of us can be right. That seems like the kind of disagreement that a debate round can tackle, so I’m not sure why it’s as irrelevant as you claim.
4. It seems like the difference you’re creating between saying “A should do X” and telling A to do X is the difference that arguments like “we can have an obligation, and just not fulfill it” attempt to capture…and frankly, I think arguments like that are quite silly. If anything, the only difference seems to be that the former is phrased in the third person, while the latter is addressed directly to the actor. Maybe it’s just me, but that doesn’t seem like a particularly important distinction to maintain…
Posted from: 66.240.48.106
April 16th, 2008 07:33
Eric:
I’m not sure there’s anything new I can add on 1 and 2; we may just have to respectfully disagree on those points.
On 3, though: I’ve had a wide variety of my students have a number of practice rounds using the comparative model, and the results have been very promising. Their debates increasingly focus on engagement of substantive claims, and that engagement is becoming increasingly detailed and nuanced. I know that’s not a large enough sample to draw some broader conclusion, but what I have seen I would call a success.
And, if things get to out of control with regards to affirmative strategy, I am confident theory arguments will develop to check those abuses. Preclusion of many of one’s own impacts seems as though it might be particularly theoretically objectionable, especially if some of the impacts drawn in the AC in some way contradict others.
Posted from: 76.17.236.195
April 16th, 2008 11:41
Interesting article and excellent discussion.
A few thoughts on when and where an impact calculus / standards debate should happen.
Eric has raised the objection that saving impact calculus debate for the NC/1AR poses problems from a strategic level (not enough time to develop an impact calculus, the possibility of overly diverse offense in AC as a strategy to avoid substantive engagement, etc.) It’s also problematic on a substantive level because there isn’t probably enough time in the 1AR do develop the standards debate rigorously. I’m inclined to believe that, but Adam says that his kids have had some success at it so I’ll leave those questions to empirical verification.
I want to add a few concerns, though, that I expressed in the initial thread on Adam’s article.
First, it seems that it would be exceedingly difficult to frame impacts in the AC without some implicit or explicit impact calculus developed at the top of the case. What is an impact if it doesn’t immediately link offense to a standard that bears on the validity of the resolution in some sense? We don’t know whether something is offense, defense, or non sequitur unless we have an impact calculus. Without it we seem to just state facts under the pretense that they are neutral until the NC/1AR when an impact calculus is developed and we find out why they are important.
More likely, we’ll just end up with an underdeveloped / unrigorous implicit impact calculus. On the current resolution, the AC says “The use of MF prevents nuclear proliferation which ultimately prevents nuclear holocaust.” Of course the implicit assumption is that nuclear holocaust is bad, but the AC hasn’t had to say why or in what way. It presents nuclear holocaust as if it is a neutral fact which takes on relevance only in the 1AR. Even if those types of impacts seem intuitive, we should be extremely weary of allowing impact calculus debate to devolve into an appeal to intuition. This is both because such an appeal is a logical fallacy, and also because not every argument has such an intuitive link to a normative framework.
Second but related, if there isn’t an impact calculus until the 1AR, then the AC can’t conceivably have fully developed impacts. This means the negative can’t attack the impact analysis until the NR. In other words, aren’t we allowing the AC to simply construct advocacy in the 1AR, and don’t we get all the theoretical problems that entails?
Third, the notion that standards debate needn’t happen until the NC/1AR I think rests on the assumption that this is a sort of second-order concern, and that if we can just proceed under some presumed impact calculus all the better.
I think that’s very problematic because the type of rigorous and critical thinking that we teach via standards debate is, I submit, one of the major components of the educational value of LD. As I argued on the thread about Adam’s article, lots of public discourse and especially that about public policy is pervaded by a theory/practice dichotomy that is both unrigorous and destructive. We want, I think, our choices to be reflective of deep and thoughtful engagement with how it is one “ought” to act or how the world ought to look. These concerns manifest themselves in debate about the various normative paradigms under which we operate - justice, morality, etc. We are often immediately led off course if we accept a normative paradigm unthinkingly. If Black people aren’t persons, then Dred Scot follows pretty logically. If the mission of government is the genetic perfection of the race, then the holocaust seems to follow. Those may be cliched and extreme, but my point is that the mistakes we make every day are often attributable to a failure to be skeptical / think critically about our basic normative assumptions. Hannah Arendt argues compellingly on this point, demonstrating (largely through the example of the rise of the Nazi government) that the danger in common sense is precisely that it is so malleable, and that we are far better served in the long run by critical engagement and thinking through of normative paradigms, even if those debates never yield an ultimately satisfactory result. This type of unthinking acceptance of normative premises is niether cliched nor extreme - we are all (I think) very familiar with it from our own lives. Arendt rightly calls it the “Banality of Evil.” In other words, jumping over normative questions because they are hard to resolve can have extremely troubling consequences both for ourselves and policy outcomes we shape.
Moreover, the inability to challenge basic normative assumptions behind action has long been a mode of marginalization. The most fundamental avenue of critique is the ability to challenge the normative assumptions of a dominant group or policy. To wish away standards analysis has the effect of reifying common sense as the norm, and constrains the grounds on which we may debate into very particular schools of thought or dominant traditions.
I’m of course not saying that the comparative worlds approach totally cuts off avenues of critique, as impact calculus debate still happens in some rounds at some point (sooner or later). But my point is to say that standards debate shouldn’t be a second order concern or a burden to us. The ability to argue rigorously and critically about the normative paradigm under which we should operate should be fundamental to our educational mission for the reasons I articulate above. We should embrace the opportunity to engage in such a debate in most rounds, not try to minimize it via paradigm.
I have tremendous respect for those advancing the comparative worldview approach, but I do worry about undermining an important educational purpose by marginalizing impact calculus debate.
Posted from: 76.17.236.195
April 16th, 2008 12:20
Sorry for the double post, but just one addition:
The ability to thoroughly debate and compare normative paradigms has a lot of validity in public policy discourse as well. Basic value clashes happen all over the political radar - the bodily autonomy of women v. the value of prospective life; political freedom v. bodily safety; basic sustenance v. property rights, etc. Those are shallow descriptions of basic value clashes implicit in several important policy issues, but it is critically important that politically responsible citizens be able to engage in those debates effectively. That’s another reason to think that comparing and debating normative paradigms should be a point of emphasis in our paradigms for the sake of its educational virtue.
Posted from: 206.180.133.78
April 16th, 2008 12:40
I think all of these discussions are really interesting. It’d be a shame if this discussion is confined to a message board. I’d really like to see those who run tournaments change the way in which judge paradigms are done. Instead of just asking people to fill a blank sheet. I think a series of questions to answer would be incredibly helpful. Until that time, I really hope people will include their thoughts on these issues in the paradigms they submit to TOC and other tournaments. I don’t think I’m alone in this hope. I know based on conversations with EPalm and Timmons that they share this belief. I think it’d help all the competitors at TOC better understand what their judges were looking for.
Posted from: 169.204.230.202
April 16th, 2008 14:05
perhaps a potential way to shore up the comparative worlds paradigm is to include within it the assumption of the Real World Hypothesis (RWH). I read about it in this article on Cartesian skepticism, by Vogel i think. Anyway, it posits that for a variety of reasons we should act as though the world is what it appears to be. Thus, the RWH stands in opposition to the various skeptical hypotheses. In this way the distinction between proving moral facts (or other epistemological concerns) true and simply making a moral assumption for action is more clearly articulated. Personally, I think the truth testing paradigm offers far too much advantage to the technically proficient debater, rather than the strategic debater or the intelligent debater. On the other hand, I feel that the comparative worlds paradigm allows all types of debaters and skill sets to coexist on an equal level: such weighing debates can be won through a particularly efficient execution, superior strategy, or intelligence. On the other hand, because the only impact that matters in terms of the truth testing paradigm is truth, it tends to default more into the “AC bristling with preempts” and “NC with a gazillion independent arguments” tropes, since those positions/strategies are by default the ones that are most effective under that paradigm. I personally think that the RWH can also support skeptical arguments, but they have to be phrased in ways that accept that the way we view things is more or less true. For instance: a debater advocating the minimal skeptical hypothesis on the TOC topic could defend that the dilemma of the unknowable is especially pernicious in international affairs, since our actions could be completely unfounded. Thus, because ignorance is equivalent to inefficiency/uncertainty in beneficial impacts/bad impacts, unless the affirmative can specifically show how they verify the facts they assume (nuclear use, threat scenarios, etc) and can solve for this skeptical scenario, we ought vote negative.
i think this sort of “soft truth testing” is a compromise between the two and allows for solving of the concerns of both parties; epalm and NELSMANG.
i also think that after further thought, my proposal fits completely under the “better justification paradigm.” i think it would be cool to see more epistemological arguments in debate, but it would be unfortunate if every round were to be the world is knowable versus the world is unknowable.
Posted from: 169.204.230.202
April 16th, 2008 14:06
oh, and who else is excited FOR PLAYOFF BASKETBALL????
Posted from: 24.242.139.162
April 16th, 2008 15:01
i think that mr. torson is dead on here.
the rigorous emphasis placed on framework in ld not only forces us to critically evaluate notions of the good (which is pretty educational, i think), but i also think that inasmuch as resolutions change every two months and don’t have as rigid of a format as policy debate, continuing to treat resolutions with regards to their truth-value is really from whence a lot of the most educational things about this activity can come. the nature of ethics is such that there are a multitude of different notions that can apply to myriad scenarios. the same can be said for methods of evaluating or debasing the truth of a claim. this sort of specialization seems less likely under a paradigm in which we compare worlds, where burden structures are much more rigid. a paradigm which compares worlds may lend itself to a very powerful educational process inasmuch as its very defined set of burdens - to advocate a world where the resolution is embraced or rejected - may be useful in addressing recurring topic which present statements about the desirability of the world. the thing is (and i don’t think is a problem; it’s something i love about ld) is that there seems to be a fundamental incongruity between the rigidity of the comparing worlds paradigm and the fluidity of the wording of ld resolutions. i don’t think that “affs still get to control the direction of the debate” and “negs can run ks or get links from the resolution” is a sufficient response here, because ld resolutions aren’t necessarily prescriptive with the exceptions of topics that include “ought” or “should”, inasmuch as “justice,” “morality,” etc. can describe forms rather than substances - that is, much of contemporary thought has been dedicated to the notions that these things are not necessarily prescriptive, or that the notions which underlie them are contrary to the ostensible goals of their premises. “just,” in my view, for example, doesn’t necessarily mean good, and to force affirmative debaters to embrace every term of the resolution as desirable not only robs them of a lot of creative, educational, thought-provoking (and frankly, pretty predictable since theories of justice are probably implied as topic research by the word “just”) ground, but also murders much of the value of the fluidity of ld topics: thinking critically about values and descriptions of the world helps us to plunge into both abstracted and heavily contextualized discussions about the nature of what is good and what is true. and frankly, i don’t think this really affects the directionality of link prep either; just like we use both deontological and utilitarian standards to affirm or negate now, both sides can make impacts under a particular notion of justice or appeal to the same impact calculus, so we often make the same arguments on different sides of a topic anyway. if we allow affs to say “justice is a form” or “justice is bad,” it’s not really all that different from allowing people to say “justice is consequential” or “justice is kantian” on the same side except that it encourages pre-round prep that includes things other than topic articles and law reviews. so i think it’s both a benefit to educational specialization to keep around some notion of truth-value (my paradigm is very similar to eric’s) as well as diversifying the theories with which our debaters become acquainted. beyond that, i think that this accordingly allows us to somewhat uneducationally fail to question a lot of important premises; if we just force debaters accept outright that justice is good, don’t we just say that it’s okay to fool ourselves and that we don’t really need to deeply interrogate the real and meaningful content of the statement at hand? “run it on the neg” doesn’t really satisfy my as a response, either; that simply predetermines that one side can claim a monopoly on the method of evaluation, and accordingly half of the debate loses a whole lot of its ground and half of the ways that an interpretation could be applied (fairly and educationally) to the other side of the resolution. it blocks a whole lot of really interesting arguments about the nature of truth and value, and that might be helpful when the wordings of topics are more consistent as methods of evaluation become much more side-programmed by the resolution - but i don’t think that makes sense in ld, and i really love that ld resolutions are written differently than always being a set of world comparisons. it just seems silly to me to say that we should start changing ld resolutions to be more comparative - because then we lose a whole lot of the specialization of this activity (and frankly, if ld abandoned truth and took on so many of these characteristics of policy, i don’t see why policy isn’t just a lot more preferable since much more rigid burdens make a lot of sense on year long topics that always start with the same few words).
so, call me old-fashioned, but i really like that they used to call it value debate.
Posted from: 24.242.139.162
April 16th, 2008 15:09
and rebar, i disagree with your argument regarding the strategic/technical debater winning more frequently under notions of truth. in my experience, having a very refined, consistent, and well-warranted notion of truth is a way to avoid dealing with a lot of heavily technical strategies because a thick spread and lots of tricks don’t really matter if they’re not engaging a very complete proof or disproof of the resolution. you can’t just avoid the nc with a couple of framework spikes of one argument being pushed very consistently for the falsity of the resolution is thoroughly warranted for almost all of the nc, just in the same way that very positional 1acs that prove the resolution true in a very sound manner aren’t susceptible to lots of tricks if they are just very uniquely well-warranted (intelligence seems to win here). “pacifism doesn’t matter because violence still happens!” doesn’t really get you out of a negative case where there is a very thorough justification of a difference between just efficacious acts that just hammers in that violence can’t possibly be deemed as ethical. sure, lots of really technical debaters can run blippy a prioris, but those sorts of things don’t really comport with the best justification paradigm either.
Posted from: 24.242.139.162
April 16th, 2008 15:26
sorry for the (egad) triple post - just wanted to elucidate something from the first of these three.
i think that a-tor (can i call you that?) is also entirely correct in pointing out the need to critically evaluate what we take for granted as good or bad in ld. i think the comparing worlds paradigm lends itself to this problem. i take an excerpt from adam nelson’s “towards a comprehensive theory of lincoln-douglas debate” as an example - not because i want to pick on adam (who i think is pretty rad), but because it’s a particularly lucid example and this sort of language seems to be common to the justifications for this paradigm:
“Why waste time articulating a criterion when all it will ultimately be is some vague explanation that the winner should be the debater who proves they provide the most benefits for the least costs?”
there are a lot of thinkers, theorists, people that find the language of costs, benefits, desirability, etc. to be nonsensical, or even as something ugly to be avoided. again, this sort of logic makes a lot of sense in an activity with different specialization (such as policy) where there is a topically implied action in all cases that always in some way or another directs us to questions of opportunity costs, but that’s not the case in lincoln-douglas where resolutions are (and i think should continue to be) not worded to follow a specific structure and which change every two months. i think that prescribing this type of burden on ld resolutions really ignores a lot of the sound strategic options, fair ground, educational benefits, and fun that we get from figuring out values in relation to the resolution and constantly having to approach new questions in new ways. and since the affirmative has to parade the resolution rather than prove it under a comparing worlds paradigm, i’m going to go out on a limb here and say that best justification probably is better for affirmatives than comparing worlds since they REALLY get to control the direction of the debate and as such rescues us from a lot of the problems of negating being easier in ld.
Posted from: 66.233.57.238
April 16th, 2008 16:25
yeah, i agree, i’m wrong. but your counter example only shows how the NC could win, and my argument was more implicating the problems with negation theory, not blippy affirmatives.
Posted from: 70.251.208.145
April 16th, 2008 16:38
“More likely, we’ll just end up with an underdeveloped / unrigorous implicit impact calculus. On the current resolution, the AC says “The use of MF prevents nuclear proliferation which ultimately prevents nuclear holocaust.” Of course the implicit assumption is that nuclear holocaust is bad, but the AC hasn’t had to say why or in what way. It presents nuclear holocaust as if it is a neutral fact which takes on relevance only in the 1AR. Even if those types of impacts seem intuitive, we should be extremely weary of allowing impact calculus debate to devolve into an appeal to intuition. This is both because such an appeal is a logical fallacy, and also because not every argument has such an intuitive link to a normative framework.”
truth. nukes can be duds. this was a huge problem i had with watching and judging rounds on this topic; many debaters failed to develop impacts without any sort of description of what would happen. or, at the very least, kids failed to weigh between impacts clearly because, when comparing ‘intuitive’ impacts, i find it hard to ajudicate rounds because i don’t know what to consider more ‘intuitive.’
standards debate is very good. in fact, i love it. but i think that good standards debate requires a very solid, clear, and well-written construction of what the resolution means and how it functions prior to a standard. i am a lover of very long framework debate, even if it means the AC isn’t chock full of arguments. to me, comparing impacts in a world where framework and standards debate is minimized becomes a big mess on the flow because [most] debaters can’t conclusively point out the order in which impacts can be evaluated devoid of a solid framework. with that said, i often stress [with my students, at least] the need for more clarity in terms of framework debate, and refusing to make logical leaps in argumentation because said leaps are easy ways of simply dismantling the truth behind advocacies. as a consequence, debaters are given access to ground that is can be very unpredictable, but can also be very well-warranted, clear, and in some cases, interesting.
Posted from: 70.251.208.145
April 16th, 2008 16:39
-is**
Posted from: 70.251.208.145
April 16th, 2008 16:41
ps if you’re running arguments about how there can be accidents and other nations build crappy bombs, isn’t is safe to ‘intuitively’ assume that those same weapons won’t work? just a thought in relation to the badness of nuclear war.
Posted from: 64.132.24.248
April 16th, 2008 17:21
well, this paradigm solves a lot of the negation theory problems, too. the example i give could be easily turned around; 15 second bad a prioris are both a) not going to be given much weight under this paradigm and b) probably not very powerful against really smart cases which cover a lot of area with the framework and very thoroughly justify their approach.
Posted from: 209.181.228.22
April 17th, 2008 08:13
Although I need to read it more carefully before I make any substinative remarks, but so far, I think this is one of the best ideas I’ve seen as far as paradigms. Just like in policy, there are affirmative burdens, but in some cases, the aff can argue why their advocacy precedes such burdens (although this is terrible stupid, but that’s a different debate), in LD, just because someone messes up on a poorly explained a priori that has little to no intuitive logic doesn’t necessarily mean you should vote neg. This is the type of thing that still allows for the validity of the resolution, while not allowing for debaters to abuse the strategic advantage of a priori arguments
Posted from: 209.181.228.22
April 17th, 2008 09:02
I’ve got two things to comment on in response to what rebar brought up:
1. I think a Strategic and/or Intelligent debater can beat back a technical debater easily in a truth-testing paradigm. Allow me to explain:
The strategic debater is a lot easier to justify, so I’ll start there. A strategic Aff has one HUGE advantage over the technically proficient neg. Their strategy doesn’t have to change. The secret isn’t to spend half the case reading preempts, but rather, to develop a dense, precise, detailed case that limits like crazy the possible neg strats. The Neg could read a case with as many independent strategies as they can imagine, but if they can’t figure out the link, they’re screwed. For a priori arguments, the same is true for a prioris. They generally have to rest on some conceptions that the AC has to make. Examples:
“Justice doesn’t exist” is preempted by the use of a different standard, justified by saying that Justice is an abstract term that in generally just reflects some positive (or potentially negative) characteristic.
Threat Con is preempted evidentially via explaining what exactly makes them a threat, or defining what a threat is.
Now for the Intelligent debater. Generally, a technical negative is going to rely on the assumption that the judge and their opponent accept the argument for face value and debate it. However, a lot of arguments don’t make sense. That’s how they win. If they read that justice doesn’t exist, ask them then what it means in every case that the word is used. Here’s a really good example from Harker:
Double Octas, my teammate is aff. The neg reads a zizek threat con case with the criterion of traversing the fantasy. In cross-x, he asked questions like “How do we traverse the fantasy?” “What would it look like if we traversed the fantasy?” and my personal favorite “If I were to go out in the hall and traverse the fantasy, what would happen?” Of course, they couldn’t answer these questions b/c their arg relied on some abstract idea that had no tangible value.
I’m not trying to defend the truth-seeking paradigm as a whole, but rather, I think you’re wrong as to why it’s bad.
2. The unknowable factors in international affairs is a poor argument. So much of the nuclear winter hypothesis research explains why the uncertainty means we need to be proactive. Not really relevant, and I get your point, I just can’t stand that argument
Posted from: 67.78.38.61
April 17th, 2008 11:09
rebar already admitted he was wrong, for the record.
Posted from: 209.181.228.22
April 17th, 2008 11:13
sorry, It’s had to follow discussion when all comments are aligned the same way.
Posted from: 65.112.165.162
April 17th, 2008 11:33
I haven’t read a lot of these posts, and I didn’t read Mangus’s initial theory, and I didn’t read Nelson’s theory either.
Maybe, then, someone can point me to an explanation of how one can act on the maxim of a descriptive/evaluative statement. How do I “act as if” preemptive use of military force is just. Does this assume that I, as a arbitrarily assumed hypothetical actor, act according to what is just?
Palmer says people act on behalf of principles, giving the example, “save innocent lives.” But it seems like topics aren’t principles, so much as descriptive sentences that in fact involve a number of principles (not simply one that can be accepted or rejected as a maxim).
It seems like this proposal doesn’t really entail “acting as if a resolution is true” so much as it means “acting as if part of the resolution is true.” Eric explains the premise with, “the idea works something like this: the affirmative says that acting as though the resolution is true leads to some good result x, the negative says that doing so would lead to some bad result y.”
But, acting as if an action is just/unjust doesn’t in and of itself cause anything to happen. A topic isn’t a command to do anything, and it isn’t worded like one. Acting as if “It is just for the United States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations that pose a threat” is true doesn’t mean “using force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons that pose a threat.” That seems especially true in the case of the United States insofar as it as an actor often seems not to care much about what is just (such that the US “acting as if” preemptive strikes, etc are just is irrelevant to its policy calculus, or at best, merely one component of it).
So, I guess I ultimately agree with all of Eric’s concerns about the “comparison” paradigm… but I have some additional reservations in terms of its coherence.
I think Eric is also right in terms of the alternative he advocates. I’m not sure if I see this as a radical departure with how many judges interpret the “truth” paradigm in practice. But to be sure, it is distinct from a judging practice that pulls the trigger instantly on an insubstantial dropped argument. Any reasonable critic should note that the likelihood of a “proof” in a debate round is negligible. We are ultimately comparing the “good reasons for X” to the “good reasons for NOT-X”. And that comparison can and should include a number of variables, standards, values, and implications.
I guess one of my biggest concerns with the comparisons approach is that it seems to fix something that isn’t all that broken. I think it misdiagnoses the origins of “pre-standard” argumentation and would ultimately do very little to correct for whatever blippy, no-risk trend emerges next. The notion of justifying or offering good reasons to believe a description to be accurate according to various standards for the judgement of that accuracy… makes sense. And, in many good rounds, plays out in an educational and fair way.
Posted from: 76.17.236.195
April 17th, 2008 12:00
Question for Eric on the “best justification” paradigm as it relates to insubstatntial pre-standards arguments (perhaps Babb could comment on this too):
It seems in different places this has been explained two different ways. One would be to say that debaters should be able to invoke the notion of best justification in the face of insubstantial pre-standards arguments. In other words, the paradigm would encourage a kind of strength-of-link weighing. The other way would be to have the judge evaluating in each round whether the link in each argument is substantial enough to vote on. Those aren’t mutually exclusive of course - a judge could hypothetically reject the most insubstantial pre-standards arguments regardless of whether they are answered well, and apply a higher standard of refutation to better but still not good pre-standards arguments or some kind of balance like that.
Anyway, important questions implied by this distinction:
1. What is a debater’s responsibility in dealing with insubstantial arguments under the best justification paradigm?
1a. Could an argument be so insubstantial or the strength of other arguments on the flow be so great that the insubstantial argument might be disregarded even though it is dropped/otherwise conceeded and extended “pre-standards”?
2. Flip side of the same question: should a judge only apply her own judgments as to strength of link when doing so is required intervention (the round can’t otherwise be resolved purely on the arguments of the debaters)?
The more proactive version (where judges tend to apply the stength-of-link analysis without prompting from the debater) probably does a better job combating the tendency to use insubstantial arguments on purpose to garner a strategic advantage, and does a better job getting away from the arbitrary exclusion of impacts that the “comparative world” paradigm advocates are concerned about. But it also invites more ambiguity (brightline for when an argument is substantial enough and all that).
Thoughts?
Posted from: 150.212.4.106
April 17th, 2008 12:08
i havent read much but i think its really funny that babb says he knows sources exists to answer his first question but yet he refuses to just read them. good work, sir. you are a true scholar.
Posted from: 209.181.228.22
April 17th, 2008 12:42
I think that this is good
Posted from: 209.181.228.22
April 17th, 2008 12:43
really good
Posted from: 65.112.165.162
April 17th, 2008 14:32
Michael, unless something has changed about yours and Adam’s premise since Eric’s explanation of that premise, and unless Eric’s account is inaccurate, then I think my question is fair.
Also, I never said I “refused” to read anything, nor is there any way for me to know those sources “answer [my] first question,” since I haven’t read them.
In fact, I mention early in my post that if my questions had been addressed somewhere, perhaps someone could point me to where. There are at least 3 “articles” on the matter and countless posts in response to those articles, so I’m just trying to avoid reading ALL of that to address 2 or 3 simple questions.
If you’ve got a useful answer for me somewhere, maybe you could kindly stop being an asshole and mention where. Or maybe the answers are coming in your much anticipated sequal article?
Posted from: 66.240.48.106
April 17th, 2008 14:54
Babb:
“Maybe, then, someone can point me to an explanation of how one can act on the maxim of a descriptive/evaluative statement. How do I “act as if” preemptive use of military force is just. Does this assume that I, as a arbitrarily assumed hypothetical actor, act according to what is just?”
The short answer to your question, at least in my opinion, is yes. I would argue the worldview implied by the Jan/Feb topic some use of military force to prevent the acquisition