Content Basics
BASIC ARGUMENT STRUCTURE
In order to be legitimate, an argument has to include three elements:
Claim: a thesis
Ex: Invading Pakistan harms US image
Warrant: a proof of the claim
Ex: because it is aggressive, and countries will fear that US will do the same to them
Impact: explanation of how an argument functions in terms of the round. On a contention level, this is a reference to how the argument matters in terms of the standard.
Ex: positive US image is needed to cooperate with countries to combat terrorism, thus saving lives (assuming the standard is Saving Lives).
SPEECHES
The speech order is:
Preparation time: (prep time) 15-20 minutes after the resolution is announced. If a resolution is announced at a central location, this includes the time it takes you to walk to your room.
GOV: Prime Minister Constructive (PMC, first speaker) 7 minutes
OPP: Leader of Opposition (LOC, first speaker) 7 minutes
GOV: Member of Government Constructive (MGC, second speaker) 7 minutes
OPP: Member of Opposition Constructive (MOC, second speaker) 7 minutes
OPP: Leader of Opposition Rebuttal (LOR, first speaker) 5 minutes
GOV: Prime Minister Rebuttal (PMR, first speaker) 5 minutes
MOC+LOR=Opp Block
NEW ARGUMENTS
Most people believe that new arguments are allowed in constructives, and not allowed in rebuttals, with an exception of clarifications and examples supporting old arguments. This is not entirely accurate.
The rule of thumb is: an argument has to be made on the first opportunity to make that argument. That is, all original arguments have to be made in the first speech by that side, all responses to them have to be made in the speech right after them, all responses to those responses have to be made on the first opportunity to do so and so on. The LOR has no new arguments, and the PMR can only make new responses if it is answering a new point brought up in the Opp Block.
EXTENSIONS & DROPS
In order to become a reason to vote for your side, an argument has to 1) be introduced in a correct speech (see “new arguments” section) 2) be extended in every speech following the time it was introduced.
Extending an argument means 1) answering all objections to it made by your opponents 2) briefly restating the argument, including mentioning all three elements of it (claim, warrant, impact).
Dropping an argument means forgetting to answer it on the first opportunity you are presented with (see “new arguments”). A dropped argument is considered to be automatically true.
RESOLUTION TYPES
Policy resolution: typically begins with “This House would” and questions a specific action. Requires a plan.
Ex: THW pull out of Iraq.
Value resolution: questions a general concept rather than an action. Doesn’t require a plan. Value debates tend to be confusing, so you can specify it down to a policy resolution.
Ex: specify “Fair trade is better than free trade” to “US should tax outsourcing”.
Fact resolution (more accurately referred to as “opinion resolution”): begins with “this House believes that” and questions whether something is factually true.
Ex: This House believes that Sarah Palin was an important factor in John McCain’s loss.
In order to frame the debate as a fact, define “this House” as the judge. If you convince the judge that “X is true,” then the resolution “This House (this judge) believes that X is true” becomes true.
Metaphorical resolutions: can be policy, value or fact. They are resolutions that absolutely cannot be debated without being taken as symbolic for something specific. They are interpreted in a two-step process.
Ex: This House would go home.
Step 1: extrapolate a phrase to a general action. In this case “going home” symbolizes “leaving”.
Step 2: specify a general action to a real world situation. E.g. “US would leave (withdraw troops from) Iraq”.
POINTS
Point of Information (POI): a question or an argument disguised as question you ask during your opponent’s speech. Points of Information count as part of the speech time. The process is: 1) you stand up 2) your opponent recognizes you 3) you ask a question 4) they answer it. The speaker holding the floor doesn’t have to accept the question right away or even at all. It is best to finish up your thought before taking a question, and not take questions when you have a lot to get through. Say “No, thank you” to decline a question. Try to take about 2 questions per speech. First and last minutes of each speech are protected time and no questions can be asked during them. Also, some tournaments don’t allow Points of Information during rebuttals, so clarify the rules with your judges before the round starts.
Point of Order: made when your opponent breaks a rule (makes a new argument in a rebuttal). Points of Order do not count as part of the speech time. A speaker has to stop when a Point of Order is made; he cannot decline it. After the point is made, the speaker has an opportunity to defend himself, after which the speech resumes. Some tournaments do not allow Points of Order, so clarify the rules with your judges before the round starts.
FLOW: write down all arguments in the round. You need three separate pieces of paper, one for Gov case and responses to it, one for disads and responses to them, and one for notes to your partner. Try to use printer paper for flowing. Divide your paper into six columns (vertically, that is, the long side of the column corresponds with the long side of the paper), corresponding to each speech, and write down arguments for each speech in the appropriate column. Write down responses to these arguments in the next column right across from the original argument. Remember to use shorthand as much as possible to save time. Listen to an argument first and make sure you understand it before flowing it, don’t write down incomprehensible sentence fragments. If you do not understand an argument, make a POI asking your opponents to clarify it. If your speech is next, pre-write your arguments in the column for your speech, so that you don’t forget to make them.
SIGNPOSTING
Make it easier for the judge to flow/follow you speech.
1) When presenting your case, introduce each of your contentions with a number and a tagline. A number refers to the order in which the argument appears chronologically in your first constructive. If your argument has several sections, you can refer to each as a subpoint and label each subpoint with a letter. A tagline is a succinct one-sentence thesis/claim/summary of your contention. It is the specific rhetoric you want your judges to put down on their flows, or, if your judge is not flowing, a mental hook that will help them remember your argument.
2) In the subsequent speeches, tell the judge the number and the tagline of the argument you are extending before going into detail and answering your opponents’ refutations. This gives the judges time to find on their flows the argument you will be addressing.
Ex: Go to contention 1 (<- number), subpoint C (<- letter), where we tell you that death penalty does not deter crime (< - tagline). Our opponents refute this by saying X (<- opponents' tagline) , but they are wrong because of Y (<- your in depth argument).
FIRST GOV SPEECH
1) FRAMEWORK
A PMC starts with setting the rules for the round. While we generally know that each team needs to prove or disprove the resolution, it is often unclear how do we know whether the resolution is proven or disproven. The Gov team needs to tell the judges how to decide the round, clearly distinguishing between which arguments are “Gov ground” and which arguments are “Opp ground”. (Think of it as a net in tennis. In order to know who won after the ball fell somewhere, we need to know whether it fell on one player’s “ground” or another, and we have a net to define whose “ground” is whose. Only in debate, there is no established “net”, so you get to argue about where it should be located). Typical framework arguments include:
Definitions: your interpretation of what the resolution means. Have to be very specific, regardless of whether a resolution is metaphorical or straight-forward. If the resolution begins with “This House would”, “this House” should be defined as the most appropriate agent for the action proposed.
Standard (similar to Value, Criterion): something used to evaluate the merits of something else. Every action is taken to achieve some basic overall goal, and what that goal is determines which actions to take. Standards are often derived from obligations, for example, every government has an obligation to promote the welfare of its citizens, so Societal Welfare is a common standard for resolutions that have a government actor, that is, we evaluate action based on how they affect the society overall.
Ex: what’s worse, a risk of a terrorist attack or bad US image? To answer this, we’d need to specify the question, that is, explain, bad for what. Isolation can be worse for economy, but a risk of terrorist attack can be worse for security. Economy and Security are thus standards that you can use to compare the harms and benefits of actions.
2) PLAN & CONTENTIONS
Plan: Explains what are you going to do to achieve the resolution and how are you going to do it. Avoid the mistake of presenting a plan and then going on to prove the resolution in general, forgetting about your plan. For example, in the example below, you need to prove that pulling out of Iraq in the specific manner you described is good, not that leaving countries is good in general. Use the specifics of the plan to preclude objections. For example, in the example below, training Iraqi police precludes your opponents from making the argument that there won’t be enough people to stop terrorism if we pull out so many troops.
After saying your plan stop and ask you opponents if they have any questions about it; this prevents them from accusing you of not being specific enough later on.
Ex: if the resolution is “This House would prefer leaving over staying”, the plan would be something like “the United States Congress would pass a law requiring our military to pull out 60,000 troops from Iraq by January 1, 2009 and to train the Iraqi police to take their spot. The plan is going to be enforced by the General Headquarters is going to be funded by the U.S. Treasury”.
Note: changing your plan or adding to it in the last 4 speeches is called shifting advocacy and is prohibited for fairness reasons.
Note: Only use if the resolution is calling for an action (which is most of the time), and not a fact resolution.
Contentions (a.k.a. advantages, if you have a plan): reasons for why you win under your framework. They are basic arguments (ex: pull out of Iraq to save money) and need to follow the claim-warrant-impact structure.
FIRST OPP SPEECH
1) ATTACK FRAMEWORK: your opponents set the rules for the round, but you don’t have to accept them. There are two reasons to reject a Gov framework
Logically their framework doesn’t make sense or has no warrants
Abuse: their framework is unfair towards you (makes it harder to disprove a resolution than to prove it). The impact is that if your opponents are abusive, proving the resolution doesn’t win them the round. The ballot asks your judges to pick the better debaters, and if your opponents have a framework that makes it too easy for them to prove a resolution, then proving it doesn’t make them better than you, since their framework gave them a head start.
Note: when arguing abuse, you need to provide a better, non-abusive framework.
2) DISADVANTAGES (a.k.a. disads a.k.a. DA’s): your opponents’ case might have advantages in the area that they are talking about, but have greater disadvantages in another area.
Ex: pulling out of Iraq might save us money, but will send out a message that we will not go through with our threats, encouraging more terrorism.
3) CASE OVERVIEWS: without answering each Gov argument specifically, you can disprove a Gov case as a whole. Typical overviews include:
Inherency: the Gov case is based on a factually incorrect assumption.
Solvency: the Gov plan can be carried out, but doesn’t solve the problems it attempts to solve.
Implementation: the Gov plan cannot be carried out.
Topicality: the Gov case has nothing to do with the resolution.
Counterplan: a.k.a. CP, you agree that the status quo is bad (unless you run a counterplan, you ground is to defend the status quo and show how it’s better than what the world would be after the implementation of your opponents’ plan) , but you claim that there are better ways of solving harms than the one Gov had provided.
Note: the counterplan has to be mutually exclusive with the Gov plan, otherwise it doesn’t disprove the Gov case, because we can do both plans at the same time.
No Plan: the Gov doesn’t provide a plan, or their plan is not specific, so we don’t know what exactly they are advocating, and can’t vote for it.
Note: The above overviews are structural in nature (that is, you opponent is missing an element of a structured case, such as good definitions for topicality). You can also run substantive overviews, which just point out the same flaw contained in all of your opponents arguments.
4) DIRECT RESPONSES: answer your opponents’ contentions by attacking either their warrants or their impacts or both.
OFFENSE VS. DEFENSE
Offensive argument gives a judge a reason to vote for your team. I.e. “we save lives”. For the Opp, disads, and turns (see later) are offensive, while case overviews (other than counterplans) and non-turn direct responses are defensive.
Defensive argument is a reason to ignore an offensive argument. I.e. “they don’t save lives”.
STRAIGHT ANSWER VS. TURN
Turn: an offensive direct response to your opponent’s contention (as opposed to straight answer). For example, a straight answer to “we save lives” is “you don’t save lives” while a turn is either “you kill more people than you save” (link turn) or “saving lives is bad, we should kill everyone” (impact turn). If you win a turn, their argument doesn’t just go away, it becomes an offensive reason to vote for you.
Link Turn:- If your opponents say that what you are doing destroys some really good thing, you can say that not doing your plan would be even more detrimental to that good thing.
Impact Turn:- If your opponent says that what you are doing destroys some really good thing, you can say that the thing you are destroying is actually bad.
Note: you cannot run both of these turns at the same time. If it helps, think of what would happen if you turned something around twice in real life. In the “lives” example above, if you prove that both they are killing more than saving, and that killing is good, you are saying that what your opponents are doing is good, and have thus “double-turned” yourself.
UNIQUENESS
In order for an advantage/disadvantage to have an impact on the round, it has to apply to one team but not the other, otherwise it is called “non-unique”.
Ex: Opp accuses Gov of polluting the environment, causing Global Warming. The Gov destroys the link between pollution and Global Warming by bringing evidence that Global Warming is a natural process. The “Global Warming disadvantage” is now non-unique because it will happen and will not decrease/increase regardless of whether the Gov or the Opp plan passes.
REBUTTALS are a time when you tell the judge why you’ve won the round. Instead of going down all the arguments again, you need to select a few (not all, just the best ones!) offensive arguments you are winning that you think can win you the round and make each one a voting issue. Number your voting issues and remember that you can reform the numbering in rebuttals, that is, contention # 1 can become voting issue # 3. Then you need to weigh your arguments against your opponents’ arguments, that is, explain why the impacts of your voting issues are more important in terms of the standard than anything your opponents might be winning (weighing early is also good, don’t wait for your last speech to do it). Finally, if your opponents have any offensive arguments left that are hard to outweigh, answer them in your last voting issues that you’d label “they have no offense now”.
32 Comments to Content Basics
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add section on signposting
Section on signposting added.
Add theory. It’s not enough to say “waaaaah that definition is abusive”
for example, for the THB states ought not possess nuclear weapons, and they define nukes as “PAL nukes (require multiple passwords) they are too specifi.
Here is a sample theory shell
A is interpretation, or the rule. A rule of parliamentary debate is that definitions in a policy debate must be broad, and reasonable, thus, nuclear weapon = any wep capable of X power made by splitting an atom.
B is the violation, they dont do this
C are the standards, the way to achieve the 2 pillars of debate.
standard 1: Predictability: This is unpredictable, nukes=PAl nukes is an illogical assumption, and uneducaional as i can’t possibly have blocked it out, leading to substanive responses. its also unfair because you are at a competitive advantage.
standard 2: Ground Skew: This definition limits ground for the neg side. I can’t make the argument that terrorists will eventually get the nukes and use them, becuase terrorists dont know all of the complex passwords. This is unfair as debate is a competitive activity, and if one sides arguments are swept away, all fairness is destroyed. edu link is kinda iffy here, so ionno
standard 3: prep skew. This is uneducational for the prop/aff because they can just spend infinite time on a single type of definition, while i the negative/opposition debater must research every single possible definition for every possible word. This skew prep, bad for education, AND skews fairness because the opp/neg team will lose every round.
Standard 4: Time skew. You made me waste 1.5 minutes reading this theory, when you could just as easily have adopted the broad definition. The loss in time results in less time spent on substantive issues, which is uneducational, AND the fact that I have less time to respond to what you say, thus, the neg debater is disadvantaged because you have more speech time.
D is the voter
1. Education is defined as “insert defnition here” Debate is an educational activity, and we must maintain this educatino for debaters nationwide. It is impossible for debate to be an educational activity if we allow affs to adopt unpredictable, hyperspecific, ground skewing, prep skewing, time skewing definitions. The time I spent on this, could have been put to better use, answering aarguments, not the framework had they provided a fair definition
2. FAIRNESS IS A VOTER. Debate is a competitive game, and we must preserve equal opportunities for both sides to win, lest the game become bankrupt. Fairness is defined as “…” He never allows us to reach fairness because he [ insert standards here]
Finally, the last part of a Theory shell is why it matters. How does it function in a debate round?
Debate is based on the pillars of Education and Fairness. My opponent destroys both today. It doesn’t matter if he proves states ought not possess nuclear weapons, because this round has ZERO real world impacts. Barrack will not utilize what he says in us foreign policy because of a small debate round. however, by allowing my opponent to make these abusive definitions, we violate education and fairness, which actually affect the real world. Thus, theory arguments come first, because this theory will have real world impacts. Education and fairness will be preserved in debate, as debaters will slowly realize that they can lose rounds for biased, skewing definitions, and be disincentivized from running them in the future. THis preserves edu and fairness. next, even if i drop the entire AC, 1st constructive, I still win, because theory comes before contentions as it deals with breaks in rules. for example, no one cares if the patriots won the superbowl 89-0 against the 49ers if the patriots had 15 players. The break in rules comes before the game itself.
Thus, drop the definition, which collapses his entire case[kinda iffy], and drop the debater.
Even if my opponent manages to refute THIS, [move on to his contentions]
How receptive is parliamentary debate to terms like “fiat.” Can I just fiat the plan and compare it to the squo? The advantage/disad debate gets pretty interesting imo.
Can you explain the value better? In Ld the value is the ultimate principle taken from the resolution we want to reach, and the value criterion or standard is the method of achieving the value. It is essentially the weighing mechanism for the debate round.
In parli, I have heard several rounds where the people just walk over the value. “My value is net benefits” heres definiions. Thats the framework. that’s it.
Is it ok for me to make the standard deontology, and argue Kant/Korsgaard. basically a fascinating weighing mechanism, deontology is the opposite of net betefits, or rule utilitarianism or consequentialism. deontology is means based, stating that people are infinitily inviolable, and we must never treat them as a means to an ends, rather an ends in and of themselves. Can I do this? I am positive that it could easily bring debates to a new level in the value debates. I took pure kant to greenhill and got a bid, so im pretty sure i can win, if it is allowed.
Also, which tournaments in CA are receptive to allowing a lone debater do parli?
The theory shell looks about right, although the timeskew standard is terrible and if you run it, you are just asking for an RVI. If you run ground skew, you need to demonstrate why the specific argument you can’t make it is essential to the Opp strat – in this case, it’s not.
I wrote this for my first-semester novices back when I was Lynbrook parli captain, so it obviously doesn’t have any complicated procedural explanation. If you want to see some more advanced debate handbooks, check out http://www.pointofinformation.org/resources/links/
I found that novices are less confused by the standard model than by the value/criterion model. I don’t see what’s wrong with having a net benefits standard.
There’s no rule against Kant. However, the lay-friendly version of Kant is terrible and the precise version of Kant is really hard to wrap your head around even for flow debaters – hence the terrible deon dumps on last year’s Sept/Oct topic. If you want to challenge util and don’t want to run critical arguments, run Rawls.
Brian Qiu got to semifinals of St. Francis after his partner had to drop out mid-prelims.
Rawls is fun to run. I debated with my friend for fun at some local tournament, i think milipitas, and we went undefeated.
so hilarious. we spread out a team with a policy judge, who stopped us halfway and said, im sorry its cheap, cant flow that. so 4 min of topicality, a hastily put together nietzsche arg (you are evil in trying to abolish evil. when you remove the greatest evil, you also remoe the greatest good. without evil, we do not know what is moral.), and sartre’s existentialism. hilarious rounds XD
i find that novi ar even more confused by straight up having a value and weighing args thru the value.
Value _morality
how do we achieve morality? i dont know, thats unimportant because im trying to prevent genocide to preserve morality. but im preenting people from beng used as means to an end, too bad. i save live. well i save rights. well im moral. no im moral.
facepalm.
please weigh.
In response to the horrible posted theory shell:
A is the Counter-Interpretation: LD resolutions ought to be debated in specific scenarios as opposed to holistic debates.
B You violate this
C is the standards
Predictability is bad because in real life you will be faced with situations which you will not have prepared for. You should have blocked this out because it is literally the tenth item that comes up on jstor. Also, now you cant go robot and read your coaches prepped arguments, leading to more education. Third, you are forced to think on the spot in the round, rather than hiding behind the dense rhetoric in your backfiles. fourth, 3 points is enough, but wtv
In depth research: Specific debates encourage more in depth argumentation, rather than broad generalizations. The topic is so vast that this will allow the opponent to frontline a quantity of arguments rather than a few, well developed points, making debate simply who read a faster blip storm, while dropping the fewest arguments.This hamstrings education as well as fairness.
Division of ground: You can still make arguments to the debate. They are narrowed, so we can have a very indepth discussion.
Real world applicability: the majority of nukes are PAL nukes.
Meaningful discussion: By using the boradest possible definitions, where one side has to holistically affirm, debate will never be fair. This allows for meaningful discussion on bothsides.
Time skew: Theory is time skew. Cross ex checks this. also, you are wasting my time as well as your own. you could have adpated to my arguments, but chose to run theory instead.
Apply fairness/education
bad theory=turnable theory=L20
This is why parliamentary debaters should not run theory. They will lose to varsity LD debaters who know how to explain theory to parent judges however. Theory should rarely be run: in 90% of times, it is used as a strategic tool by both debaters.
“Standard 4: Time skew. You made me waste 1.5 minutes reading this theory, when you could just as easily have adopted the broad definition. The loss in time results in less time spent on substantive issues, which is uneducational, AND the fact that I have less time to respond to what you say, thus, the neg debater is disadvantaged because you have more speech time. “
You made me waste even more time responding to this crap, in an already hellish 1AR. You could easily have adopted the slightly specific, but topical definition. Turn this again because you ran theory, detracting a meaningful discussion on nukes to a stupid debate where 16 year olds argue the same, movable standards for 26 minutes. Turn this again, because the neg ALWAYS has more speech time than the aff. Look at your 7 minute nc, and my 4 min 1ar!
How could a debater with a bid from GREENHILL argue this point? The other guy did a decent job, but I thought I could do the time skew arg a little more justice.
The PAL nukes definition wasn’t really that cheap. Reasonable parametrics are very good. Look to the sanctions topic. It was horrible at the TOC with theory being run left right and center because of a-spec, multi actor fiat good bad, sanction spec, FPO spec, negatively worded policy topic, use=threat, or utilize, side switch debate, AND the dreaded ought debate. Your attack was simply strategic, not fundamentally true. Being reasonably topical is sufficient. Theory is pretty bad. I’m really disappointed we have it, because it is abused way too much.
Back to the sanctions topic. If we had a specified sanction, ground would not have been limited. It would have increased, as people can dig deeper. IE make the topic about Iran, or North Korea rather than EVERY sanction at EVERY moment by EVERYBODY OR A SINGLE STATE against ANY OR MULTIPLE COUNTRIES for ANY foreign policy objective. North korea and iran are common.
Any TOC quality debater knows that reasonable parametrics are good. Broad generalization debates are SO pointless.
@ parli people. A said that going too indepth is bad, and impacted to fairness and education, as well as the fact that this theory arg comes before ANYTHING in the round, so if A wins the theory and drops the ENTIRE constructive speech, A wins. B says indepth argumentation is good, TURNING the theory argument completely, so B gets the heory arg, a clear voting issue before any of A’s case if Bwins theory. Look at this, and think of a way to crossapply this in easily explainable terms to a lay judge. Its not too bad, but ONLY use it if there is a clear case of abuse.
@ everyone. Why run theory, if it has a bankrupt ontology?
also, the meaningful discussion is slightly off.
@yoyo
. You neglect to say that I devote the first 3 minutes of my 1AC to clarification and questions. Also, either some other team took my case and ran a really stupid version of it, or you’re making that resolution up. I would never say “PALs good” and then say “but states shouldn’t possess them!”
Either you’re talking about some case run on the LD resolution, or (your brief bastardization of) my PAL case is famous now
(The following are not actual responses, but rather what I want to say to teams who run theory against debateable topic interpretations)
A/T Standard 1 “uneducational as i can’t possibly have blocked it out”: Waaaaaaaaaaa you mean you can’t run the beautifully crafted argument you really really really wanted to run!?! :’(
A/T Standard 2: Waaaaaaaa you mean you might have to weigh a successful technology that fights terrorism against the negative geopolitical implications of PAL distribution :’(
A/T Standard 3: a.) Empirically proven false at the Cal Cup and recent major Parli tournies where Aff teams lost 60%+ of the time despite “prep skew” b.) Waaaaaaaaa you have to think quickly :’( c.)Your link is awful
A/T Standard 4: a.)Waaaaa I didn’t hold a gun to your head and force you to run bad theory b.)RVI: you’re using valuable education time
Resolved: States ought not possess nuclear weapons.
Nearly became an LD topic. Probably not in reponse to a parliamentary topic.
Parli theory is pretty much. I’m reasonable. You can parametricize as much as you want as long as its fair.
Does the affirmative side always win on the resolutions like. THB we should go home. (quit iraq, we (humans) must prevent ontological damnation, illegal immigrants must leave, what ever you know about and want)?
Obviously, on resolutions where there is a clear winning side, like politics, it comes down to first who actually knows what the hell is going on, and next, which side is the topic more skewed to?
That theory obviously would not be run at parli, the speech times are pretty much exact.
^^ *Did become the LD Topic.
Great introduction to Parli and even debate as a whole, Thanks.
I really do think value and fact rounds are outdated. All good rounds are policy and all rounds should be policy.
No one is philosophically sophisticated enough (from what I have seen) to properly debate values, as most debaters just resort back to the old “ethical” value, which is of course circular.
Why must counterplans solve the case harms? Must they solve all or only some?
I thought that all CP’s have to do is a) prove competition, and b) prove why the CP is net beneficial.
I feel like the “counterplan must specifically solve AFF’s harms” is an artificial restraint.
Is this just a difference between stock issues and policy-making or am I missing something?
There’s no rule that says CP must solve all/some case harms. You are correct, CP just needs to be competitive and outweigh the plan.
If there is a disad that the plan links into but the CP doesnt, and if that disad outweighs case, then Opp wins. Solving case harms does help however, because it makes them non-unique and means that you don’t have to weigh your disads against them.
Ah, that makes sense.
But if you solve the harms better than the AFF, can that justify a NEG ballot, even if your CP doesn’t have an additional advantage?
Sure, if it’s competitive. But at that point, your offense is pretty much marginal and a DA against the CP could bite back pretty hard.
Solving better than the case is only really useful if CP is mutually exclusive. If you’re competing via net benefits, you need to prove that CP alone is better than the perm (P + CP). Ideally, the way that’s done is to say CP solves 100% of aff but doesn’t link into DAs. A CP that has 100% solvency while the aff has only 90% doesn’t really matter in a world where the aff can perm the CP.
As a general note, how often are y’all successful with running net benefits cps? I tried having my kids run them at stanford but parents and even flow judges with a weaker grasp of theory tend to just go “you’re not mutually exclusive, so…i vote aff.”
I think that many judges, even some experienced ones, don’t understand that non-mutually exclusive counterplans can also compete through net benefits.
I do find that the net benefits competition seems very similar to the “net beneficial” policy option. Like, if you prove the CP is better than the perm (so perm fails), don’t you also simultaneously prove that the CP is better than the plan?
There’s a really gray line, IMO.
You prove that of the three policy options on the table (plan, CP, plan+CP), CP is better than plan+CP.
Then the debate is between only CP and plan. I don’t think this is necessarily automatically won by the CP, though. Let’s say plan and CP are ideologically opposed (though not pragmatically exclusive) approaches to an international conflict. The perm would garner some disadvantage about US credibility (hypothetically), making it less attractive than the CP or plan. That being said, the perm’s failure doesn’t say that much about the value of the CP or plan relative to each other.
Or, in a very simple case: the CP of one debate could be the plan of another debate, and vice versa. If the perm sucks, we don’t learn anything about the merit of the CP or plan since they’re basically arbitrary distinctions.
How receptive is parli judges to hypo-testing the resolution?
Good parli flow judges will follow the theory flow and see if hypo-testing is justified in the round. BUT, most of these judges will side against hypo-testing in favor of policy-making if there is any decent theory defending policy-making.
As for lay judges, if you’re smooth and explain what Hypo-T actually is, you could probably get them to vote down a topical CP, yeah.
How receptive do you think experienced parli judges would be to alternate frameworks?
Like, if the aff came up and told the judge to evaluate deontology before consequentialism, while making only deontological arguments. If the neg drops framework, would the aff then win?
Yes, a million times yes. I do not know a single judge who, in his or her paradigm, states that he or she will only evaluate consequentially/deontologically.
Do most judges (not necessarily “very” experienced ones) understand these frameworks?
On the level of “stick to your principles” vs “the ends justify the means” – sure. On a more nuanced level – not unless they’ve taken a philosophy class.
Also, do most judges buy counterwarrants and justification arguments if they are clearly articulated by the NEG?
Yes. Also, it’s okay to ask more than one question at a time.
Hi guys,
I was reading the discussion above, and I may sound stupid for asking, but:
What are “deontology frameweworks,” counterwarrants, and justification arguments???
Deontology is an obligations-based ethical system. It asks the question of what obligations—and to whom—the government has. This is opposed to consequentialism, wherein the best aggregate outcome for all people is what dictates action.
Justification arguments are exactly what they sound like: arguments that justify the usage of a particular framework (usually deon v. conseq/util). An example (not necessarily a good one) is ‘Consequentialism is better than deontology because it allows for direct analysis of competing policy options, whereas you can’t weigh morality on a scale.’
I’m not 100% on counterwarrants, but there’s an explanation of them here: http://webpages.charter.net/johnprager/IPD/Chapter13.htm
I am ashamed to admit that I was the debater who wrote some of the shells on here. Not sure why they are here at all, but also, wow, I predicted a future LD topic. Pretty cool =D
I think parli should be all policy debate because no one knows how to debate against broad values like democracy and justice.
How does one debate against justice?