Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Critiques Bad
Shells
1NC Shell
1. Interpretation: The aff should defend the hypothetical enactment of a topical plan 2. United States Federal Government should means the debate is solely about the outcome of a policy established by governmental means Ericson, California Polytechnic Dean Emeritus, 03
(Jon M., Dean Emeritus of the College of Liberal Arts California Polytechnic U., et al., The Debaters Guide, Third Edition, p. 4) The Proposition of Policy: Urging Future Action In policy propositions, each topic contains certain key elements, although they have slightly different functions from comparable elements of value-oriented propositions. 1. An agent doing the acting ---The United States in The United States should adopt a policy of free trade. Like the object of evaluation in a proposition of value, the agent is the subject of the sentence. 2. The verb shouldthe first part of a verb phrase that urges action. 3. An action verb to follow should in the should-verb combination. For example, should adopt here means to put a program or policy into action though governmental means. 4. A specification of directions or a limitation of the action desired. The phrase free trade, for example, gives direction and limits to the topic, which would, for example, eliminate consideration of increasing tariffs, discussing diplomatic recognition, or discussing interstate commerce. Propositions of policy deal with future action. Nothing has yet occurred. The entire debate is about whether something ought to occur. What you agree to do, then, when you accept the affirmative side in such a debate is to offer sufficient and compelling reasons for an audience to perform the future action that you propose.
3. Prefer our interpretation: a. Ground: allowing un-topical affs kills ground, all neg ground is based off of a policy happening. Absent a stable locus for links and competition, debate is shallow, killing education b. Predictable limits: government action is key to create a limit on the topic, allowing different methods or framings to be the 1ac explodes neg research burden and kills core generics. Prefer our limits because they are predictably based off of the resolution c. Topic education: the topic is about the effects of US policies toward regions of Latin America. A discussion of policies accesses a knowledge of politics, which is the largest portable impact to debate d. Aff conditionality: without the plan text as a stable source of the offense the aff can shift their advocacy to get out of offense which discourages research and clash. Voting issue e. Switch side debate solves their offense critiquing the topic on the neg produces the same discussion. f. Framework is a voting issue for the reasons above 4. Roleplaying is good and key to in-depth political knowledge the process of debating politics and counterplans is key Zwarensteyn, Grand Valley State Masters student, 12
[Ellen C., 8-1-2012 High School Policy Debate as an Enduring Pathway to Political Education: Evaluating Possibilities for Political Learning http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=theses accessed: 7/5/13 EYS] The first trend to emerge concerns how debate fosters in-depth political knowledge. Immediately, every resolution calls for analysis of United States federal government action. Given that each debater may debate in over a hundred different unique rounds, there is a competitive incentive thoroughly research as many credible, viable, and in-depth strategies as possible. Moreover, the requirement to debate both affirmative and negative sides of the topic injects a creative necessity to defend viable arguments from a multitude of perspectives. As a result, the depth of knowledge spans questions not only of what, if anything, should be done in response to a policy question, but also questions of who, when, where, and why. This opens the door to evaluating intricacies of government branch, committee, agency, and even specific persons who may yield different cost-benefit outcomes to conducting policy action. Consider the following responses: I think debate helped me understand how Congress works and policies actually happen which is different than what government classes teach you. Process counterplans are huge - reading and understanding how delegation works means you understand that it is not just congress passes a bill and the president signs. You understand that policies can happen in different methods. Executive orders, congress, and courts counterplans have all helped me understand that policies dont just happen the
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 6 Brovero/Lundeen Framework way we learn in government. There are huge chunks of processes that you don't learn about in government that you do learn about in debate. Similarly, Debate has certainly aided [my political knowledge]. The nature of policy-making requires you to be knowledgeable of the political process because process does effect the outcome. Solvency questions, agent counterplans, and politics are tied to process questions. When addressing the overall higher level of awareness of agency interaction and ability to identify pros and cons of various committee, agency, or branch activity, most respondents traced this knowledge to the politics research spanning from their affirmative cases, solvency debates, counterplan ideas, and political disadvantages. One of the recurring topics concerns congressional vs. executive vs. court action and how all of that works. To be good at debate you really do need to have a good grasp of that. There is really something to be said for high school debate - because without debate I wouldnt have gone to the library to read a book about how the Supreme Court works, read it, and be interested in it. Maybe I wouldve been a lawyer anyway and I wouldve learned some of that but I cant imagine at 16 or 17 I wouldve had that desire and have gone to the law library at a local campus to track down a law review that might be important for a case. That aspect of debate in unparalleled - the competitive drive pushes you to find new materials. Similarly, I think [my political knowledge] comes from the politics research that we have to do. You read a lot of names name-dropped in articles. You know who has influence in different parts of congress. You know how different leaders would feel about different policies and how much clout they have. This comes from links and internal links. Overall, competitive debaters must have a depth of political knowledge on hand to respond to and formulate numerous arguments. It appears debaters then internalize both the information itself and the motivation to learn more. This aids the PEP value of intellectual pluralism as debaters seek not only an oversimplified both sides of an issue, but multiple angles of many arguments. Debaters uniquely approach arguments from a multitude of perspectives often challenging traditional conventions of argument. With knowledge of multiple perspectives, debaters often acknowledge their relative dismay with television news and traditional outlets of news media as superficial outlets for information.
5. That turns the aff focusing on the details and inner-workings of government policy-making is productive critical approaches cant resolve real world problems like poverty, racism and war McClean, Mollow College Philosophy Professor, 01
[David E., Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Molloy College, New York, 2001 The Cultural Left and the Limits of Social Hope, Presented at the 2001 Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, Available Online at www.americanphilosophy.org/archives/past_conference_programs/pc2001/Discussion%20papers/david_mcclean.htm, JMP, Accessed on July 5, 2013)][SP] Yet for some reason, at least partially explicated in Richard Rorty's Achieving Our Country, a book that I think is long overdue, leftist critics continue to cite and refer to the eccentric and often a priori ruminations of people like those just mentioned, and a litany of others including Derrida, Deleuze, Lyotard, Jameson, and Lacan, who are to me hugely more irrelevant than Habermas in their narrative attempts to suggest policy prescriptions (when they actually do suggest them)
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 7 Brovero/Lundeen Framework aimed at curing the ills of homelessness, poverty, market greed, national belligerence and racism . I would like to suggest that it is time for American social critics who are enamored with this group, those who actually want to be relevant, to recognize that they have a disease, and a disease regarding which I myself must remember to stay faithful to my own twelve step program of recovery. The disease is the need for elaborate theoretical "remedies" wrapped in neological and multi-syllabic jargon. These elaborate theoretical remedies are more "interesting," to be sure, than the pragmatically settled questions about what shape democracy should take in various contexts, or whether private property should be protected by the state, or regarding our basic human nature (described, if not defined (heaven forbid!), in such statements as "We don't like to starve" and "We like to speak our minds without fear of death" and "We like to keep our children safe from poverty"). As Rorty puts it, "When one of today's academic leftists says that some topic has been 'inadequately theorized,' you can be pretty certain that he or she is going to drag in either philosophy of language, or Lacanian psychoanalysis, or some neo-Marxist version of economic determinism. . . . These futile attempts to philosophize one's way into political relevance are a symptom of what happens when a Left retreats from activism and adopts a spectatorial approach to the problems of its country. Disengagement from practice produces theoretical hallucinations"(italics mine).(1) Or as John Dewey put it in his The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy, "I believe that philosophy in America will be lost between chewing a historical cud long since reduced to woody fiber, or an apologetics for lost causes, . . . . or a scholastic, schematic formalism, unless it can somehow bring to consciousness America's own needs and its own implicit principle of successful action." Those who suffer or have suffered from this disease Rorty refers to as the Cultural Left, which left is juxtaposed to the Political Left that Rorty prefers and prefers for good reason. Another attribute of the Cultural Left is that its members fancy themselves pure culture critics who view the successes of America and the West, rather than some of the barbarous methods for achieving those successes, as mostly evil, and who view anything like national pride as equally evil even when that pride is tempered with the knowledge and admission of the nation's shortcomings. In other words, the Cultural Left, in this country, too often dismiss American society as beyond reform and redemption. And Rorty correctly argues that this is a disastrous conclusion, i.e. disastrous for the Cultural Left. I think it may also be disastrous for our social hopes, as I will explain. Leftist American culture critics might put their considerable talents to better use if they bury some of their cynicism about America's social and political prospects and help forge public and political possibilities in a spirit of determination to, indeed, achieve our country - the country of Jefferson and King; the country of John Dewey and Malcom X; the country of Franklin Roosevelt and Bayard Rustin, and of the later George Wallace and the later Barry Goldwater. To invoke the words of King, and with reference to the American society, the time is always ripe to seize the opportunity to help create the "beloved community," one woven with the thread of agape into a conceptually single yet diverse tapestry that shoots for nothing less than a true intra-American cosmopolitan ethos, one wherein both same sex unions and faith-based initiatives will be able to be part of the same social reality, one wherein business interests and the university are not seen as belonging to two separate galaxies but as part of the same answer to the threat of social and ethical nihilism. We who fancy ourselves philosophers would do well to create from within ourselves and from within our ranks a new kind of public intellectual who has both a hungry theoretical mind and who is yet capable of seeing the need to move past high theory to other important questions that are less bedazzling and "interesting" but more important to the prospect of our flourishing - questions such as "How is it possible to develop a citizenry that cherishes a certain hexis, one which prizes the character of the Samaritan on the road to Jericho almost more than any other?" or "How can we square the political dogma that undergirds the
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 8 Brovero/Lundeen Framework fantasy of a missile defense system with the need to treat America as but one member in a community of nations under a "law of peoples?" The new public philosopher might seek to understand labor law and military and trade theory and doctrine as much as theories of surplus value; the logic of international markets and trade agreements as much as critiques of commodification, and the politics of complexity as much as the politics of power (all of which can still be done from our arm chairs.) This means going down deep into the guts of our quotidian social institutions, into the grimy pragmatic details where intellectuals are loathe to dwell but where the officers and bureaucrats of those institutions take difficult and often unpleasant, imperfect decisions that affect other peoples' lives, and it means making honest attempts to truly understand how those institutions actually function in the actual world before howling for their overthrow commences. This might help keep us from being slapped down in debates by true policy pros who actually know what they are talking about but who lack awareness of the dogmatic assumptions from which they proceed, and who have not yet found a good reason to listen to jargon-riddled lectures from philosophers and culture critics with their snobish disrespect for the so-called "managerial class."
6. Topic Specific Education - Role playing and decision making solves Latin American education failure in the US. Cook, Education Practitioner, 85 [Kay K., September 1985, Latin American Studies, http://www.ericdigests.org/pre923/latin.htm, accessed 7/7/13, ALT]
Gallup polls indicate that Latin America--Mexico, Central America, South America, and the independent countries of the Caribbean--is a region about which United States citizens are poorly informed (Glab 1981). Yet for practical reasons of politics and economics, as well as cultural and historical reasons, United States citizens should be well informed about Latin America. This Digest considers the present status of Latin American studies in elementary and secondary schools. It discusses the need and rationale for Latin American studies, effective teaching techniques, and resources to supplement textbooks which treat Latin America inadequately. THE PRESENT STATE OF TEACHING ABOUT LATIN AMERICA Social studies textbooks and media often present an incomplete or biased portrait of the countries comprising Latin America. Newspapers and television news programs tend to focus on such spectacular events as earthquakes, terrorism, coups, and American foreign policy related to the region. "It is rare to find stories on the arts, humanities, or culture of Latin America" (Glab 1981). The same is true of textbook representation. A recent survey of ten high school texts revealed that "with the exception of one textbook, little recognition was given to cultural characteristics" (Fleming 1982). Latin American history was presented primarily in the context of United States foreign policy. The point of view of Latin American countries was rarely considered. Textbooks often created or reinforced negative stereotypes of Latin America and its citizens. THE NEED AND RATIONALE FOR TEACHING ABOUT LATIN AMERICA Glab (1981) offers the following considerations for including more about Latin America in the curriculum: --Foreign Policy. International controversies over the influence of other governments in the politics of Latin America need analysis and examination. --Physical Proximity. Latin American countries are virtually next-door neighbors, "with close political, commercial, and cultural interactions with the United States extending over many years."
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 9 Brovero/Lundeen Framework --The American Heritage. Latin American culture and the Spanish language are part of the American heritage, exerting early and continuing influence on what are now the states of Texas, California, New Mexico, and Arizona. --Negative Stereotyping. It is well documented that Hispanic-Americans in general "suffer from explicit negative stereotyping." In addition to those suggested by Glab, other considerations, based on commonality, exist. Shared problems include traffic congestion, pollution, and crime related to urbanization; unemployment and slow economic growth; concentration of ownership of agricultural land; and government debt. EFFECTIVE APPROACHES TO TEACHING LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES In his analysis of high school textbook treatment of Latin America, Fleming (1982) points out that "a major source of information on Latin America should be the social studies classroom." The world history course offers an especially fertile ground for introducing a Latin American perspective into a study of world events. As an article in the WORLD HISTORY BULLETIN stresses, "The New World was not simply the passive recipient of European civilization; rather, it modified and changed Europe's civilization and contributed to the development of the Old World" (Burns 1984). Case studies, decision-making exercises, and role playing have been effective methods of introducing Latin American culture and erasing preconceived notions about that region.
2AC Frontline
1. Interpretation: The role of the ballot is to decide between a topical plan and the status quo or a competitive policy alternative. Prefer our interpretation: a. Limits: tons of unpredictable K frameworks, weighing our advantages is key to informed decisions b. Ground: They can leverage framework to moot the 1AC, structural advantages like the block makes preserving aff ground a priority c. Topic education: their framework encourages generic Ks that get rehashed every year. We change the topic to learn about new things. d. Solves their offense they can read their K as a DA or offer a policy alternative to the plan that resolves the harms outlined in the K. 2. Limits are good- Agreement on what is being debated is a prior question that must be resolved first it is a pre-condition for debate to occur Shively, Assistant Prof Political Science at Texas A&M, 2K [Ruth Lessl, Assistant Prof
Political Science at Texas A&M, 2000 Partisan Politics and Political Theory, p. 181-2, Accessed on July 5, 2013)][SP] The requirements given thus far are primarily negative. The ambiguists must say "no" to-they must reject and limit-some ideas and actions. In what follows, we will also find that they must say "yes" to some things. In particular, they must say "yes" to the idea of rational persuasion. This means, first, that they must recognize the role of agreement in political contest, or the basic accord that is necessary to discord. The mistake that the ambiguists make here is a common one. The mistake is in thinking that agreement marks the end of contest-that consensus kills debate. But this is true only if the agreement is perfect-if there is nothing at all left to question or contest. In most cases, however, our agreements are highly imperfect. We agree on some matters but not on others, on generalities but not on specifics, on principles but not on their applications, and so on. And this kind of limited agreement is the starting condition of contest and debate. As John Courtney Murray writes: We hold certain truths; therefore we can argue about them. It seems to have been one of the corruptions of intelligence by positivism to assume that argument ends when agreement is reached. In a basic sense, the reverse is true. There can be no argument except on the premise, and within a context, of agreement. (Murray 1960, 10) In other words, we cannot argue about something if we are not communicating: if we cannot agree on the topic and terms of argument or if we have utterly different ideas about what counts as evidence or good argument. At the very least, we must agree about what it is that is being debated before we can debate it. For instance, one cannot have an argument about euthanasia with someone who thinks euthanasia is a musical group. One cannot successfully stage a sitin if one's target audience simply thinks everyone is resting or if those doing the sitting have no complaints. Nor can one demonstrate resistance to a policy if no one knows that it is a policy. In other
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 11 Brovero/Lundeen Framework words, contest is meaningless if there is a lack of agreement or communication about what is being contested. Resisters, demonstrators, and debaters must have some shared ideas about the subject and/or the terms of their disagreements. The participants and the target of a sit-in must share an understanding of the complaint at hand. And a demonstrator's audience must know what is being resisted. In short, the contesting of an idea presumes some agreement about what that idea is and how one might go about intelligibly contesting it. In other words, contestation rests on some basic agreement or harmony.
Definitions
2nc Resolved
Resolved requires a vote on a formal resolution American Heritage Dictionary 11 (The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth
Edition copyright 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company., resolved 2011, http://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=resolved&submit.x=-826&submit.y=-210, accessed July 6, 2013, QDKM) resolve (r. resolved, resolving, resolves v.tr. 1.a. To make a firm decision about: resolved that I would do better next time. See Synonyms at decide. b. To decide or express by formal vote: The legislature resolved that the official should be impeached. 2. A formal resolution made by a deliberative body.
A resolution requires not only a formal vote, but a formal proposition that was submitted to those voting upon it.
Blacks Law Dictionary 9 (The Law Dictionary Featuring Black's Law Dictionary Free Online Legal Dictionary What is RESOLUTION? definition of RESOLUTION October 23, 2009, http://thelawdictionary.org/resolution/, accessed July 7, 2013, QDKM) A motion or formal proposition offered for adoption by such a body. In legislative practice. The term is usually employed to denote the adoption of a motion, the subject-matter of which would not properly constitute a statute; such as a mere expression of opinion; an alteration of the rules ; a vote of thanks or of censure,
Resolved means to enact a resolution Merriam-Webster 13 (resolve, Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 2013, http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/resolve, accessed July 7, 2013, QDKM) resolve verb ri- lv, - lv also - v or - v\ resolvedresolving Definition of RESOLVE 3 : to cause resolution of (a pathological state)
2nc Should
Should requires we perform the actions of the following verb, its a necessity Cambridge Dictionary 13 (published by Cambridge University Press, Should *American Version+,
2013, http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/american-english/should_1?q=should, accessed July 6, 2013, QDKM) should modal verb (DUTY) /d, d/ Definition used to express that it is necessary, desirable, or important to perform the action of the following verb
Should is mandatory, in legal context it must be obeyed Oxford English Dictionary 13 (Shall- should*American-Business Version], Oxford University Press,
Copyright 2013, Press.http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/177350?isAdvanced=true&result=10&rskey=XZ3VE5&, accessed July 6, 2013, QDKM)
II. Followed by an infinitive (without to). Except for a few instances of shall will, shall may (mowe), shall conne in the 15th c., the infinitive after shall is always either that of a principal verb or of have or be. 2. In general statements of what is right or becoming: = ought. Obs. (Superseded by the pa. subjunctive should: see sense 18) In Old English the subjunctive present sometimes occurs in this use (e.g. c888 in A. 4). c. In conditional clause, accompanying the statement of a necessary condition: = is to. 4. Indicating what is appointed or settled to take place = the modern is to, am to, etc. Obs. 5. In commands or instructions.
Should requires a mandate, implies that the action will be followed through Merriam-Webster Dictionary 13 (Should, Merriam-Webster Incorporated, 2013,
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/should?show=0&t=1373233008, accessed July 7, 2013, QDKM) should verbal auxiliary \shd, shud\ Definition of SHOULD 1 used in auxiliary function to express condition <if he should leave his father, his father would die Genesis 44:22(Revised Standard Version)> 2
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 16 Brovero/Lundeen Framework used in auxiliary function to express obligation, propriety, or expediency <'tis commanded I should do so Shakespeare> <this is as it should be H. L. Savage> <you should brush your teeth after each meal>
2NC Extensions
2nc Stasis DA
Stasis the resolution orients debate around a clear and specific controversial point of government action which creates argumentative stasis the aff promotes a model of debate with much less equal footing. The best mechanism to facilitate debate is the resolution Zwarensteyn, Grand Valley State Masters student, 12
[Ellen C., 8-1-2012 High School Policy Debate as an Enduring Pathway to Political Education: Evaluating Possibilities for Political Learning http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=theses accessed: 7/5/13 EYS] Galloway (2007) also advances an argument concerning the privileging of the resolution as a basis for debating. Galloway (2007) cites three pedagogical advantages to seeing the resolution and the first affirmative constructive as an invitation to dialogue. First, all teams have equal access to the resolution. Second, teams spend the entire year preparing approaches for and against the resolution. Finally, the resolution represents a community consensus of worthwhile and equitably debatable topics rooted in a collective history and experience of debate (p. 13). An important starting point for conversation, the resolution helps frame political conversations humanely. It preserves basic means for equality of access to base research and argumentation. Having a year-long stable resolution invites depth of argument and continuously rewards adaptive research once various topics have surfaced through practice or at debate tournaments.
Agreement on what is being debated is a prior question that must be resolved first it is a pre-condition for debate to occur Shively, Assistant Prof Political Science at Texas A&M, 2K [Ruth Lessl, Assistant Prof
Political Science at Texas A&M, 2000 Partisan Politics and Political Theory, p. 181-2, Accessed on July 5, 2013)][SP] The requirements given thus far are primarily negative. The ambiguists must say "no" to-they must reject and limit-some ideas and actions. In what follows, we will also find that they must say "yes" to some things. In particular, they must say "yes" to the idea of rational persuasion. This means, first, that they must recognize the role of agreement in political contest, or the basic accord that is necessary to discord. The mistake that the ambiguists make here is a common one. The mistake is in thinking that agreement marks the end of contest-that consensus kills debate. But this is true only if the agreement is perfect-if there is nothing at all left to question or contest. In most cases, however, our agreements are highly imperfect. We agree on some matters but not on others, on generalities but not on specifics, on principles but not on their applications, and so on. And this kind of limited agreement is the starting condition of contest and debate. As John Courtney Murray writes: We hold certain truths; therefore we can argue about them. It seems to have been one of the corruptions of intelligence by positivism to assume that argument ends when agreement is reached. In a basic sense, the reverse is true. There can be no argument except on the premise, and within a context, of agreement. (Murray 1960, 10) In other words, we cannot argue about something if we are not communicating: if we cannot agree on the topic and terms of argument or if we have utterly different ideas about what counts as evidence or good argument. At the very least, we must agree about what
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 19 Brovero/Lundeen Framework it is that is being debated before we can debate it. For instance, one cannot have an argument about euthanasia with someone who thinks euthanasia is a musical group. One cannot successfully stage a sitin if one's target audience simply thinks everyone is resting or if those doing the sitting have no complaints. Nor can one demonstrate resistance to a policy if no one knows that it is a policy. In other words, contest is meaningless if there is a lack of agreement or communication about what is being contested. Resisters, demonstrators, and debaters must have some shared ideas about the subject and/or the terms of their disagreements. The participants and the target of a sit-in must share an understanding of the complaint at hand. And a demonstrator's audience must know what is being resisted. In short, the contesting of an idea presumes some agreement about what that idea is and how one might go about intelligibly contesting it. In other words, contestation rests on some basic agreement or harmony.
This is a d-rule impossible to be negative without prior agreement on the terms of the resolution Shively, Assistant Prof Political Science at Texas A&M, 2K [Ruth Lessl, Assistant Prof
Political Science at Texas A&M, 2000 Partisan Politics and Political Theory, p. 182-3, Accessed on July 5, 2013)][SP] The point may seem trite, as surely the ambiguists would agree that basic terms must be shared before they can be resisted and problematized. In fact, they are often very candid about this seeming paradox in their approach: the paradoxical or "parasitic" need of the subversive for an order to subvert. But admitting the paradox is not helpful if, as usually happens here, its implications are ignored; or if the only implication drawn is that order or harmony is an unhappy fixture of human life. For what the paradox should tell us is that some kinds of harmonies or orders are, in fact, good for resistance; and some ought to be fully supported. As such, it should counsel against the kind of careless rhetoric that lumps all orders or harmonies together as arbitrary and inhumane. Clearly some basic accord about the terms of contest is a necessary ground for all further contest. It may be that if the ambiguists wish to remain full-fledged ambiguists, they cannot admit to these implications, for to open the door to some agreements or reasons as good and some orders as helpful or necessary, is to open the door to some sort of rationalism. Perhaps they might just continue to insist that this initial condition is ironic, but that the irony should not stand in the way of the real business of subversion. Yet difficulties remain. For and then proceed to debate without attention to further agreements. For debate and contest are forms of dialogue: that is, they are activities premised on the building of progressive agreements. Imagine, for instance, that two people are having an argument about the issue of gun control. As noted earlier, in any argument, certain initial agreements will be needed just to begin the discussion. At the very least, the two discussants must agree on basic terms: for example, they must have some shared sense of what gun control is about; what is at issue in arguing about it; what facts are being contested, and so on. They must also agreeand they do so simply by entering into debatethat they will not use violence or threats in making their cases and that they are willing to listen to, and to be persuaded by, good arguments. Such agreements are simply implicit in the act of argumentation.
Clash is key to productive debate and effective change. Freeley, John Caroll University, and Steinberg, University of Miami, 8 *Austin L. and David L., 2/13/2008, Argumentation and Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making, 12th edition,
2nc Limits
Limits their model of debate disincentives in depth debate and pre round prep its impossible to prepare for the infinite number of possible advocacies which means the aff is always ahead because they can develop issue-specific tricks to beat generics they spent a bunch of time researching, practicing, and refining the 1ac this means novices quit the activity someone who has no experience cant have a debate about debate Rowland, Kansas University communications professor, 84
(Robert C., Baylor U., Topic Selection in Debate, American Forensics in Perspective. Ed. Parson, p. 534) The first major problem identified by the work group as relating to topic selection is the decline in participation in the National Debate Tournament (NDT) policy debate. As Boman notes: There is a growing dissatisfaction with academic debate that utilizes a policy proposition. Programs which are oriented toward debating the national policy debate proposition, so-called NDT programs, are diminishing in scope and size.4 This decline in policy debate is tied, many in the work group believe, to excessively broad topics. The most obvious characteristic of some recent policy debate topics is extreme breath. A resolution calling for regulation of land use literally and figuratively covers a lot of ground. Naitonal debate topics have not always been so broad. Before the late 1960s the topic often specified a particular policy change.5 The move from narrow to broad topics has had, according to some, the effect of limiting the number of students who participate in policy debate. First, the breadth of the topics has all but destroyed novice debate. Paul Gaske argues that because the stock issues of policy debate are clearly defined, it is superior to value debate as a means of introducing students to the debate process.6 Despite this advantage of policy debate, Gaske belives that NDT debate is not the best vehicle for teaching beginners. The problem is that broad policy topics terrify novice debaters, especially those who lack high school debate experience. They are unable to cope with the breadth of the topic and experience negophobia,7 the fear of debating negative. As a consequence, the educational advantages associated with teaching novices through policy debate are lost: Yet all of these benefits fly out the window as rookies in their formative stage quickly experience humiliation at being caugh without evidence or substantive awareness of the issues that confront them at a tournament.8 The ultimate result is that fewer novices participate in NDT, thus lessening the educational value of the activity and limiting the number of debaters or eventually participate in more advanced divisions of policy debate. In addition to noting the effect on novices, participants argued that broad topics also discourage experienced debaters from continued participation in policy debate. Here, the claim is that it takes so much times and effort to be competitive on a broad topic that students who are concerned with doing more than just debate are forced out of the activity.9 Gaske notes, that broad topics discourage participation because of insufficient time to do requisite research.10 The final effect may be that entire programs either cease functioning or shift to value debate as a way to avoid unreasonable research burdens. Boman supports this point: It is this expanding necessity of evidence, and thereby research, which has created a competitive imbalance between institutions that participate in academic debate.11 In this view, it is the competitive imbalance resulting from the use of broad topics that has led some small schools to cancel their programs.
That turns education the education in debate doesnt come from the other team lecturing you it comes from the discussion that occurs within the round if we win they make that discussion impossible thats a reason they cant solve any of their offense otherwise result in the same authoritative exclusion that they critique Morson, Northwestern Prof, 4
(Greg, Bakhtinian Perspectives on Language, Literacy, and Learning, 317-23) Sarah Freedman and Arnetha Ball describe learning as a dialogic process. It is not merely a transmission of knowledge, but an activity in which whole selves are formed and acquire new capacities for development. We live in a world of enormous cultural diversity, and the various languages and points of view ideologies in Bakhtins sense of students have become a fact that cannot be ignored. Teachers need to enter into a dialogue with those points of view and to help students do the same. For difference may best be understood not as an obstacle but as an opportunity. The range of authoritative and innerly persuasive discourses in our classrooms appears to be growing along with our cultural diversity. Freedman and Ball observe: This rich and complex contact one inside the classroom yields plentiful opportunity for students to decide what will be internally persuasive for them, and consequently for them to develop their ideologies. This diversity presents both challenges and opportunities as teachers seek to guide their students on this developmental journey (pp. 8 9, this volume). The journey they have in mind does not so much lead to a particular goal as establish an everenriching process of learning. Freedman and Balls approach grows out of Bakhtins key concepts, especially one that has been largely neglected in research on him: ideological becoming (see Chapter 1, this volume). The implications of the essays in this volume therefore extend well beyond educational theory and practice to the humanities and social sciences generally. How does a thinking person and we are all thinking people develop? What happens when ideas, embodied in specific people with particular voices, come into dialogic contact? What factors guide the creation of a point of view on the world? The specific problematic of pedagogy serves as a lens to make the broader implications of such questions clearer. 318 Authority and testing How does a person develop a point of view on the world, a set of attitudes for interpreting and evaluating it ? How systematic is that point of view? Is our fundamental take on the world a philosophy with implicit doctrines or is it more like a set of inclinations and a way of probing? Perhaps it is not one, but a collection of ways of probing, a panoply of skills and habits, which a person tries out one after another the way in which one may, in performing a physical task, reach for one tool after another? What does our point of view have to do with our sense of ourselves, whether as individuals or as members of groups? What role does formal education play in acquiring and shaping it? What happens when contrary evidence confronts us or when the radical uncertainty of the world impinges on us? Whatever that point of view is, how does it change over time ? In any given culture or subculture, there tends to be what Bakhtin would call an authoritative perspective. However, the role of that perspective is not necessarily authoritarian. Despite Bakhtins experience as a Soviet citizen, where the right perspective on just about all publicly identified perspectives was held to be already known and certain, he was well aware that outside that circle of presumed certainty life was still governed by opinion. It is not just that rival ideologies Christian, liberal, and many others were still present; beyond that, each individuals experiences led to halfformed but strongly held beliefs that enjoyed no formal expression. Totalitarianism was surely an aspiration of the Soviet and other such regimes, but it could never realize its ideal of uniformitythe new Soviet man who was all of a piece for some of the same reasons it could not make a centrally planned economy work. There is always too much contingent, unexpected, particular, local, and idiosyncratic, with a historical or personal background that does not fit. Bakhtin may be viewed as the great philosopher of all that does not fit. He saw the world as irreducibly messy, unsystematizable, and
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 24 Brovero/Lundeen Framework contingent, and he regarded it as all the better for that. For life to have meaning, it must possess what he called surprisingness. If individual people are to act morally, they cannot displace their responsibility onto some systematic ideology, whether Marxist, Christian, or any other. What I do now is not reducible to any ethical, political, or metaphysical system; and I each I must take responsibility for his or her acts at this moment. As Bakhtin liked to say, there is no alibi. Authoritative words in their fully expressed form purport to offer an alibi. They say, like Dostoevskys Grand Inquisitor: we speak the truth and you need not question, only obey, for your conscience to be at rest. Yet, every authoritative word is spoken or heard in a milieu of difference. It may try to insulate itself from dialogue with reverential tones, a special script, and all the other signs of the authority fused to it, but at the margins 319 dialogue waits with a challenge: you may be right, but you have to convince me. Once the authoritative word responds to that challenge, it ceases to be fully authoritative. To be sure, it may still command considerable deference by virtue of its past, its moral aura, and its omnipresence. But it has ceased to be free from dialogue and its authority has changed from unquestioned to dialogically tested. Every educator crosses this line when he or she gives reasons for a truth. My daughter once had a math teacher who, when asked why a certain procedure was used to solve an equation, would reply, because some old, dead guy said so. Of course, no answer could be further from the spirit of mathematics, where logic counts for everything and authority for nothing. Nobody proves the Pythagorean theorem by saying Pythagoras said so. Compare this reply with actually showing the logic of a procedure so the student understands the why. In that case, one immediately admits t hat there must be a good reason for proceeding in a certain way, and that it needs to be shown. The procedure does not end up as less sure because of this questioning; quite the contrary. Rather, questioning is seen as intrinsic to mathematics itself, which enjoys its authority precisely because it has survived such questioning. Even in fields that do not admit of mathematical proof, an authoritative word does not necessarily lose all authority when questioning enters into it. We can give no mathematically sure reason why democracy is preferable to dictatorship or market economies are generally more productive than command economies. But we can give reasons, which admit the possibilities of challenges we had not foreseen and may have to think about. Education and all inquiry are fundamentally different when the need for reasons is acknowledged and when questioning becomes part of the process of learning. Truth becomes dialogically tested and forever testable. In short, authoritative words may or may not be authoritarian. In the Soviet Union, authoritarian words were the norm and questioning was seen as suspect. One no more questioned Marxism-Leninism than one questioned the law of gravity (a common comparison, suggesting that each was equally sure). What the Party said was right because it was the outcome of sure historical laws guaranteeing the correctness of its rulings. Education reflected this spirit. Bakhtins embrace of dialogue, then, challenged not so much the economic or historical theories the regime propounded, but its very concept of truth and the language of truth it embraced. Dialogue by its very nature invites questioning, thrives on it, demands it. It follows from Bakhtins argument that nonauthoritarian authoritative words are not necessarily weaker than authoritarian ones. After all, one may believe something all the more because one has questioned it, provided that defenders have been willing to answer and have been more or less cogent in their defense. They need not answer all objections perfectly we are often convinced with qualifications, with a just in case, with loopholes. 320 However, they must demonstrate that the authority is based on generally sound reasons. Morever, for many, enormous persuasive power lies in the very fact that the authoritative belief is so widely held. Everyone speaks it, even if with ironizing quotation marks. An authoritative word of this nonauthoritarian kind functions not as a voice speaking the Truth, but as a voice speaking the one point of view that must be attended to. It may be contested, rejected, or modified, the way in which church dogmas are modified over time by believers, but it cannot be ignored. Think of Huck Finn (discussed by Mark Dressman, this volume). Even when he cannot bring himself to turn in Jim as a
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 25 Brovero/Lundeen Framework runaway slave, he accepts the authority of the social voice telling him that such an action would be right. He does not question that voice, just reali es he will not follow it and will do wrong. Much of the moral complexity of this book lies in Hucks self-questioning, as he does what we believe to be right but what he thinks of as wrong; and if we read this book sensitively, we may ask ourselves how much of our own behavior is Huckish in this respect. Perhaps our failure to live up to our ideals bespeaks our intuition without overt expression that there is something wrong with those ideals. What Huck demonstrates is that there may be a wisdom, even a belief system, in behavior itself: we always know more than we know, and our moral sensitivity may be different from, and wiser than, our professed beliefs. our own authoritative words The basic power of an authoritative voice comes from its status as the one that everyone hears. Everyone has heard that democracy is good and apartheid is bad, that the environment needs preserving, that church must not be merged with state; and people who spend their lives in an academic environment may add many more to the list. In our academic subculture, we are, almost all of us, persuaded of the rightness of greater economic equality, of plans for inclusion and affirmative action, of abortion rights, of peace, of greater efforts to reach out to all the people in the world in all their amazing diversity. These are our authoritative voices, and , too, we may accept either because they are simply not to be questioned or because we have sought out intelligent opponents who have questioned them and have thought about, if not ultimately accepted, their answers. Again, educators know the moment when a student from a background different from ours questions one of our beliefs and we experience the temptation to reply like that math teacher. Thinking of ourselves as oppositional, we often forget that we, too, have our own authoritative discourse and must work to remember that, in a world of difference, authority may not extend to those unlike us. The testable authoritative voice: we hear it always, and though some may disagree with it, they cannot ignore it. Its nonauthoritarian power is based 321 above all on its ubiquity. In a society that is relatively open to diverse values, that minimal, but still significant, function of an authoritative voice is the most important one. It demands not adherence but attention. And such a voice is likely to survive far longer than an authoritarian voice whose rejection is necessarily its destruction. We have all these accounts of Soviet dissidents say, Solzhenitsyn who tell their story as a narrative of rethinking (to use Christian Knoellers phrase): they once believed in Communist ideology, but events caused them to raise some questions that by their nature could not be publicly voiced, and that silence itself proved most telling. You can hear silence if it follows a pistol shot. If silence does not succeed in ending private questioning, the word that silence defends is decisively weakened. The story of Soviet dissidents is typically one in which, at some point, questioning moved from a private, furtive activity accompanied by guilt to the opposite extreme, a clear rejection in which the authoritative voice lost all hold altogether. Vulnerability accompanies too much power. But in more open societies, and in healthier kinds of individual development, an authoritative voice of the whole society, or of a particular community (like our own academic community), still sounds, still speaks to us in our minds. In fact, we commonly see that people who have questioned and rejected an authoritative voice find that it survives within them as a possible alternative, like the minority opinion in a court decision. When they are older, they discover that experience has vindicated some part of what they had summarily rejected. Perhaps the authoritative voice had more to it than we thought when young? Now that we are teachers, perhaps we see some of the reasons for practices we objected to? Can we, then, combine in a new practice both the practices of our teachers and the new insights we have had? When we do, a flexible authoritative word emerges, one that has become to a great extent an innerly persuasive one. By a lengthy process, the word has, with many changes, become our own, and our own word has in the process acquired the intonations of authority. In much the same way, we react to the advice of our parents. At some point it may seem dated, no more than what an earlier generation unfortunately thought, or we may greet it with the sign of regret that our parents have forgotten what they experienced when our age. However,
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 26 Brovero/Lundeen Framework the dialogue goes on. At a later point, we may say, you know, there was wisdom in what our parents said, only why did they express it so badly? If only I had known! We may even come to the point where we express some modified form of parental wisdom in a convincing voice. We translate it into our own idiolect, confident that we will not make the mistakes of our parents when we talk to our children. Then our children listen, and find our own idiolect, to which we have devoted such painful ideological and verbal work, hopelessly dated, and the process may start again. It is always a difficult moment when we realize that our own voice is now the authority, especially because we have made it different, persuasive in its 322 own terms, not like our parents voice. When we reflect on how our children see us, we may even reali e that our parents authoritative words may not have been the product of blind acceptance, but the result of a process much like our own. They may have done the same thing we did question, reject, adapt, arrive at a new version and that rigid voice of authority we heard from them was partly in our own ears. Can we somehow convey to our students our own words so they do not sound so rigid? We all think we can. But so did our parents (and other authorities). Dialogue, Laughter, And Surprise Bakhtin viewed the whole process of ideological (in the sense of ideas and values, however unsystematic) development as an endless dialogue. As teachers, we find it difficult to avoid a voice of authority, however much we may think of ours as the rebels voice, because our rebelliousness against society at large speaks in the authoritative voice of our subculture. We speak the language and thoughts of academic educators, even when we imagine we are speaking in no jargon at all, and that jargon, inaudible to us, sounds with all the overtones of authority to our students. We are so prone to think of ourselves as fighting oppression that it takes some work to realize that we ourselves may be felt as oppressive and overbearing, and that our own voice may provoke the same reactions that we feel when we hear an authoritative voice with which we disagree. So it is often helpful to think back on the great authoritative oppressors and reconstruct their selfimage: helpful, but often painful. I remember, many years ago, when, as a recent student rebel and activist, I taught a course on The Theme of the Rebel and discovered, to my considerable chagrin, that many of the great rebels of history were the very same people as the great oppressors. There is a famous exchange between Erasmus and Luther, who hoped to bring the great Dutch humanist over to the Reformation, but Erasmus kept asking Luther how he could be so certain of so many doctrinal points. We must accept a few things to be Christians at all, Erasmus wrote, but surely beyond that there must be room for us highly fallible beings to disagree. Luther would have none of such tentativeness. He knew, he was sure. The Protestant rebels were, for a while, far more intolerant than their orthodox opponents. Often enough, the oppressors are the ones who present themselves and really think of themselves as liberators. Certainty that one knows the root cause of evil: isnt that itself often the root cause? We know from Tsar Ivan the Terribles letters denouncing Prince Kurbsky, a general who escaped to Poland, that Ivan saw himself as someone who had been oppressed by noblemen as a child and pictured himself as the great rebel against traditional authority when he killed masses of people or destroyed whole towns. There is something in the nature of maximal rebellion against authority that produces ever greater intolerance, unless one is very careful. 323 For the skills of fighting or refuting an oppressive power are not those of openness, self-skepticism, or real dialogue. In preparing for my course, I remember my dismay at reading Hitlers Mein Kampf and discovering that his selfconsciousness was precisely that of the rebel speaking in the name of oppressed Germans, and that much of his amazing appeal otherwise so inexplicable was to the German sense that they were rebelling victims. In our time, the Serbian Communist and nationalist leader Slobodan Milosevic exploited much the same appeal. Bakhtin surely knew that Communist totalitarianism, the Gulag, and the unprecedented censorship were constructed by rebels who had come to power. His favorite writer, Dostoevsky, used to emphasize that the worst oppression comes from those who, with the rebellious psychology of the insulted and humiliated, have sei ed power unless they have somehow
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 27 Brovero/Lundeen Framework cultivated the value of dialogue, as Lenin surely had not, but which Eva, in the essay by Knoeller about teaching The Autobiography of Malcolm X, surely had. Rebels often make the worst tyrants because their word, the voice they hear in their consciousness, has borrowed something crucial from the authoritative word it opposed, and perhaps exaggerated it: the aura of righteous authority. If ones ideological becoming is understood as a struggle in which one has at last achieved the truth, one is likely to want to impose that truth with maximal authority; and rebels of the next generation may proceed in much the same way, in an ongoing spiral of intolerance. By contrast, if ones rebellion against an authoritative word is truly dialogic, that is unlikely to happen, or to be subject to more of a self-check if it does. Then one questions ones own certainties and invites skepticism, lest one become what one has opposed. One may even step back and laugh at oneself. Laughter at oneself invites the perspective of the other. Laughter is implicitly pluralist. Instead of looking at ones opponents as the unconditionally wrong, one imagines how one sounds to them. Regarding earlier authorities, one thinks: that voice of authority, it is not my voice, but perhaps it has something to say, however wrongly put. It comes from a specific experience, which I must understand. I will correct it, but to do that I must measure it, test it, against my own experience. Dialogue is a process of real testing, and one of the characteristics of a genuine test is that the result is not guaranteed. It may turn out that sometimes the voice of earlier authority turns out to be right on some point. Well, we will incorporate that much into our own innerly persuasive voice. Once one has done this, once one has allowed ones own evolving convictions to be tested by experience and by other convictions
Debate doesnt need to avoid being creative, but they still have to have a specific focus. Freeley, John Caroll University, and Steinberg, University of Miami, 8 *Austin L. and David L., 2/13/2008, Argumentation and Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making, 12th edition, http://teddykw2.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/argumentation-and-debate.pdf, p. 45, accessed 7/4/13, ALT]
To have a productive debate, which facilitates effective decision making by directing and placing limits on the decision to be made, the basis for argument should be clearly defined. If we merely talk about homelessness or abortion or crime or global warming we are likely to have an interesting discussion but not to establish profitable basis for argument. For example, the statement Resolved: That the pen is mightier than the sword is debatable, yet fails to provide much basis for clear argumentation. If we take this statement to mean that the written word is more effective than physical force for some purposes, we can identify a problem area: the comparative effectiveness of writing or physical force for a specific purpose. Although we now have a general subject, we have not yet stated a problem. It is still too broad, too loosely worded to promote well-organized argument. What sort of writing are we concerned with poems, novels, government documents, website development, advertising, or what? What does effectiveness mean in this context? What kind of physical force is being comparedfists, dueling swords, bazookas, nuclear weapons, or what? A more specific question might be, Would a mutual defense treaty or a visit by our fleet be more effective in assuring Laurania of our support in a certain crisis? The basis for argument could be phrased in a debate proposition such as Resolved: That the United States should enter into a mutual defense treaty with Laurania. Negative advocates might oppose this proposition by arguing that fleet maneuvers would be a better solution. This is not to say that debates should completely avoid creative interpretation of the controversy by advocates, or
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 28 Brovero/Lundeen Framework that good debates cannot occur over competing interpretations of the controversy; in fact, these sorts of debates may be very engaging. The point is that debate is best facilitated by the guidance provided by focus on a particular point of difference, which will be outlined in the following discussion.
2nc Predictability
Predictability Diversion from topic focus unfairly gives shifts ground hurts debate Galloway, Samford University communications professor, 07 [Ryan Galloway, professor
of communications at Samford University (Dinner And Conversation At The Argumentative Table: Reconceptuali ing Debate As An Argumentative Dialogue, Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, Vol. 28 (2007), ebsco)][SP] Debate as a dialogue sets an argumentative table, where all parties receive a relatively fair opportunity to voice their position. Anything that fails to allow participants to have their position articulated denies one side of the argumentative table a fair hearing. The affirmative side is set by the topic and fairness requirements. While affirmative teams have recently resisted affirming the topic, in fact, the topic selection process is rigorous, taking the relative ground of each topic as its central point of departure. Setting the affirmative reciprocally sets the negative. The negative crafts approaches to the topic consistent with affirmative demands. The negative crafts disadvantages, counter-plans, and critical arguments premised on the arguments that the topic allows for the affirmative team. According to fairness norms, each side sits at a relatively balanced argumentative table. When one side takes more than its share, competitive equity suffers. However, it also undermines the respect due to the other involved in the dialogue. When one side excludes the other, it fundamentally denies the personhood of the other participant (Ehninger, 1970, p. 110). A pedagogy of debate as dialogue takes this respect as a fundamental component. A desire to be fair is a fundamental condition of a dialogue that takes the form of a demand for equality of voice. Far from being a banal request for links to a disadvantage, fairness is a demand for respect, a demand to be heard, a demand that a voice backed by literally months upon months of preparation, research, and critical thinking not be silenced. Affirmative cases that suspend basic fairness norms operate to exclude particular negative strategies. Unprepared, one side comes to the argumentative table unable to meaningfully participate in a dialogue. They are unable to understand what went on and are left to the whims of time and power (Farrell, 1985, p. 114). Hugh Duncan furthers this line of reasoning: Opponents not only tolerate but honor and respect each other because in doing so they enhance their own chances of thinking better and reaching sound decisions. Opposition is necessary because it sharpens thought in action. We assume that argument, discussion, and talk, among free an informed people who subordinate decisions of any kind, because it is only through such discussion that we reach agreement which binds us to a common causeIf we are to be equalrelationships among equals must find expression in many formal and informal institutions (Duncan, 1993, p. 196-197). Debate compensates for the exigencies of the world by offering a framework that maintains equality for the sake of the conversation (Farrell, 1985, p. 114). For example, an affirmative case on the 2007-2008 college topic might defend neither state nor international action in the Middle East, and yet claim to be germane to the topic in some way. The case essentially denies the arguments that state action is oppressive or that actions in the international arena are philosophically or pragmatically suspect. Instead of allowing for the dialogue to be modified by the interchange of the affirmative case and the negative response, the affirmative subverts any meaningful role to the negative team, preventing them from offering effective counter-word and undermining the value of a meaningful exchange of speech acts. Germaneness and other substitutes for topical action do not accrue the dialogical benefits of topical advocacy.
That makes research impossible and destroys education Hanghj, University of Bristol Author, 08
[Thorkild Hanghj, author affiliated with Danish Research Centre on Education and Advanced Media Materials, research the Centre for Learning, Knowledge, and Interactive Technologies (L-KIT), the Institute of Education at the University of Bristol and the institute formerly known as Learning Lab Denmark at the School of Education, 2008 (PLAYFUL KNOWLEDGE: An Explorative Study of Educational Gaming, University of Southern Denmark, p. 50-51 Available Online at http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_hum/ afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdf, Accessed on July 7, 2013)][SP] Debate games are often based on pre-designed scenarios that include descriptions of issues to be debated, educational goals, game goals, roles, rules, time frames etc. In this way, debate games differ from textbooks and everyday classroom instruction as debate scenarios allow teachers and students to actively imagine, interact and communicate within a domain-specific game space. However, instead of mystifying debate games as a magic circle (Hui inga, 1950), I will try to overcome the epistemological dichotomy between gaming and teaching that tends to dominate discussions of educational games. In short, educational gaming is a form of teaching. As mentioned, education and games represent two different semiotic domains that both embody the three faces of knowledge: assertions, modes of representation and social forms of organisation (Gee, 2003; Barth, 2002; cf. chapter 2). In order to understand the interplay between these different domains and their interrelated knowledge forms, I will draw attention to a central assumption in Bakhtins dialogical philosophy. According to Bakhtin, all forms of communication and culture are subject to centripetal and centrifugal forces (Bakhtin, 1981). A centripetal force is the drive to impose one version of the truth, while a centrifugal force involves a range of possible truths and interpretations. This means that any form of expression involves a duality of centripetal and centrifugal forces: Every concrete utterance of a speaking subject serves as a point where centrifugal as well as centripetal forces are brought to bear (Bakhtin, 1981: 272). If we take teaching as an example, it is always affected by centripetal and centrifugal forces in the on-going negotiation of truths between teachers and students. In the words of Bakhtin: Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction (Bakhtin, 1984a: 110). Similarly, the dialogical space of debate games also embodies centrifugal and centripetal forces. Thus, the election scenario of The Power Game involves centripetal elements that are mainly determined by the rules and outcomes of the game, i.e. the election is based on a limited time frame and a fixed voting procedure. Similarly, the open-ended goals, roles and resources represent centrifugal elements and create virtually endless possibilities for researching, preparing, presenting, debating and evaluating a variety of key political issues. Consequently, the actual process of enacting a game scenario involves a complex negotiation between these centrifugal/centripetal forces that are inextricably linked with the teachers and students game activities. In this way, the enactment of The Power Game is a form of teaching that combines different pedagogical practices (i.e. group work, web quests, student presentations) and learning resources (i.e. websites, handouts, spoken language) within the interpretive frame of the election scenario. Obviously, tensions may arise if there is too much divergence between educational goals and game goals. This means that game facilitation requires a balance between focusing too narrowly on the rules or facts of a game (centripetal orientation) and a focusing too broadly on the contingent possibilities and interpretations of the game scenario (centrifugal orientation). For Bakhtin, the duality of centripetal/centrifugal forces often manifests itself as a dynamic between monological and dialogical forms of discourse. Bakhtin illustrates this point with the monological discourse of the
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 31 Brovero/Lundeen Framework Socrates/Plato dialogues in which the teacher never learns anything new from the students, despite Socrates ideological claims to the contrary (Bakhtin, 1984a). Thus, discourse becomes monologised when someone who knows and possesses the truth instructs someone who is ignorant of it and in error, where a thought is either affirmed or repudiated by the authority of the teacher (Bakhtin, 1984a: 81). In contrast to this, dialogical pedagogy fosters inclusive learning environments that are able to expand upon students existing knowledge and collaborative construction of truths (Dysthe, 1996). At this point, I should clarify that Bakhtins term dialogic is both a descriptive term (all utterances are per definition dialogic as they address other utterances as parts of a chain of communication) and a normative term as dialogue is an ideal to be worked for against the forces of monologism (Lillis, 2003: 197-8). In this project, I am mainly interested in describing the dialogical space of debate games. At the same time, I agree with Wegerif that one of the goals of education, perhaps the most important goal, should be dialogue as an end in itself (Wegerif, 2006: 61).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 34 Brovero/Lundeen Framework possibilities in a spirit of determination to, indeed, achieve our country - the country of Jefferson and King; the country of John Dewey and Malcom X; the country of Franklin Roosevelt and Bayard Rustin, and of the later George Wallace and the later Barry Goldwater. To invoke the words of King, and with reference to the American society, the time is always ripe to seize the opportunity to help create the "beloved community," one woven with the thread of agape into a conceptually single yet diverse tapestry that shoots for nothing less than a true intra-American cosmopolitan ethos, one wherein both same sex unions and faith-based initiatives will be able to be part of the same social reality, one wherein business interests and the university are not seen as belonging to two separate galaxies but as part of the same answer to the threat of social and ethical nihilism. We who fancy ourselves philosophers would do well to create from within ourselves and from within our ranks a new kind of public intellectual who has both a hungry theoretical mind and who is yet capable of seeing the need to move past high theory to other important questions that are less bedazzling and "interesting" but more important to the prospect of our flourishing - questions such as "How is it possible to develop a citizenry that cherishes a certain hexis, one which prizes the character of the Samaritan on the road to Jericho almost more than any other?" or "How can we square the political dogma that undergirds the fantasy of a missile defense system with the need to treat America as but one member in a community of nations under a "law of peoples?" The new public philosopher might seek to understand labor law and military and trade theory and doctrine as much as theories of surplus value; the logic of international markets and trade agreements as much as critiques of commodification, and the politics of complexity as much as the politics of power (all of which can still be done from our arm chairs.) This means going down deep into the guts of our quotidian social institutions, into the grimy pragmatic details where intellectuals are loathe to dwell but where the officers and bureaucrats of those institutions take difficult and often unpleasant, imperfect decisions that affect other peoples' lives, and it means making honest attempts to truly understand how those institutions actually function in the actual world before howling for their overthrow commences. This might help keep us from being slapped down in debates by true policy pros who actually know what they are talking about but who lack awareness of the dogmatic assumptions from which they proceed, and who have not yet found a good reason to listen to jargonriddled lectures from philosophers and culture critics with their snobish disrespect for the so-called "managerial class."
Social philosophies need to be moved away from just cultural critics in order to affect real change. McClean Rutgers Philosophy Professor 1 [David E., Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, The Cultural Left and the Limits of Social Hope, http://www.americanphilosophy.org/archives/past_conference_programs/pc2001/Discussion%20papers/davi d_mcclean.htm]
Is it really possible to philosophize by holding Foucault in one hand and the Code of Federal Regulation or the Congressional Record in the other? Given that whatever it has meant to be a philosopher has been under siege at various levels, I see no reason why referring to the way things are actually done in the actual world (I mean really done, not done as we might imagine) as we think through issues of public morality and social issues of justice shouldn't be considered a viable alternative to the way philosophy has proceeded in the past. Instead of replacing epistemology with hermeneutics or God knows what
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 35 Brovero/Lundeen Framework else as the foundation of philosophical practice, we should move social philosophers in the direction of becoming more like social and cultural auditors rather than further in the direction of mere culture critics. We might be able to recast philosophers who take-up questions of social justice in a serious way as the ones in society able to traverse not only disciplines but the distances between the towers of the academy and the bastions of bureaucracies seeking to honestly and sometimes dishonestly assess both their failings and achievements. This we can do with a special advantage over economists, social scientists and policy specialists who are apt to take the narrow view of most issues. We do have examples of such persons. John Dewey and Karl Popper come to mind as but two examples, but in neither case was there enough grasp of the actual workings of social institutions that I believe will be called for in order to properly minister to a nation in need of helpful philosophical insights in policy formation. Or it may just be that the real work will be performed by philosophically grounded and socially engaged practitioners rather than academics. People like George Soros come to mind here. But there are few people like George Soros around, and I think that the improbability of philosophers emerging as a special class of social auditor also marks the limits of social hope, inasmuch as philosophers are the class most likely to see the places at which bridges of true understanding can be built not only between an inimical Right and Left, but between public policy and the deep and relevant reflections upon our humanity in which philosophers routinely engage. If philosophers seek to remain what the public thinks we are anyway, a class of persons of whom it can be said, as Orwell put it, One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that; no ordinary man could be such a fool, then I do not know from what other class of persons to turn to navigate the complicated intellectual and emotional obstacles that prevent us from the achievement of our country. For I do not see how policy wonks, political hacks, politicians, religious ideologues and special interests will do the work that needs to be done to achieve the kind of civic consensus envisioned in our Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Without a courageous new breed of public intellectual, one that is able to help articulate new visions for community and social well being without fear of reaching out to others that may not share the narrow views of the Cultural Left and Cultural Right, I do not see how America moves beyond a mere land of toleration and oligarchy.
Policy debate has value not only in the role of speech, but rather education in critical thinking and prioritizing.
Lundberg University of North Carolina Communications Professor 10 [Christian 0., January 2010, The Allred Initiative and Debate Across the Curriculum: Reinventing the Tradition of Debate at North Carolina, http://academia.edu/968401/LundbergOnDebate, p. 311, accessed 7/5/13, ALT]
The second major problem with the critique that identifies a naivety in articulating debate and democracy is that it presumes that the primary pedagogical outcome of debate is speech capacities. But the democratic capacities built by debate are not limited to speechas indicated earlier, debate builds capacity for critical thinking, analysis of public claims, informed decision making, and better public judgment. If the picture of modern political life that underwrites this critique of debate is a pessimistic view of increasingly labyrinthine and bureaucratic administrative politics, rapid scientific and technological change, outpacing the capacities of the citizenry to comprehend them, and everexpanding insular special-interest and money-driven politics, it is a puzzling solution, at best, to argue that these conditions warrant giving up on debate. If democracy is open to rearticulation, it is open to rearticulation precisely because as the challenges of modern political life proliferate, the citi enrys capacities can change, which is one of the primary reasons that theorists of democracy such as Dewey in The Public and Its Problems place such a high premium on deducation (Dewey 1988, 63, 154). Debate provides an indispensable form of education in the modern articulation of democracy because it builds precisely the skills that allow the citizenry to research and be informed about policy decisions that impact them, to sort through and evaluate the evidence for and relative merits of arguments for and against a policy in an increasingly information-rich environment, and to prioritize their time and political energies toward policies that matter the most to them.
Specifically, critically thinking is key to ethical decision making. Freeley, John Caroll University, and Steinberg, University of Miami, 8 *Austin L. and David L., 2/13/2008, Argumentation and Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making, 12th edition, http://teddykw2.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/argumentation-and-debate.pdf, p. 17, accessed 7/4/13, ALT]
Debate offers the ideal tool for examining the ethical implications of any decision, and critical thinking should also be ethical thinking. How do we reach a decision on any matters of importance? We are under constant pressure to make unreasoned decisions, and we often make decisions carelessly. But which method is most likely to lead to wise decisions? To make wise judgments, we should rely on critical thinking. In many situations argumentations emphasis on reasoned considerations and debates confrontation of opposing sides give us our best, and perhaps only, opportunity to reach reasoned conclusions. In any case it is in the public interest to promote debate, and it is in our own intelligent self-interest to know the principles of argumentation and to be able to apply critical thinking in debate.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 40 Brovero/Lundeen Framework multiple levels. First, the contingency of situated practice invites analysis geared to assess, in particular cases, the extent to which debate practices enable and/ or constrain deliberative objectives. Regarding the intelligence communitys debating initiative, such an analytical perspective highlights, for example, the tight connection between the deliberative goals established by intelligence officials and the cultural technology manifest in the bridge projects online debating applications such as Hot Grinds. An additional dimension of nuance emerging from this avenue of analysis pertains to the precise nature of the deliberative goals set by bridge. Program descriptions notably eschew Kettering-style references to democratic citizen empowerment, yet feature deliberation prominently as a key ingredient of strong intelligence tradecraft . Th is caveat is especially salient to consider when it comes to the second category of rhetorically informed critical work invited by the contingent aspect of specific debate initiatives. To grasp this layer it is useful to appreciate how the name of the bridge project constitutes an invitation for those outside the intelligence community to participate in the analytic outreach eff ort. According to Doney, bridge provides an environment for Analytic Outreacha place where IC analysts can reach out to expertise elsewhere in federal, state, and local government, in academia, and industry. New communities of interest can form quickly in bridge through the web of trust access control modelaccess to minds outside the intelligence community creates an analytic force multiplier.48 This presents a moment of choice for academic scholars in a position to respond to Doneys invitation; it is an opportunity to convert scholarly expertise into an analytic force multiplier. In reflexively pondering this invitation, it may be valuable for scholars to read Greene and Hickss proposition that switch-side debating should be viewed as a cultural technology in light of Langdon Winners maxim that technological artifacts have politics.49 In the case of bridge, politics are informed by the history of intelligence community policies and practices. Commenter Th omas Lord puts this point in high relief in a post off ered in response to a news story on the topic: *W+hy should this thing (bridge) be? . . . *Th e intelligence community+ on the one hand sometimes provides useful information to the military or to the civilian branches and on the other hand it is a dangerous, out of control, relic that by all external appearances is not the slightest bit reformed, other than superficially, from such excesses as became exposed in the cointelpro and mkultra hearings of the 1970s.50 A debate scholar need not agree with Lords full-throated criticism of the intelligence community (he goes on to observe that it bears an alarming resemblance to organized crime) to understand that participation in the communitys Analytic Outreach program may serve the ends of deliberation, but not necessarily democracy, or even a defensible politics. Demand-driven rhetoric of science necessarily raises questions about whats driving the demand, questions that scholars with relevant expertise would do well to ponder carefully before embracing invitations to contribute their argumentative expertise to deliberative projects. By the same token, it would be prudent to bear in mind that the technological determinism about switch-side debate endorsed by Greene and Hicks may tend to flatten reflexive assessments regarding the wisdom of supporting a given debate initiativeas the next section illustrates, manifest differences among initiatives warrant context-sensitive judgments regarding the normative political dimensions featured in each case. Public Debates in the EPA Policy Process The preceding analysis of U.S. intelligence community debating initiatives highlighted how analysts are challenged to navigate discursively the heteroglossia of vast amounts of diff erent kinds of data flowing through intelligence streams. Public policy planners are tested in like manner when they attempt to stitch together institutional arguments from various and sundry inputs ranging from expert testimony, to historical precedent, to public comment. Just as intelligence managers find that algorithmic, formal methods of analysis often dont work when it comes to the task of interpreting and synthesizing copious amounts of disparate data, public-policy planners encounter similar challenges.
analysis that foregrounds deliberative interchange and critical thinking as alternatives to decisionism, the formulaic application of objective decision algorithms to the public policy process. Stating the matter plainly, Majone suggests, whether in written or oral form, argument is central in all stages of the policy process. Accordingly, he notes, we miss a great deal if we try to understand policy-making solely in terms of power, influence, and bargaining, to the exclusion of debate and argument.51 One can see similar rationales driving Goodwin and Daviss EPA debating project, where debaters are invited to conduct on-site public debates covering resolutions craft ed to reflect key points of stasis in the EPA decision-making process. For example, in the 2008 Water Wars debates held at EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C., resolutions were craft ed to focus attention on the topic of water pollution, with one resolution focusing on downstream states authority to control upstream states discharges and sources of pollutants, and a second resolution exploring the policy merits of bottled water and toilet paper taxes as revenue sources to fund water infrastructure projects. In the first debate on interstate river pollution, the team of Seth Gannon and Seungwon Chung from Wake Forest University argued in favor of downstream state control, with the Michigan State University team of Carly Wunderlich and Garrett Abelkop providing opposition. In the second debate on taxation policy, Kevin Kallmyer and Matthew Struth from University of Mary Washington defended taxes on bottled water and toilet paper, while their opponents from Howard University, Dominique Scott and Jarred McKee, argued against this proposal. Reflecting on the project, Goodwin noted how the intercollegiate Switch-Side Debating Meets Demand-Driven Rhetoric of Science 107 debaters ability to act as honest brokers in the policy arguments contributed positively to internal EPA deliberation on both issues.52 Davis observed that since the invited debaters didnt have a dog in the fight, they were able to give voice to previously buried arguments that some EPA subject matter experts felt reticent to elucidate because of their institutional affiliations.53 Such findings are consistent with the views of policy analysts advocating the argumentative turn in policy planning. As Majone claims, Dialectical confrontation between generalists and experts often succeeds in bringing out unstated assumptions, conflicting interpretations of the facts, and the risks posed by new projects.54 Frank Fischer goes even further in this context, explicitly appropriating rhetorical scholar Charles Willards concept of argumentative epistemics to flesh out his vision for policy studies: Uncovering the epistemic dynamics of public controversies would allow for a more enlightened understanding of what is at stake in a particular dispute, making possible a sophisticated evaluation of the various viewpoints and merits of diff erent policy options. In so doing, the diff ering, oft en tacitly held contextual perspectives and values could be juxtaposed; the viewpoints and demands of experts, special interest groups, and the wider public could be directly compared; and the dynamics among the participants could be scrutizined. This would by no means sideline or even exclude scientific assessment; it would only situate it within the framework of a more comprehensive evaluation.55 As Davis notes, institutional constraints present within the EPA communicative milieu can complicate eff orts to provide a full airing of all relevant arguments pertaining to a given regulatory issue. Thus, intercollegiate debaters can play key roles in retrieving and amplifying positions that might otherwise remain sedimented in the policy process. Th e dynamics entailed in this symbiotic relationship are underscored by deliberative planner John Forester, who observes, If planners and public administrators are to make democratic political debate and argument possible, they will need strategically located allies to avoid being fully thwarted by the characteristic self-protecting behaviors of the planning organizations and bureaucracies within which they work.56 Here, an institutions need for strategically located allies to support deliberative practice constitutes the demand for rhetorically informed expertise, setting up what can be considered a demand-driven rhetoric of science. As an instance of rhetoric of science scholarship, this type of switch-side public 108 Rhetoric & Public Affairs debate
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 42 Brovero/Lundeen Framework diff ers both from insular contest tournament debating, where the main focus is on the pedagogical benefit for student participants, and first-generation rhetoric of science scholarship, where critics concentrated on unmasking the rhetoricity of scientific artifacts circulating in what many perceived to be purely technical spheres of knowledge production.58 As a form of demand-driven rhetoric of science, switch-side debating connects directly with the communication fields performative tradition of argumentative engagement in public controversya different route of theoretical grounding than rhetorical criticisms tendency to locate its foundations in the English fields tradition of literary criticism and textual analysis.59 Given this genealogy, it is not surprising to learn how Daviss response to the EPAs institutional need for rhetorical expertise took the form of a public debate proposal, shaped by Daviss dual background as a practitioner and historian of intercollegiate debate. Davis competed as an undergraduate policy debater for Howard University in the 1970s, and then went on to enjoy substantial success as coach of the Howard team in the new millennium. In an essay reviewing the broad sweep of debating history, Davis notes, Academic debate began at least 2,400 years ago when the scholar Protagoras of Abdera (481 411 bc), known as the father of debate, conducted debates among his students in Athens.60 As John Poulakos points out, older Sophists such as Protagoras taught Greek students the value of dissoi logoi, or pulling apart complex questions by debating two sides of an issue.61 Th e few surviving fragments of Protagorass work suggest that his notion of dissoi logoi stood for the principle that two accounts *logoi+ are present about every thing, opposed to each other, and further, that humans could measure the relative soundness of knowledge claims by engaging in give-and-take where parties would make the weaker argument stronger to activate the generative aspect of rhetorical practice, a key element of the Sophistical tradition.62 Following in Protagorass wake, Isocrates would complement this centrifugal push with the pull of synerchesthe, a centripetal exercise of coming together deliberatively to listen, respond, and form common social bonds.63 Isocrates incorporated Protagorean dissoi logoi into synerchesthe, a broader concept that he used flexibly to express interlocking senses of (1) inquiry, as in groups convening to search for answers to common questions through discussion;64 (2) deliberation, with interlocutors gathering in a political setting to deliberate about proposed courses of action;65 and (3) alliance formation, a form of collective action typical at festivals,66 or in the exchange of pledges that deepen social ties.67 Switch-Side Debating Meets Demand-Driven Rhetoric of Science 109 Returning once again to the Kettering-informed sharp distinction between debate and deliberation, one sees in Isocratic synerchesthe, as well as in the EPA debating initiative, a fusion of debate with deliberative functions. Echoing a theme raised in this essays earlier discussion of intelligence tradecraft , such a fusion troubles categorical attempts to classify debate and deliberation as fundamentally opposed activities. Th e significance of such a finding is amplified by the frequency of attempts in the deliberative democracy literature to insist on the theoretical bifurcation of debate and deliberation as an article of theoretical faith. Tandem analysis of the EPA and intelligence community debating initiatives also brings to light dimensions of contrast at the third level of Isocratic synerchesthe, alliance formation. The intelligence communitys Analytic Outreach initiative invites largely one-way communication flowing from outside experts into the black box of classified intelligence analysis. On the contrary, the EPA debating program gestures toward a more expansive project of deliberative alliance building. In this vein, Howard Universitys participation in the 2008 EPA Water Wars debates can be seen as the harbinger of a trend by historically black colleges and universities (hbcus) to catalyze their debate programs in a strategy that evinces Daviss dual-focus vision. On the one hand, Davis aims to recuperate Wiley Colleges tradition of competitive excellence in intercollegiate debate, depicted so powerfully in the feature film The Great Debaters, by starting a wave of new debate programs housed in hbcus across the nation.68 On the other
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 43 Brovero/Lundeen Framework hand, Davis sees potential for these new programs to complement their competitive debate programming with participation in the EPAs public debating initiative. This dual-focus vision recalls Douglas Ehningers and Wayne Brockriedes vision of total debate programs that blend switch-side intercollegiate tournament debating with forms of public debate designed to contribute to wider communities beyond the tournament setting.69 Whereas the political telos animating Daviss dual-focus vision certainly embraces background assumptions that Greene and Hicks would find disconcertingnotions of liberal political agency, the idea of debate using words as weapons70there is little doubt that the project of pursuing environmental protection by tapping the creative energy of hbcu-leveraged dissoi logoi diff ers significantly from the intelligence communitys eff ort to improve its tradecraft through online digital debate programming. Such diff erence is especially evident in light of the EPAs commitment to extend debates to public realms, with the attendant possible benefits unpacked by Jane Munksgaard and Damien Pfister: 110 Rhetoric & Public Affairs Having a public debater argue against their convictions, or confess their indecision on a subject and subsequent embrace of argument as a way to seek clarity, could shake up the prevailing view of debate as a war of words. Public uptake of the possibility of switch-sides debate may help lessen the polarization of issues inherent in prevailing debate formats because students are no longer seen as wedded to their arguments. This could transform public debate from a tussle between advocates, with each public debater trying to convince the audience in a Manichean struggle about the truth of their side, to a more inviting exchange focused on the content of the others argumentation and the process of deliberative exchange.71 Reflection on the EPA debating initiative reveals a striking convergence among (1) the expressed need for dissoi logoi by government agency officials wrestling with the challenges of inverted rhetorical situations, (2) theoretical claims by scholars regarding the centrality of argumentation in the public policy process, and (3) the practical wherewithal of intercollegiate debaters to tailor public switch-side debating performances in specific ways requested by agency collaborators. These points of convergence both underscore previously articulated theoretical assertions regarding the relationship of debate to deliberation, as well as deepen understanding of the political role of deliberation in institutional decision making. But they also suggest how decisions by rhetorical scholars about whether to contribute switch-side debating acumen to meet demand-driven rhetoric of science initiatives ought to involve careful reflection. Such an approach mirrors the way policy planning in the argumentative turn is designed to respond to the weaknesses of formal, decisionistic paradigms of policy planning with situated, contingent judgments informed by reflective deliberation. Conclusion Dilip Gaonkars criticism of first-generation rhetoric of science scholarship rests on a key claim regarding what he sees as the inherent thinness of the ancient Greek rhetorical lexicon.72 That lexicon, by virtue of the fact that it was invented primarily to teach rhetorical performance, is ill equipped in his view to support the kind of nuanced discriminations required for eff ective interpretation and critique of rhetorical texts. Although Gaonkar isolates rhetoric of science as a main target of this critique, his choice of subject matter Switch-Side Debating Meets Demand-Driven Rhetoric of Science 111 positions him to toggle back and forth between specific engagement with rhetoric of science scholarship and discussion of broader themes touching on the metatheoretical controversy over rhetorics proper scope as a field of inquiry (the so-called big vs. little rhetoric dispute).73 Gaonkars familiar refrain in both contexts is a warning about the dangers of universali ing or globali ing rhetorical inquiry, especially in attempts that stretch the classical Greek rhetorical vocabulary into a hermeneutic metadiscourse, one pressed into service as a master key for interpretation of any and all types of communicative artifacts. In other words, Gaonkar warns against the dangers of rhetoricians pursuing what might be called supply-side
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 44 Brovero/Lundeen Framework epistemology, rhetorics project of pushing for greater disciplinary relevance by attempting to extend its reach into far-flung areas of inquiry such as the hard sciences. Yet this essay highlights how rhetorical scholarships relevance can be credibly established by outsiders, who seek access to the creative energy flowing from the classical Greek rhetorical lexicon in its native mode, that is, as a tool of invention designed to spur and hone rhetorical performance. Analysis of the intelligence community and EPA debating initiatives shows how this is the case, with government agencies calling for assistance to animate rhetorical processes such as dissoi logoi (debating different sides) and synerchesthe (the performative task of coming together deliberately for the purpose of joint inquiry, collective choice-making, and renewal of communicative bonds).74 Th is demand-driven epistemology is different in kind from the globalization project so roundly criticized by Gaonkar. Rather than rhetoric venturing out from its own academic home to proselytize about its epistemological universality for all knowers, instead here we have actors not formally trained in the rhetorical tradition articulating how their own deliberative objectives call for incorporation of rhetorical practice and even recruitment of strategically located allies75 to assist in the process. Since the productivist content in the classical Greek vocabulary serves as a critical resource for joint collaboration in this regard, demanddriven rhetoric of science turns Gaonkars original critique on its head. In fairness to Gaonkar, it should be stipulated that his 1993 intervention challenged the way rhetoric of science had been done to date, not the universe of ways rhetoric of science might be done in the future. And to his partial credit, Gaonkar did acknowledge the promise of a performance-oriented rhetoric of science, especially one informed by classical thinkers other than Aristotle.76 In his Ph.D. dissertation on Aspects of Sophistic Pedagogy, Gaonkar documents how the ancient sophists were the greatest champions 112 Rhetoric & Public Affairs of socially useful science,77 and also how the sophists essentially practiced the art of rhetoric in a translational, performative register: Th e sophists could not blithely go about their business of making science useful, while science itself stood still due to lack of communal support and recognition. Besides, sophistic pedagogy was becoming increasingly dependent on the findings of contemporary speculation in philosophy and science. Take for instance, the eminently practical art of rhetoric. As taught by the best of the sophists, it was not simply a handbook of recipes which anyone could mechanically employ to his advantage. On the contrary, the strength and vitality of sophistic rhetoric came from their ability to incorporate the relevant information obtained from the on-going research in other fields.78 Of course, deep trans-historical differences make uncritical appropriation of classical Greek rhetoric for contemporary use a fools errand. But to gauge from Robert Harimans recent reflections on the enduring salience of Isocrates, timely, suitable, and eloquent appropriations can help us postmoderns forge a new political language suitable for addressing the complex raft of intertwined problems facing global society. Such retrospection is long overdue, says Hariman, as the history, literature, philosophy, oratory, art, and political thought of Greece and Rome have never been more accessible or less appreciated.79 This essay has explored ways that some of the most venerable elements of the ancient Greek rhetorical traditionthose dealing with debate and deliberationcan be retrieved and adapted to answer calls in the contemporary milieu for cultural technologies capable of dealing with one of our times most daunting challenges. This challenge involves finding meaning in inverted rhetorical situations characterized by an endemic surplus of heterogeneous content.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 46 Brovero/Lundeen Framework of thinking and acting, and arriving at commitments after a period of questioning, analysis, and reflection (Brookfield, 1987). Significant parallels exist with the policy-making process--identifying the values underlying policy choices, recognizing and evaluating multiple alternatives, and taking a position and advocating for its adoption. Developing policy practice skills seems to share much in common with developing capacities for critical thinking. R.W. Paul (as cited in Gambrill, 1997) states that critical thinkers acknowledge the imperative to argue from opposing points of view and to seek to identify weakness and limitations in one's own position. Critical thinkers are aware that there are many legitimate points of view, each of which (when thought through) may yield some level of insight. (p. 126) John Dewey, the philosopher and educational reformer, suggested that the initial advance in the development of reflective thought occurs in the transition from holding fixed, static ideas to an attitude of doubt and questioning engendered by exposure to alternative views in social discourse (Baker, 1955, pp. 36-40). Doubt, confusion, and conflict resulting from discussion of diverse perspectives "force comparison, selection, and reformulation of ideas and meanings" (Baker, 1955, p. 45). Subsequent educational theorists have contended that learning requires openness to divergent ideas in combination with the ability to synthesize disparate views into a purposeful resolution (Kolb, 1984; Perry, 1970). On the one hand, clinging to the certainty of one's beliefs risks dogmatism, rigidity, and the inability to learn from new experiences. On the other hand, if one's opinion is altered by every new experience, the result is insecurity, paralysis, and the inability to take effective action. The educator's role is to help students develop the capacity to incorporate new and sometimes conflicting ideas and experiences into a coherent cognitive framework. Kolb suggests that, "if the education process begins by bringing out the learner's beliefs and theories, examining and testing them, and then integrating the new, more refined ideas in the person's belief systems, the learning process will be facilitated" (p. 28). The authors believe that involving students in substantive debates challenges them to learn and grow in the fashion described by Dewey and Kolb. Participation in a debate stimulates clarification and critical evaluation of the evidence, logic, and values underlying one's own policy position. In addition, to debate effectively students must understand and accurately evaluate the opposing perspective. The ensuing tension between two distinct but legitimate views is designed to yield a reevaluation and reconstruction of knowledge and beliefs pertaining to the issue.
Discourse by the people instead of the elites is the best way to improve democracy. Levasseur, West Chester University Prof, & Carlin, U of Kansas Prof, 1
*David G. & Diana B., professors of communication studies, Fall 2001, Egocentric Argument and the Public Sphere: Citi en Deliberations on Public Policy and Policymakers, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Vol 3, n. 4, p. 408, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/rhetoric_and_public_affairs/v004/4.3levasseur.html, accessed 7/7/13, MC] Such empirical examinations should pay particular attention to ordinary citizens' deliberative discourse. After all, democracy is built upon the discursive acts of ordinary people in ordinary conversation. 5 Yet scholars have paid little attention to such ordinary citizens, who, Alexis de Tocqueville observed, "reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe." 6 Consequently, our knowledge of the public sphere would benefit from a shift in focus: shifting our attention from the discourse of elites to the discourse of the larger citizenry. 7 While few studies have examined the conversations of ordinary citizens, some scholars have breached this veiled communicative space. Scholars have used citizen focus groups to explore the relationship between political discussion and television programs, 8 the construction of political action frames, 9 citizen reactions to political debates, 10 and political choices during presidential campaigns. 11 Scholars also observed citizen discussions during the National Issues Forum in 1996. 12 While all of these studies have enhanced our understanding of citizens' public policy deliberations, none of these studies has examined citizen dialogue within the rich scholarly tradition of the public sphere. However, Thomas W.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 48 Brovero/Lundeen Framework Benson explored the public sphere as constituted in citizens' political discussions on Internet bulletin boards. 13 His study's significant empirical insights were limited by the distinct sample population (Internet political newsgroup members) and by the limited communicative medium (e-mail messaging) used by these members. Mitchell S. McKinney's dissertation used citizen focus group data to examine voter anger and alienation. 14 His study was grounded in public sphere literature to develop recommendations for improving the state of civic discourse.
Debate is essentialgives us access to effective methods of discourse, improving understanding of the public sphere. Levasseur, West Chester University Prof, & Carlin, U of Kansas Prof, 1
*David G. & Diana B., professors of communication studies, Fall 2001, Egocentric Argument and the Public Sphere: Citi en Deliberations on Public Policy and Policymakers, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Vol 3, n. 4, p. 425, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/rhetoric_and_public_affairs/v004/4.3levasseur.html, accessed 7/7/13, MC] The problem of polling also points to the importance of examining citizen discourse in an effort to understand the public sphere. Citizen discourse must be examined because it differs in important ways from the elite discourse that commonly pervades studies of the public sphere. Studies centered on such elite discourse have lamented the growth of a rhetoric of polls in our political process. 60 While such rhetoric certainly plays a prominent role in politician and media discourse, it played very little role in our citizen discussion groups; citizens simply did not refer to polls to advance their policy arguments. Studying citizen groups also presents a different picture with regard to the fourth commonly cited ailment confronting the public sphere: the rise of a rhetoric of technical expertise. Writers ranging from Dryzek to Habermas have complained about a "lifeworld" colonized by the discourse of expert cultures. 61 The lifeworld represented within our group deliberations did not reveal such colonization. Discourse deferring to technical expertise was largely absent from these discussions. On the other hand, the discourse of personal expertise substantiated through personal narratives dominated these discussions. In fact, these citizen conversations might have benefitted from some expert discourse that would have helped participants frame their experiences within a broader context of knowledge.
Roleplaying
Roleplaying is key to decision making teaches us both pragmatic and philosophical values detachment from the personal is key Hanghj, University of Bristol Author, 08
[Thorkild Hanghj, author affiliated with Danish Research Centre on Education and Advanced Media Materials, research the Centre for Learning, Knowledge, and Interactive Technologies (L-KIT), the Institute of Education at the University of Bristol and the institute formerly known as Learning Lab Denmark at the School of Education, 2008 (PLAYFUL KNOWLEDGE: An Explorative Study of Educational Gaming, University of Southern Denmark, p. 50-51 Available Online at http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_hum/ afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdf, Accessed on July 7, 2013)][SP] Joas re-interpretation of Deweys pragmatism as a theory of situated creativity raises a critique of humans as purely rational agents that navigate instrumentally through meansends- schemes (Joas, 1996: 133f). This critique is particularly important when trying to understand how games are enacted and validated within the realm of educational institutions that by definition are inscribed in the great modernistic narrative of progress where nation states, teachers and parents expect students to acquire specific skills and competencies (Popkewitz, 1998; cf. chapter 3). However, as Dewey argues, the actual doings of educational gaming cannot be reduced to rational means-ends schemes. Instead, the situated interaction between teachers, students, and learning resources are played out as contingent redistributions of means, ends and ends in view, which often make classroom contexts seem messy from an outsiders perspective (Barab & Squire, 2004). 4.2.3. Dramatic rehearsal The two preceding sections discussed how Dewey views play as an imaginative activity of educational value, and how his assumptions on creativity and playful actions represent a critique of rational means-end schemes. For now, I will turn to Deweys concept of dramatic rehearsal, which assumes that social actors deliberate by projecting and choosing between various scenarios for future action. Dewey uses the concept dramatic rehearsal several times in his work but presents the most extensive elaboration in Human Nature and Conduct: Deliberation is a dramatic rehearsal (in imagination) of various competing possible lines of action *It+ is an experiment in finding out what the various lines of possible action are really like (...) Thought runs ahead and foresees outcomes, and thereby avoids having to await the instruction of actual failure and disaster. An act overtly tried out is irrevocable, its consequences cannot be blotted out. An act tried out in imagination is not final or fatal. It is retrievable (Dewey, 1922: 1323). This excerpt illustrates how Dewey views the process of decision making (deliberation) through the lens of an imaginative drama metaphor. Thus, decisions are made through the imaginative projection of outcomes, where the possible competing lines of action are resolved through a thought experiment. Moreover, Deweys compelling use of the drama metaphor also implies that decisions cannot be reduced to utilitarian, rational or mechanical exercises, but that they have emotional, creative and personal qualities as well. Interestingly, there are relatively few discussions within the vast research literature on Dewey of his concept of dramatic rehearsal. A notable exception is the phenomenologist Alfred Schtz, who praises Deweys concept as a fortunate image for understanding everyday rationality (Schtz, 1943: 140). Other attempts are primarily related to overall discussions on moral or ethical deliberation (Caspary, 1991, 2000, 2006; Fesmire, 1995, 2003; Rnssn, 2003; McVea, 2006). As Fesmire points out, dramatic rehearsal is intended to describe an important phase of deliberation that does not characterise the whole process of making moral decisions, which includes duties and contractual obligations, short and long-term consequences, traits of character to be affected, and rights (Fesmire, 2003: 70). Instead, dramatic rehearsal should be seen as the process of crystallizing possibilities and transforming them into directive hypotheses (Fesmire, 2003: 70). Thus, deliberation can in no way guarantee that the response of a thought experiment will be successful. But what it
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 54 Brovero/Lundeen Framework can do is make the process of choosing more intelligent than would be the case with blind trial-anderror (Biesta, 2006: 8). The notion of dramatic rehearsal provides a valuable perspective for understanding educational gaming as a simultaneously real and imagined inquiry into domain-specific scenarios. Dewey defines dramatic rehearsal as the capacity to stage and evaluate acts, which implies an irrevocable difference between acts that are tried out in imagination and acts that are overtly tried out with real-life consequences (Dewey, 1922: 132-3). This description shares obvious similarities with games as they require participants to inquire into and resolve scenario-specific problems (cf. chapter 2). On the other hand, there is also a striking difference between moral deliberation and educational game activities in terms of the actual consequences that follow particular actions. Thus, when it comes to educational games, acts are both imagined and tried out, but without all the real-life consequences of the practices, knowledge forms and outcomes that are being simulated in the game world. Simply put, there is a difference in realism between the dramatic rehearsals of everyday life and in games, which only play at or simulate the stakes and risks that characterise the serious nature of moral deliberation, i.e. a real-life politician trying to win a parliamentary election experiences more personal and emotional risk than students trying to win the election scenario of The Power Game. At the same time, the lack of real-life consequences in educational games makes it possible to design a relatively safe learning environment, where teachers can stage particular game scenarios to be enacted and validated for educational purposes. In this sense, educational games are able to provide a safe but meaningful way of letting teachers and students make mistakes (e.g. by giving a poor political presentation) and dramatically rehearse particular competing possible lines of action that are relevant to particular educational goals (Dewey, 1922: 132). Seen from this pragmatist perspective, the educational value of games is not so much a question of learning facts or giving the right answers, but more a question of exploring the contingent outcomes and domain-specific processes of problembased scenarios.
State Good
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 60 Brovero/Lundeen Framework and practical experts. In this situation, public debate has become even more fragile than it was. It has become diluted by the predominance of purely pragmatic, managerial and administrative argument, and under-articulated as a result of an explosion of new political schemata that crowd out the more conventional ideologies. The new schemata do feed on the ideologies; but in larger part they consist of a random and unarticulated 'mish-mash' of attitudes and images derived from ethnic, local-cultural, professional, religious, social movement and personal political experiences. The market-place of political ideas and arguments is thriving; but on the other hand, politicians and citizens are at a loss to judge its nature and quality. Neither political parties, nor public officials, interest groups, nor social movements and citizen groups, nor even the public media show any inclination, let alone competency, in ordering this inchoate field. In such conditions, scientific debate provides a much needed minimal amount of order and articulation of concepts, arguments and ideas. Although frequently more in rhetoric than substance, reference to scientific 'validation' does provide politicians, public officials and citizens alike with some sort of compass in an ideological universe in disarray. For policy analysis to have any political impact under such conditions, it should be able somehow to continue 'speaking truth' to political elites who are ideologically uprooted, but cling to power; to the elites of administrators, managers, professionals and experts who vie for power in the jungle of organisations populating the functional policy domains of post-parliamentary democracy; and to a broader audience of an ideologically disoriented and politically disenchanted citizenry.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 62 Brovero/Lundeen Framework confronting the United States. In this way, they gain greater insight into the real-world legal dilemmas faced by policy makers. Second, as they work with other members of their team, they realize the complexities of applying and implementing international law, and the difficulty of bridging the gaps between United States policy and international legal principles, either by reworking the former or creatively reinterpreting the latter. Finally, research for the debates forces students to become familiarized with contemporary issues on the United States foreign policy agenda and the role that international law plays in formulating and executing these policies. 8 The debate thus becomes an excellent vehicle for pushing students beyond stale arguments over principles into the real world of policy analysis, political critique, and legal defense.
1998, QDKM)
Having traced a major strand in the development of CRT, we turn now to the strands' effect on the relationships of CRATs with each other and with outsiders. As the foregoing material suggests, the central CRT message is not simply that minorities are being treated unfairly, or even that individuals out there are in pain - assertions for which there are data to serve as grist for the academic mill - but that the minority scholar himself or herself hurts and hurts badly. An important problem that concerns the very definition of the scholarly enterprise now comes into focus. What can an academic trained to [*694] question and to doubt n72 possibly say to Patricia Williams when effectively she announces, "I hurt bad"? n73 "No, you don't hurt"? "You shouldn't hurt"? "Other people hurt too"? Or, most dangerously - and perhaps most tellingly - "What do you expect when you keep shooting yourself in the foot?" If the majority were perceived as having the well- being of minority groups in mind, these responses might be acceptable, even welcomed. And they might lead to real conversation. But, writes Williams, the failure by those "cushioned within the invisible privileges of race and power... to incorporate a sense of precarious connection as a part of our lives is... ultimately obliterating." n74 "Precarious." "Obliterating." These words will clearly invite responses only from fools and sociopaths; they will, by effectively precluding objection, disconcert and disunite others. "I hurt," in academic discourse, has three broad though interrelated effects. First, it demands priority from the reader's conscience. It is for this reason that law review editors, waiving usual standards, have privileged a long trail of undisciplined - even silly n75 - destructive and, above all, self-destructive arti cles. n76 Second, by emphasizing the emotional bond between those who hurt in a similar way, "I hurt" discourages fellow sufferers from abstracting themselves from their pain in order to gain perspective on their condition. n77 [*696] Last, as we have seen, it precludes the possibility of open and structured conversation with others. n78 [*697] It is because of this conversation-stopping effect of what they insensitively call "first-person agony stories" that Farber and Sherry deplore their use. "The norms of academic civility hamper readers from challenging the accuracy of the researcher's account; it would be rather difficult, for example, to criticize a law review article by questioning the author's emotional stability or veracity." n79 Perhaps, a better practice would be to put the scholar's experience on the table, along with other relevant material, but to subject that experience to the same level of scrutiny. If through the foregoing rhetorical strategies CRATs succeeded in limiting academic debate, why do they not have greater influence on public policy? Discouraging white legal scholars from entering the national conversation about race, n80 I suggest, has generated a kind of cynicism in white audiences which, in turn, has had precisely the reverse effect of that ostensibly desired by CRATs. It drives the American public to the right and ensures that anything CRT offers is reflexively rejected. In the absence of scholarly work by white males in the area of race, of course, it is difficult to be sure what reasons they would give for not having rallied behind CRT. Two things, however, are certain. First, the kinds of issues raised by Williams are too important in their implications [*698] for American life to be confined to communities of color. If the lives of minorities are heavily constrained, if not fully defined, by the thoughts and actions of the majority elements in society, it would seem to be of great importance that white thinkers and doers participate in open discourse to bring about change. Second, given the lack of engagement of CRT by the community of legal scholars as a whole, the discourse that should be
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 64 Brovero/Lundeen Framework taking place at the highest scholarly levels has, by default, been displaced to faculty offices and, more generally, the streets and the airwaves.
Topic Specific
Key To Decisionmaking
Latin American education key to decision making in new era of globalization. Marcotte Yale Programs in International Education Research 13
*Margaret, 2013, Educational Outreach/Teacher Training Program, http://www.yale.edu/macmillan/lais/outreach.html, accessed 7/7/13, ALT] Our mission is to enhance and promote an open and critical understanding of the socio-economic, political and cultural changes and continuities that define Latin American societies. From a multidisciplinary perspective, our purpose is to engage the interests, knowledge and practices of educators who teach about Latin America at all levels with those of researchers, policy-makers and grass-roots activists, who are also pursuing a deeper understanding of the diverse societies and identities of Latin America within local, regional and worldwide developments. It is important to learn about other cultures, especially Latin American cultures, in order to enhance our understanding of historical developments through multiple forms of education, guided by universal principles of social tolerance, social equity, and respect for human dignity and human rights. An education that promotes intercultural dialogue and understanding is based on an appreciation and reaffirmation of diversity and cultural identities, and can prevent conflicts through non-violent means as individuals create and embrace social changes amid contexts of social cohesion. These educational goals aim to improve the ways in which societies can collaborate with each other towards a more equitable and sustainable socioeconomic development and, thus, to the improvement of the quality of life of all. Achieving this goal, international education, and specifically education about Latin America, will enable students of all ages to critically address and participate in dialogues and decision-making aimed at better defining the dynamics and changes brought by an era of globalization, new technological and economic developments, transnational arrangements, and vast and rapid information and migration patterns that have resulted in new multi-cultural social realities. In short, learning about Latin America and other world regions will allow todays youth to be better equipped with the tools and skills needed in order to be active and productive global citizens.
Scholarship Benefits
Latin American policy good: cultural and political diversity, and role in global studies. Dirzo Stanford University Latin American Studies Director 12
*Rodolfo, Enlace Year in Review, Year In Review, http://issuu.com/icastanford/docs/clas_2012_enlace/1, p. 5, accessed 7/6/13, ALT] One might ask, why bring this litany of multi-faceted (and seemingly disconnected) examples of Latin American news to the table? And the answer is to emphasize: i) the plethoric diversity of issues in history, culture, policy, politics, and science that emerge from this region of the world; ii) what an important geopolitical entity the region is in and of itself and in the context of the global community; and iii) the extent to which the region continues to be an exciting, fertile laboratory for international studies, which deserves the continued interest of scholars and students who wish to engage in interdisciplinary research and training for our understanding of the world. It is my aspiration that CLAS, with the support of the general Stanford Latin American community (students, faculty and visiting scholars) becomes an even stronger venue that fosters the study and appreciation of the regions resources, people, and actual and potential contributions to the world.
Latin American studies incorporates an innovate, interdisciplinary approach. Carpenter University of Derby Research Manager 13 [Victoria, Society for Latin American
Studies, Why Study Latin America?, http://www.slas.org.uk/studyingLA/whyLatinA.htm, accessed 7/7/13, ALT] Latin American Studies is a vibrant and expanding area of academic activity attracting scholars from a wide range of disciplines and interests, including history, music, film and media studies, economics, languages, geography, politics, anthropology, international relations, sociology and literature. Latin Americanists are interested primarily in the region or individual countries and this gives them a well-rounded knowledge of their specialist area, incorporating history, contemporary life and the arts, as well as their own niche topic. The interdisciplinary nature of Latin American studies encourages scholars to think in a fluid and imaginative way about issues and events, borrowing ideas from different academic approaches and creating an eclectic response. Students of Latin America study important traditional topics, such as poverty, injustice and inequality, but also exciting contemporary developments such as the indigenous resurgence across the region, Bra ils Afroreggae movement and the rise of new left political projects. As such, Latin American studies also provides an important window on power, society and life beyond the region, having the potential to bring important new perspectives to the study of so-called developed countries as well as presenting a distinctive experience of the colonial condition.
Regional studies are key to preparing ourselves to tackle U.S. problems. Gallucci, Former Georgetown Foreign Service Dean, 12
[Robert L., president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, has 21 years of government service, former Special Envoy for United States on proliferation, 11/26/12, The Chronicle of Higher Education, How Scholars Can Improve International Relations, http://chronicle.com/article/HowScholars-Can-Improve/135898/, accessed 7/7/13, MC]
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 69 Brovero/Lundeen Framework To these recommendations, I would add two more: first, a robust embrace of regional studies. Nothing can replace the value of insights that emerge from the integration of knowledge and research on the history, economics, politics, culture, religion, and geography of a region. Second, consideration of rigorous, policy-relevant theory and analysis should be among the requirements for hiring, tenure, and promotion. My organization, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, supports efforts in this regard, but it is incumbent upon all who teach and study international relations to think about the problems we face as a nation, and those humankind faces across the planet. Think about the needs of governments, and of the vast range of organizations at work in the world. Find practical ways to prepare people to be useful and effective. Our universities have the country's intellectual firepower, trained expertise, and the careers of the most promising young people in their hands. I am asking that they please do something useful with them.
International Relations
Discussion of IR Policy is critical for skill development and advocacy skills Starkley and Blake, University of Maryland, 2001 (Brigid and Elizabeth, Simulation in international relations education, http://maaz.ihmc.us/rid=1K7F7521P-2BS8TQRV0T/Garcia%20Carbonell%20et%20al%20-%20Simulation.pdf#page=94, Accessed- 7-6-13, RRR)
For the past 50 years, scholars and practitioners of international relations have used simulations to model real-world environments. Simulations can be conducted as experimental tools to allow researchers to develop and test theories of decision making and other processes. Simulations can also be used as predictive tools to help policy makers weigh various outcomes. Finally, simulations can be used as educational tools to help student participants understand the way the international system works and to apply decision-making theory to the solution of real-world problems.1 Although the reasons for simulating the international system have remained relatively constant over time, the types and structures of these simulations have changed dramatically since 1950, owing in part to shifts in theory and politics during that period. Of particular interest is the role that technology has played in fostering innovation in the design and delivery of simulation exercises for educational purposes. Although the use of simulations for research purposes has declined since the 1950s and 1960s, the use of international relations (IR) simulations for teaching purposes has rapidly expanded, with representations becoming more complex owing to the technology-mediated tools available.2 In education, simulations give students the opportunity to learn experientially and have been shown to develop different skills from *conventional+ classroom teachingespecially those of being imaginative and innovative (Winham, 1991, p. 417). Such exercises place participants in roles and require them to overcome various obstacles in their pursuit of goals (Walcott, 1980, p. 1). Simulations of the international system can create worldwide laboratories for learners, helping them to gain understanding of the complexity of key issues (Starkey & Wilkenfeld, 1996, p. 25) by navigating the international system from the perspective of real-world decision makers.3
Answers To
Debate empowers students. Framework is a prerequisiteany alt must go through policy means first if its to achieve actual change Zwarensteyn, Grand Valley State Masters student, 12 [Ellen C., 8-1-2012 High School Policy
Debate as an Enduring Pathway to Political Education: Evaluating Possibilities for Political Learning http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=theses accessed: 7/5/13 EYS] A debate education becomes a way for students to think of themselves as activists and critics of society. This is a practice of empowerment. Warner and Brushke (2001) continue to highlight how practicing public speaking itself may be vitally empowering. Speaking in a highly engaged academic environment where the goal is analytical victory would put many on edge. Taking academic risks in a debate round, however, yields additional benefits. The process of debating allows students to practice listening and conceiving and re-conceiving ideas based on in-round cooperation. This cooperation, even between competing teams, establishes respect for the process of deliberation. This practice may in turn empower students to use speaking and listening skills outside the debate round and in their local communities skills making students more comfortable talking to people who are different from them (Warner and Brushke, 2001, p. 4-7). Moreover, there is inherent value in turning the traditional tables of learning around. Reversing the traditional classroom demonstrates students taking control
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 75 Brovero/Lundeen Framework of their own learning through the praxis of argumentation. Students learn to depend on themselves and their colleagues for information and knowledge and must cooperate through the debate process. Taken together, policy debate aids academic achievement, student behavior, critical thinking, and empowers students to view themselves as qualified agents for social change.
Role playing is a prerequisite to real life decision making and agency Hanghj, University of Bristol Author, 08
[Thorkild Hanghj, author affiliated with Danish Research Centre on Education and Advanced Media Materials, research the Centre for Learning, Knowledge, and Interactive Technologies (L-KIT), the Institute of Education at the University of Bristol and the institute formerly known as Learning Lab Denmark at the School of Education, 2008 (PLAYFUL KNOWLEDGE: An Explorative Study of Educational Gaming, University of Southern Denmark, p. 50-51 Available Online at http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_hum/ afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdf, Accessed on July 7, 2013)][SP] Thus, debate games require teachers to balance the centripetal/centrifugal forces of gaming and teaching, to be able to reconfigure their discursive authority, and to orchestrate the multiple voices of a dialogical game space in relation to particular goals. These Bakhtinian perspectives provide a valuable analytical framework for describing the discursive interplay between different practices and knowledge aspects when enacting (debate) game scenarios. In addition to this, Bakhtins dialogical philosophy also offers an explanation of why debate games (and other game types) may be valuable within an educational context. One of the central features of multi-player games is that players are expected to experience a simultaneously real and imagined scenario both in relation to an insiders (participant) perspective and to an outsiders (co-participant) perspective. According to Bakhtin, the outsiders perspective reflects a fundamental aspect of human understanding: In order to understand, it is immensely important for the person who understands to be located outside the object of his or her creative understanding in time, in space, in culture. For one cannot even really see one's own exterior and comprehend it as a whole, and no mirrors or photographs can help; our real exterior can be seen and understood only by other people, because they are located outside us in space, and because they are others (Bakhtin, 1986: 7). As the quote suggests, every person is influenced by others in an inescapably intertwined way, and consequently no voice can be said to be isolated. Thus, it is in the interaction with other voices that individuals are able to reach understanding and find their own voice. Bakhtin also refers to the ontological process of finding a voice as ideological becoming, which represents the process of selectively assimilating the words of others (Bakhtin, 1981: 341). Thus, by teaching and playing debate scenarios, it is possible to support students in their process of becoming not only themselves, but also in becoming articulate and responsive citizens in a democratic society.
Debate is uniquely important for high school students discovering themselves through political engagement Zwarensteyn, Grand Valley State Masters student, 12 [Ellen C., 8-1-2012 High School Policy
Debate as an Enduring Pathway to Political Education: Evaluating Possibilities for Political Learning http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1034&context=theses accessed: 7/5/13 EYS] High school students experience unique developmental challenges as they search for their own identities and establish relationships with authority and their peers. In addition to social changes, high
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 76 Brovero/Lundeen Framework school students also actively seek information, challenge systems of power, and negotiate their own world-views amid conflicting messages of childhood and emerging adult expectations. High school debate may heighten this search as students seek to know more about their own political identity through relatively mature exchanges of information. These maturing dialogues do not trade-off with stereotypical teen-aged irresponsible acts of foolishness. From a sociological perspective, Fine (2004) investigated the high school debate community and observed students behavior, attitudes, and characteristics. Fine (2004) advances that adolescents are agents of theirown world. They interact with institutions and persons that determine their sense of self and their world-views. What those experiences are that influence that childs development help determine immediate behavior and long term identity. Thus, adolescents shape their actions in light of how they are viewed and treated by adults and adult institutions, how they are viewed and treated by their peers, and how they desire to view themselves (Fine, 2004, p. 2). Both mature and childish, high school debaters have the power to construct their own lifeworlds, but not always in ways that adults endorse (Fine, 2004, p.7). Questions of moral and ethical development surround what type of arguments students are exposed to, what type of competition students experience, and overall how coaching can impact a childs development. Each of these questions raises ethical questions within the debate community.
Students already have preconceived notions about how the world operates--government policy discussion is vital to force engagement with competing perspectives Esberg and Sagan, special assistant to the director at New York University's and Professor at Stanford, Center 12 *
Jane Esberg is special assistant to the director at New York University's Center on. International Cooperation. She was the winner of 2009 Firestone Medal, AND Scott Sagan is a professor of political science and director of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation NEGOTIATING NONPROLIFERATION: Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Nuclear Weapons Policy, The Nonproliferation Review, 19:1, 95-108 accessed 5-7-13, RRR These government or quasi-government think tank simulations often provide very similar lessons for high-level players as are learned by students in educational simulations. Government participants
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 78 Brovero/Lundeen Framework learn about the importance of understanding foreign perspectives, the need to practice internal coordination, and the necessity to compromise and coordinate with other governments in negotiations and crises. During the Cold War, political scientist Robert Mandel noted how crisis exercises and war games forced government officials to overcome bureaucratic myopia, moving beyond their normal organizational roles and thinking more creatively about how others might react in a crisis or conflict.6 The skills of imagination and the subsequent ability to predict foreign interests and reactions remain critical for real-world foreign policy makers. For example, simulations of the Iranian nuclear crisisheld in 2009 and 2010 at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center and at Harvard University's Belfer Center, and involving former US senior officials and regional expertshighlighted the dangers of misunderstanding foreign governments preferences and misinterpreting their subsequent behavior. In both simulations, the primary criticism of the US negotiating team lay in a failure to predict accurately how other states, both allies and adversaries, would behave in response to US policy initiatives.7 By university age, students often have a pre-defined view of international affairs, and the literature on simulations in education has long emphasized how such exercises force students to challenge their assumptions about how other governments behave and how their own government works.8 Since simulations became more common as a teaching tool in the late 1950s, educational literature has expounded on their benefits, from encouraging engagement by breaking from the typical lecture format, to improving communication skills, to promoting teamwork.9 More broadly, simulations can deepen understanding by asking students to link fact and theory, providing a context for facts while bringing theory into the realm of practice.10 These exercises are particularly valuable in teaching international affairs for many of the same reasons they are useful for policy makers: they force participants to grapple with the issues arising from a world in flux.11 Simulations have been used successfully to teach students about such disparate topics as European politics, the Kashmir crisis, and US response to the mass killings in Darfur.12 Role-playing exercises certainly encourage students to learn political and technical factsbut they learn them in a more active style. Rather than sitting in a classroom and merely receiving knowledge, students actively research their government's positions and actively argue, brief, and negotiate with others.13 Facts can change quickly; simulations teach students how to contextualize and act on information.
Critique cant influence policy policymakers need empiricism to fill their academic niche, scholars prescriptive ideas are not received in the decision-making process Bertucci, Universidad de San Andres, et al 12 (Mariano E., Fabian Borges-Herrero, University of
Southern California, Claudia Fuentes-Julio, University of Denver, International Studies Perspectives (2012), 119 Toward Best Practices in ScholarPractitioner Relations: Insights from the Field of InterAmerican Affairs, pg. 9 date accessed 7/12/13 igm) The influence of scholarly ideas on policymakers is contingent on factors beyond the control of scholars. These factors are usually related but not limited to the politicized and haphazard nature of public policy decision-making processes. Scholarly contributions, if defined as findings published in leading academic journals, do not often directly affect policymaking. As discussed above, only in the case of USAIDs democracy promotion efforts academic findings informed policymaking. Particularly in the fields of Comparative Politics and
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 80 Brovero/Lundeen Framework IR, actual scholarly contributions do not appear to systematically impact policy. 16 Rather, it is prescriptive ideas, for which there is no empirical evidence but that resonates within universities because the common layperson sees them as the right thing to dofor example, the issue of responsibility to protect 17that end up influencing policy. Prescriptive ideas are logical arguments about why they would provide better policy outcomes vis-a`-vis other policies, but these ideas are not actually demonstrated by empirical evidencewhether a new idea would make the world safer or better cannot be empirically demonstrated before the policy is actually implemented (Krasner 2011). As a general rule, in academia, where scholars strive to publish or perish in leading journals, scholars do not care about what one another think about a certain issue; what matters is what can be shown through systematically collected empirical evidence .
Criticism cant influence policy lack of interior advocates, lack of communication interoperability and timing all trump theory Bertucci, Universidad de San Andres, et al 12 (Mariano E., Fabian Borges-Herrero, University of
Southern California, Claudia Fuentes-Julio, University of Denver, International Studies Perspectives (2012), 119 Toward Best Practices in ScholarPractitioner Relations: Insights from the Field of InterAmerican Affairs, pg. 10 date accessed 7/12/13 igm) Scholarly success in influencing policymaking also depends on the existence of receptive allies within government institutionswhat Rafael Fernandez de Castro calls brokersthat are willing to advance policy recommendations based on sound scholarly research (Fernandez de Castro 2011:6). However, not all efforts at effectively influencing policy are reducible to nurturing relations with government brokers. The United States was well on its way to creating the FTAA when countries like Brazil blocked the path. In this case, the United States let the moment pass, while other Latin American countries, such as Argentina, turned their back to the FTAA as soon as free trade-friendly governments left office, strengthening the position of the already ambiguous Brazilians. Thus, government brokers are important, but timing is also a factor that may facilitate or impede the effective influence of scholarly outputs on policy (Feinberg 2011). Communicating the fruits of rigorous and policy-relevant research in user friendly ways presents another challenge for scholars seeking to influence policy. Scholars, in general, are trained to write for peers interested in theory development, rather than for practitioners, interested in absorbing jargonfree policy recommendations based on rigorous diagnoses. Practitioners have no time to read books and articles written for a scholarly audience that require readers to immerse themselves in academic debates. To be sure, scholarly influence on policy is a two-way streetpractitioners must also be willing to listen to scholars and respect the value of their work. However, practitioners likelihood of paying attention to expert knowledge appears to be tied to issue-specific perceptions. For instance, the success of economists in influencing policy can be explained by the widespread perception that economic policymaking requires technical knowledge. There is no similar consensus behind the idea that technical knowledge is needed for crafting foreign policy, for example. This is certainly the case in the area of citizen security, where no one assumes that technical knowledge is a prerequisite for speaking about the issue (Casas-Zamora 2011).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 82 Brovero/Lundeen Framework perform this task as economically as I can, with the recognition that it might have carried more weight if provided by a respondent rather than the author.) The Foucauldian counter-critique importantly emphasizes a relation between style and position, but it obscures (1) the importance or value of the Habermasian critique and (2) the possibility that the other side of the debate might have its own ethos to advocate, one that has precisely to do with an ethos of argument, an ideal of reciprocal debate that involves taking distance on one's pre-given forms of identity or the norms of one's community, both so as to talk across differences and to articulate one's claims in relation to shared and even universal ideals. And this leads to the second thesis of the book, the insistence that an emphasis on ethos and character is interestingly present if not widely recognized in contemporary theory, and one of the ways its vitality and existential pertinence makes itself felt (even despite the occurrence of the kinds of unfair trumping moves I have mentioned). We often fail to notice this, because identity has so uniformly come to mean sociological, ascribed, or group identity-race, gender, class, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, and so forth. Instances of the move toward character and ethos include the later Foucault (for whom ethos is a central concept), cosmopolitanism (whose aspiration it is to turn universalism into an ethos), and, more controversially, proceduralist ethics and politics (with its emphasis on sincerity and civility). Another version of this attentiveness to ethos and character appears in contemporary pragmatism, with its insistence on casualness of attitude, or insouciance in the face of contingency-recommendations that get elevated into full-fledged exemplary personae in Richard Rorty's notion of the "ironist" or Barbara Herrnstein Smiths portrait of the "postmodern skeptic." These examples-and the larger claim they support-are meant to defend theory as still living, despite the many reports of its demise, and in fact still interestingly and incessantly reelaborating its relation to practice. This second aspect of the project is at once descriptive, motivated by the notion that characterology within theory is intrinsically interesting, and critical, in its attempt to identify how characterology can itself be used to cover or evade the claims of rational argument, as in appeals to charismatic authority or in what I identify as narrow personifications of theory (pragmatism, in its insistence on insouciance in the face of contingency, is a prime example of this second form). And as a complement to the critical agenda, there is a reconstructive agenda as well, an attempt to recuperate liberalism and proceduralism, in part by advocating the possibility, as I have suggested, of an ethos of argument. Robbins, in his extraordinarily rich and challenging response, zeroes in immediately on a crucial issue: who is to say exactly when argument is occurring or not, and what do we do when there is disagreement over the fundamentals (the primary one being over what counts as proper reasoning)? Interestingly, Robbins approaches this issue after first observing a certain tension in the book: on the one hand, The Way We Argue Now calls for dialogue, debate, argument; on the other, its project is "potentially something a bit stricter, or pushier: getting us all to agree on what should and should not count as true argument." What this point of entry into the larger issue reveals is a kind of blur that the book, I am now aware, invites. On the one hand, the book anatomizes academic debates, and in doing so is quite "debaterly" This can give the impression that what I mean by argument is a very specific form unique to disciplinary methodologies in higher education. But the book is not generally advocating a narrow practice of formal and philosophical argumentation in the culture at large, however much its author may relish adherence to the principle of non-contradiction in scholarly argument. I take pains to elaborate an ethos of argument that is linked to democratic debate and the forms of dissent that constitutional patriotism allows and even promotes. In this sense, while argument here is necessarily contextualized sociohistorically, the concept is not merely academic. It is a practice seen as integral to specific political forms and institutions in modern democracies, and to the more general activity of critique within modern societies-to the tradition of the public sphere, to speak in broad terms. Additionally, insofar as argument impels one to take distance on embedded customs, norms, and senses
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 83 Brovero/Lundeen Framework of given identity, it is a practice that at once acknowledges identity, the need to understand the perspectives of others, and the shared commitment to commonality and generality, to finding a way to live together under conditions of difference. More than this: the book also discusses at great length and from several different angles the issue that Robbins inexplicably claims I entirely ignore: the question of disagreement about what counts as argument. In the opening essay, "Debatable Performances," I fault the proponents of communicative ethics for not having a broader understanding of public expression, one that would include the disruptions of spectacle and performance. I return to and underscore this point in my final chapter, where I espouse a democratic politics that can embrace and accommodate a wide variety of expressions and modes. This is certainly a discussion of what counts as dialogue and hence argument in the broad sense in which I mean it, and in fact I fully acknowledge that taking distance from cultural norms and given identities can be advanced not only through critical reflection, but through ironic critique and defamiliarizing performance as well. But I do insist-and this is where I take a position on the fundamental disagreements that have arisen with respect to communicative ethics-that when they have an effect, these other dimensions of experience do not remain unreflective, and insofar as they do become reflective, they are contributing to the very form of reasoned analysis that their champions sometimes imagine they must refuse in order to liberate other modes of being (the affective, the narrative, the performative, the nonrational). If a narrative of human rights violation is persuasive in court, or in the broader cultural public sphere, it is because it draws attention to a violation of humanity that is condemned on principle; if a performance jolts people out of their normative understandings of sexuality and gender, it prompts forms of understanding that can be affirmed and communicated and also can be used to justify political positions and legislative agendas.
If the state is racist as the aff purposes, then there is no way to fix the state but engage with and make it non-racist. Rejecting the state as a whole will solve nothing. We defend the biggest solvency mechanism to solve for the impacts of the 1AC.
Anderson, prof. John Hokins University, 07 (Amanda, Reply to my Critic(s) 2007, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/criticism/v048/48.2anderson.html, accessed July 5, 2013, QDKM)
Disagreement is, by the terms of my book, a form of respect, not a form of disrespect. And by disagreement, I don't mean simply to say that we should expect disagreement rather than agreement, which is a frequently voicedif misconceivedcriticism of Habermas. Of course we should expect disagreement. My point is that we should focus on the moment of dissatisfaction in the face of disagreementthe internal dynamic in argument that imagines argument might be the beginning of [End Page 281] a process of persuasion and exchange that could end in agreement (or partial agreement). For those who advocate reconciling ourselves to disagreements rather than arguing them out, by contrast, there is a complacentand in some versions, even celebratoryattitude toward fixed disagreement. Refusing these options, I make the case for dissatisfied disagreement in the final chapter of the book and argue that people should be willing to justify their positions in dialogue with one another, especially if they hope to live together in a post-traditional pluralist society.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 85 Brovero/Lundeen Framework heart and soul and mind, objects of ultimate concern. Similarly, Philosophy can mean simply what Sellars calls an attempt to see how things, in the broadest possible sense of the term, hang together, in the broadest possible sense of the term. Pericles, for example, was using this sense of the term when he praised the Athenians for philosophising without unmanliness (philosophein aneu malakias). In this sense, Blake is as much a philosopher as Fichte, Henry Adams more of a philosopher than Frege. No one would be dubious about philosophy, taken in this sense. But the word can also denote something more specialised, and very dubious indeed. In this second sense, it can mean following Platos and Kants lead, asking questions about the nature of certain normative notions (e.g., truth, rationality, goodness) in the hope of better obeying such norms. The idea is to believe more truths or do more good or be more rational by knowing more about Truth or Goodness or Rationality. I shall capitalise the term philosophy when used in this second sense, in order to help make the point that Philosophy, Truth, Goodness, and Rationality are interlocked Platonic notions. Pragmatists are saying that the best hope for philosophy is not to practise Philosophy. They think it will not help to say something true to think about Truth, nor will it help to act well to think about Goodness, nor will it help to be rational to think about Rationality.
Pragmatism questions the individual Rorty, philosopher, 82 *Richard, 1982, Consequences of Pragmatism
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/rorty.htm 7/5/13 EYS] So far, however, my description of pragmatism has left an important distinction out of account. Within Philosophy, there has been a traditional difference of opinion about the Nature of Truth, a battle between (as Plato put it) the gods and the giants. On the one hand there have been Philosophers like Plato himself who were otherworldly, possessed of a larger hope. They urged that human beings were entitled to self-respect only because they had one foot beyond space and time. On the other hand especially since Galileo showed how spatio-temporal events could be brought under the sort of elegant mathematical law which Plato suspected might hold only for another world there have been philosophers (e.g., Hobbes, Marx) who insisted that space and time make up the only Reality there is, and that Truth is Correspondence to that Reality. In the nineteenth century, this opposition crystallised into one between the transcendental philosophy and the empirical philosophy, between the Platonists and the positivists. Such terms were, even then, hopelessly vague, but every intellectual knew roughly where he stood in relation to the two movements. To be on the transcendental side was to think that natural science was not the last word that there was more Truth to be found. To be on the empirical side was to think that natural science facts about how spatio-temporal things worked was all the Truth there was. To side with Hegel or Green was to think that some normative sentences about rationality and goodness corresponded to something real, but invisible to natural science. To side with Comte or Mach was to think that such sentences either reduced to sentences about spatiotemporal events or were not subjects for serious reflection. It is important to realise that the empirical philosophers the positivists were still doing Philosophy. The Platonic presupposition which unites the gods and the giants, Plato with Democritus, Kant with Mill, Husserl with Russell, is that what the vulgar call truth the assemblage of true statements should be thought of as divided into a lower and an upper division, the division between (in Platos terms) mere opinion and genuine knowledge. It is the work of the Philosopher to establish an invidious distinction between such statements as It rained yesterday and Men should try to be just in their dealings. For Plato the former sort of statement was second-rate, mere pistis or doxa. The latter, if perhaps not yet episteme, was at least a plausible candidate. For the positivist tradition which runs from Hobbes to
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 86 Brovero/Lundeen Framework Carnap, the former sentence was a paradigm of what Truth looked like, but the latter was either a prediction about the causal effects of certain events or an expression of emotion. What the transcendental philosophers saw as the spiritual, the empirical philosophers saw as the emotional. What the empirical philosophers saw as the achievements of natural science in discovering the nature of Reality, the transcendental philosophers saw as banausic, as true but irrelevant to Truth. Pragmatism cuts across this transcendental/empirical distinction by questioning the common presupposition that there is an invidious distinction to be drawn between kinds of truths. For the pragmatist, true sentences are not true because they correspond to reality, and so there is no need to worry what sort of reality, if any, a given sentence corresponds to no need to worry about what makes it true. (Just as there is no need to worry, once one has determined what one should do, whether there is something in Reality which makes that act the Right one to perform.) So the pragmatist sees no need to worry about whether Plato or Kant was right in thinking that something non-spatiotemporal made moral judgments true, nor about whether the absence of such a thing means that such judgments are is merely expressions of emotion or merely conventional or merely subjective. This insouciance brings down the scorn of both kinds of Philosophers upon the pragmatist. The Platonist sees the pragmatist as merely a fuzzy-minded sort of positivist. The positivist sees him as lending aid and comfort to Platonism by leveling down the distinction between Objective Truth the sort of true sentence attained by the scientific method and sentences which lack the precious correspondence to reality which only that method can induce. Both join in thinking the pragmatist is not really a philosopher, on the ground that he is not a Philosopher. The pragmatist tries to defend himself by saying that one can be a philosopher precisely by being anti-Philosophical, that the best way to make things hang together is to step back from the issues between Platonists and positivists, and thereby give up the presuppositions of Philosophy. One difficulty the pragmatist has in making his position clear, therefore, is that he must struggle with the positivist for the position of radical anti-Platonist. He wants to attack Plato with different weapons from those of the positivist, but at first glance he looks like just another variety of positivist. He shares with the positivist the Baconian and Hobbesian notion that knowledge is power, a tool for coping with reality. But he carries this Baconian point through to its extreme, as the positivist does not. He drops the notion of truth as correspondence with reality altogether, and says that modern science does not enable us to cope because it corresponds, it just plain enables us to cope. His argument for the view is that several hundred years of effort have failed to make interesting sense of the notion of correspondence (either of thoughts to things or of words to things). The pragmatist takes the moral of this discouraging history to be that true sentences work because they correspond to the way things are is no more illuminating than it is right because it fulfils the Moral Law. Both remarks, in the pragmatists eyes, are empt y metaphysical compliments harmless as rhetorical pats on the back to the successful inquirer or agent, but troublesome if taken seriously and clarified philosophically. It is the impossible attempt to step outside our skins the traditions, linguistic and other, within which we do our thinking and self-criticism and compare ourselves with something absolute. This Platonic urge to escape from the finitude of ones time and place, the merely conventional and contingent aspects of ones life, is responsible for the original Platonic distinction between two kinds of true sentence. By attacking this latter distinction, the holistic pragmaticising strain in analytic philosophy has helped us see how the metaphysical urge common to fuzzy Whiteheadians and razorsharp scientific realists works. It has helped us be sceptical about the idea that some particular science (say physics) or some particular literary genre (say Romantic poetry, or transcendental philosophy) gives us that species of true sentence which is not just a true sentence, but rather a piece of Truth itself. Such sentences may be very useful indeed, but there is not going to be a Philosophical
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 87 Brovero/Lundeen Framework explanation of this utility. That explanation, like the original justification of the assertion of the sentence, will be a parochial matter a comparison of the sentence with alternative sentences formulated in the same or in other vocabularies. But such comparisons are the business of, for example, the physicist or the poet, or perhaps of the philosopher not of the Philosopher, the outside expert on the utility, or function, or metaphysical status of Language or of Thought.
Only pragmatic philosophy can evade the logical harms of the K and still take action against great atrocities Were not committed to their slippery slope link args Rorty, philosopher, 82 *Richard, 1982, Consequences of Pragmatism
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/rorty.htm 7/5/13 EYS] The most powerful reason for thinking that no such culture is possible is that seeing all criteria as no more than temporary resting-places, constructed by a community to facilitate its inquiries, seems morally humiliating. Suppose that Socrates was wrong, that we have not once seen the Truth, and so will not, intuitively, recognise it when we see it again. This means that when the secret police come, when the torturers violate the innocent, there is nothing to be said to them of the form There is something within you which you are betraying. Though you embody the practices of a totalitarian society which will endure forever, there is something beyond those practices which condemns you. This thought is hard to live with, as is Sartres remark: Tomorrow, after my death, certain people may decide to establish fascism, and the others may be cowardly or miserable enough to let them get away with it. At that moment, fascism will be the truth of man, and so much the worse for us. In reality, things will be as much as man has decided they are. This hard saying brings out what ties Dewey and Foucault, James and Nietzsche, together- the sense that there is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves, no criterion that we have not created in the course of creating a practice, no standard of rationality that is not an appeal to such a criterion, no rigorous argumentation that is not obedience to our own conventions. A post-philosophical culture, then, would be one in which men and women felt themselves alone, merely finite, with no links to something Beyond. On the pragmatists account, position was only a halfway stage in the development of such a culture-the progress toward, as Sartre puts it, doing without God. For positivism preserved a god in its notion of Science (and in its notion of scientific philosophy), the notion of a portion of culture where we touched something not ourselves, where we found Truth naked, relative to no description. The culture of positivism thus produced endless swings of the pendulum between the view that values are merely relative (or emotive, or subjective) and the view that bringing the scientific method to bear on questions of political and moral choice was the solution to all our problems. Pragmatism, by contrast, does not erect Science as an idol to fill the place once held by God. It views science as one genre of literature-or, put the other way around, literature and the arts as inquiries, on the same footing as scientific inquiries. Thus it sees ethics as neither more relative or subjective than scientific theory, nor as needing to be made scientific. Physics is a way of trying to cope with various bits of the universe; ethics is a matter of trying to cope with other bits. Mathematics helps physics do its job; literature and the arts help ethics do its. Some of these inquiries come up with propositions, some with narratives, some with paintings. The question of what propositions to assert, which pictures to look at, what narratives to listen to and comment on and retell, are all questions about what will help us get what we want (or about what we should want). No. The question of whether the pragmatist view of truth-that it is t a profitable topic-is itself true is thus a question about whether a post-Philosophical culture is a good thing to try for. It is not a question about what the word true means, nor about the requirements of an adequate philosophy of
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 88 Brovero/Lundeen Framework language, nor about whether the world exists independently of our minds, nor about whether the intuitions of our culture are captured in the pragmatists slogans. There is no way in which the issue between the pragmatist and his opponent can be tightened up and resolved according to criteria agreed to by both sides. This is one of those issues which puts everything up for grabs at once -where there is no point in trying to find agreement about the data or about what would count as deciding the question. But the messiness of the issue is not a reason for setting it aside. The issue between religion and secularism was no less messy, but it was important that it got decided as it did. If the account of the contemporary philosophical scene which I offer in these essays is correct, then the issue about the truth of pragmatism is the issue which all the most important cultural developments since Hegel have conspired to put before us. But, like its predecessor, it is not going to be resolved by any sudden new discovery of how things really are. It will be decided, if history allows us the leisure to decide such issues, only by a slow and painful choice between alternative self-images.
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 91 Brovero/Lundeen Framework opportunity arises, we shall miss it for lack of preparedness and lose out to the opponents of reform, to those who want to preserve the status quo.
Critiques Good
Note: this should just supplement what specific evidence you have about your aff.
Definitions
Resolved
Resolved doesnt mean to enact laws, the definition is to prompt an action to change the state of mind, which is what the aff does Oxford English Dictionary 10 (Oxford English Dictionary, premier English dictionary, March 10th,
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/163734?redirectedFrom=Resolved&, accessed July 5, 2013, QDKM) Resolved, adj. 1. a. Of the mind, etc.: freed from doubt or uncertainty; settled. Obs. b. Of a person: convinced, satisfied, or certain of something. Obs. c. Of doctrine: adopted or accepted after careful deliberation. Obs. 2. a. Of a person: that has resolved to do something; having a fixed intention; determined, decided. Usually followed by an expression (prepositional phrase, that-clause, or to and infinitive) indicating the intended action, outcome, etc. b. Of an action, state of mind, etc.: fully determined upon, deliberate. c. Of a person: staunch, dedicated; committed, confirmed; that is thoroughly committed to the specified or implied course of action, practice, religious belief, doctrine, etc. 3. Of a person, the mind, etc.: characterized by determination or firmness of purpose; resolute.
Should
Should denotes obligation Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary, 2
Merriam-Websters Inc., Tenth Ed., http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary Used in auxiliary function to express obligation, propriety, or expediency
Debate should be focused on questions of ethical obligations Duffy, Communication Professor Cal Poly, 83
[Bernard,
Rhetoric PhD Pitt, The Ethics of Argumentation in Intercollegiate Debate: A Conservative Appraisal, National Forensics Journal, Spring, pp 65-71, accessed at http://www.nationalforensics.org/journal/vol1no1-6.pdf] Debate at its worst is an activity which promotes self abnegation rather than self discovery. Intercollegiate debate ought to educate students in more than structure, credibility, and logical reasoning. It should teach them the effective use of arguments from definition as well as arguments from consequence, circumstance and authority. Definitional arguments, better than others, orient students toward their own beliefs and principles. Logic, fact, and authority wither without ethics, and debate without ethical judgments sounds hollow and contrived. I am not proposing that debaters only make arguments they believe in. Students also learn from articulating the principles which underlie positions they oppose. To ignore principle as a line of argument and focus instead on mere fact and authority makes debate less effective as a method of exploring one's own preferences and values. It might be argued that debate is not dialectic, and that my criticisms require debate to be something we cannot make it. After all the sophists, not Plato, gave birth to debate. Protagoras saw it as a lesson in sophistic relativism. If one believes in the relativism of the sophists, it would be absurd for debaters to search after principles upon which to base their arguments. Of what use, one might ask. are the eloquently expressed propositions of a bygone era to a scientific age winch bases decisions on calculable fact? For today's neosophists it would be foolish indeed to think of debate as a philosophical or ethical enterprise. But in this case, why talk about the ethics of debate at all? If the term only means observing the rules of the game, it is not particularly significant. Debate should be a thoroughly ethical enterprise. It should educate students in ethics, as well as requiring them to follow the rules. Ultimately, it comes down to a matter of choice. Should we as coaches and judges permit the steady dismantling of debate as a means of educating students? Ought we to praise students for making sensationalistic arguments, and for relying on appeals to authority, while ignoring arguments from principle? Should we give ballots to speakers who are the most adept at parroting back the commonplaces they have learned and to those who can read evidence with the greatest speed and the least visible understanding? Should we encourage debate as a contest of evidence rather than as a meeting of minds? No matter how much lip service is given to the educational values of intercollegiate debate, it cannot now be claimed as an activity which forces students to reflect upon or use their ethical beliefs in the formulation of arguments.
Answers To
A2: Limits
Innovation is a prerequisite to change limits on a topic restrict the ability to create new solutions and theories Bleiker, professor of International Relations, and Leet, Senior Research Officer with the Brisbane Institute 6 (Roland, and Martin, From the Sublime to the Subliminal: Fear, Awe and
Wonder in International Politics Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 34(3), pg. 733 igm) A subliminal orientation is attentive to what is bubbling along under the surface. It is mindful of how conscious attempts to understand conceal more than they reveal, and purposeful efforts of progressive change may engender more violence than they erase. For these reasons, Connolly emphasises that ethical artistry has an element of navet and innocence. One is not quite sure what one is doing. Such navet need not lead us back to the idealism of the romantic period. One should not be nave about navet, Simon Critchley would say.56 Rather, the challenge of change is an experiment. It is not locked up in a predetermined conception of where one is going. It involves tentatively exploring the limits of ones being in the world, to see if different interpretations are possible, how those interpretations might impact upon the affects below the level of conscious thought, and vice versa. This approach entails drawing upon multiple levels of thinking and being, searching for changes in sensibilities that could give more weight to minor feelings or to arguments that were previously ignored.57 Wonder needs to be at the heart of such experiments, in contrast to the resentment of an intellect angry with its own limitations. The ingredient of wonder is necessary to disrupt and suspend the normal pressures of returning to conscious habit and control. This exploration beyond the conscious implies the need for an ethos of theorising and acting that is quite different from the mode directed towards the cognitive justification of ideas and concepts. Stephen White talks about circuits of reflection, affect and argumentation.58 Ideas and principles provide an orientation to practice, the implications of that practice feed back into our affective outlook, and processes of argumentation introduce other ideas and affects. The shift, here, is from the vertical search for foundations in skyhooks above or foundations below, to a horizontal movement into the unknown.
Limits constrain possible solutions politics is best informed by different levels of analysis Bleiker, professor of International Relations, 3 (Roland, Discourse and Human Agency,
Contemopary Political Theory, 2003, 2, Palgrave Macmillan Ltd, pg. 39-40 igm) Approaching the political - and by extension dilemmas of agency requires tolerance towards various forms of insight and levels of analysis, even if they contradict each others internal logic. Such differences often only appear as contradictions because we still strive for a universal standard of reference that is supposed to subsume all the various aspects of life under a single totalizing standpoint (Adorno, 1992, 1718). Every process of revealing is at the same time a process of concealing. Even the most convincing position cannot provide a form of insight that does not at the same time conceal other perspectives. Revealing always occurs within a frame. Framing is a way of ordering, and ordering banishes all other forms of revealing. This is, grossly simplified, a position that resonates throughout much of Heideggers work (1954, 35). Taking this argument to heart is to recognize that one cannot rely on one form of revealing alone. An adequate understanding of human agency can be reached only by moving back and forth between various insights. The point, then, is not
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 99 Brovero/Lundeen Framework to end up with a grand synthesis, but to make most out of each specific form of revealing (for an exploration of this theme, via an analysis of Kants Critique of Judgement, see Deleu e, 1994).
A2: Predictability
Their cards are not about contest debate, but about dialogic processes of deliberation - Debate is distinct from deliberative dialogue Anderson, Professor of Philosophy Babson College, 98
(Albert A., , Why Dialogue?, http://www.wordtrade.com/philosophy/ancient/whydialogue.htm) Dialogue is not debate. Debate differs from discussion in that the verbal exchange usually has a limited number of positions stipulated at the outset (such as affirmative vs. negative, liberal vs. conservative, or plaintiff vs. defendant), each competing with the others with the clear goal of winning the contest. Debate is a zerosum game. If one side wins, the other side must lose. The goal in a debate is to win the verbal contest by persuading others, often without concern for the truth of the matter. It differs from discussion in its singleminded purpose of proving a preestablished position in order to win; to change positions in a debate is to lose the contest. The adversarial method frequently employed by lawyers is one familiar form of debate. Although it is not necessary for
the legal process to employ this method, when money and power are at stake it is not surprising that a win/lose strategy takes over. The most important difference between dialogue and these other forms of oral exchange is its primary dedication to what is common or universal. Conversation often depends on the tastes and inclinations of the participants without an agenda or clear objective. Discussion and debate, by contrast, are dedicated to presenting and defending a specific position or point of view, usually determined by the context or the group being represented. Unlike
these other forms of verbal activity, dialogue makes no prior judgment about the outcome of the process. It is serious inquiry that seeks to understand the nature and activity of whatever subject matter is being considered. It searches for truth rather than taking it as given at the outset of the inquiry. Participants in a dialogue are free to change their mind in the course of the exchange.
A2: Deliberation
Zero sum debate competition makes deliberation impossible Bartanen, Pacific Lutheran University and Frank, University of Oregon 99
(Michael D. Bartanen and David A. Frank, Reclaiming a Heritage: A Proposal for Rhetorically Grounded Academic Debate, Journal of the National Parliamentary Debate Association, vol 6, #1, p.39-40, http://www.parlidebate.org/pdf/vol5no5.pdf) Unfortunately, without compensating for the zero-sum game element of competitive debate, even parliamentary debate cannot fulfill its potential in encouraging greater civility in the debate process. Any form of debate works best when arguers interact with their opponents in a context where "risk taking" occurs. The importance of taking the risk of "being proved wrong." is a vital characteristic of debate introduced by Wayne Brockriede.25 Debate is just a game when arguers are encouraged to defend their own arguments without reference to adapting to the views of others. The structure of both policy and parliamentary debates heavily relies on gaming as an organizing principle.26 The zero sum outcome of the debate round, where one team wins and the other loses, destroys any incentive to seek common ground or modify any pre-conceived position. Further, the zero sum outcome encourages debaters to overstate the strength of their own position and denigrate the status of their opponent's views. Debaters onlv re-examine their own views if those arguments are competitively unsuccessful, rather than if an opponent has raised substantive flaws in the argument.
Contest debate only produces bad deliberation Bartanen, Pacific Lutheran University and Frank, University of Oregon 99
(Michael D. Bartanen Pacific Lutheran University and David A. Frank University of Oregon, Reclaiming a Heritage: A Proposal for Rhetorically Grounded Academic Debate, Journal of the National Parliamentary Debate Association, vol 6, #1, p.40, http://www.parlidebate.org/pdf/vol5no5.pdf) Both policy and parliamentary debate fail to promote habits of effective argument analysis and research. Trapp is right that policy debate discourages careful testing of the inferences between evidence and claims. In addition, policy debate, by emphasizing the use of expert testimony evidence and discouraging debate about the traditional stock issues, effectively narrows the range of viewpoints that can be considered. There is a third tendency in policy debate for arguers to develop positions which mirror those of many other teams. Some of these positions have an almost notorious reputation (e.g. "Nuke War Disad") for accentuating the tendency in policy debate to prefer "low risk / high impact" positions rather than ones which effectively test the causal relationships between a proposed policy change and its potential disadvantages.
Hanghoj conceives of debate that is detached side switching as distinct from deliberative forums - no internal link to their deliberation impacts Hanghoj, PhD Candidate Institute of Literature, Media and Cultural Studies University of Southern Denmark, 8
(Thorkild, PLAYFUL KNOWLEDGE: An Explorative Study of Educational Gaming, PhD Dissertation Institute of Literature, Media and Cultural Studies University of Southern Denmark, http://static.sdu.dk/mediafiles/Files/Information_til/Studerende_ved_SDU/Din_uddannelse/phd_hum/ afhandlinger/2009/ThorkilHanghoej.pdf) This gradual process of shifting from a pragmatic design perspective toward a more analytically oriented perspective on the social actors in the game encounters implied a reconceptualisation of my study. For example, having observed how the game scenario was enacted and validated by the teachers and students, I decided to modify my initial assumptions about creating a "realistic" game and focus more on the relevance of the design elements. Furthermore, the end-of-game discussions and post-game interviews resulted in a significantly high degree of responses about the students' debate practices especially in relation to the students that performed as politicians. This focus was consistent with my own observations and the analytical themes that emerged when transcribing and coding the video data from the game session. Moreover, some of the social studies teachers in this study were slightly
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 103 Brovero/Lundeen Framework negative toward the label "role-playing" as it had obvious drama pedagogical connotations. Based on these findings, I decided to reconceptualise the game label from a realistic role-playing game to a debate game. During the process of relabelling the game, I learned that debate games and debate education are fairly well-known phenomena in the English speaking world and have a long history that can be traced back to ancient Greece, where Protagoras and other Sophists taught and debated on the premise that there are always "many sides" to any subject (Billig, 1996: Snider & Schnurer, 2006). At the same time, the formalised and staged aspects of debate games represent a relatively unknown phenomenon in the German-Nordic countries, which have a stronger tradition for more deliberative models of democratic debate (cf. Habermas, 1981). Hopefully, English speaking readers will bear such difference between various national debate cultures in mind when reading this thesis.
Freeley & Steinberg include creative topicality defenses within the bounds of answers to the resolutional question that create clash Freeley, Late, John Carroll University & Steinberg, University of Miami 8
(Austin j. Freeley, Late, John Carroll University and David L Steinberg, University of Miami, Argumentation and Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making, p.45) Although we now have a general subject, we have not yet stated a problem. It is still too broad, too loosely worded to promote well-organized argument. What sort of writing are we concerned with poems, novels, government documents, website development, advertising, or what? What does "effectiveness" mean in this context? What kind of physical force is being comparedfists, dueling swords, bazookas, nuclear weapons, or what? A more specific question might be, "Would a mutual defense treaty or a visit by our fleet be more effective in assuring Laurania of our support in a certain crisis?" The basis for argument could be phrased in a debate proposition such as "Resolved: That the United States should enter into a mutual defense treaty with Laurania." Negative advocates might oppose this proposition by arguing that fleet maneuvers would be a better solution. This is not to say that debates should completely avoid creative interpretation of the controversy by advocates, or that good debates cannot occur over competing interpretations of the controversy; in fact, these
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 105 Brovero/Lundeen Framework sorts of debates may be very engaging. The point is that debate is best facilitated by the guidance provided by focus on a particular point of difference, which will be outlined in the following discussion.
They agree alternative forms of debate are still debate Freeley, Late, John Carroll University & Steinberg, University of Miami 8
(Austin j. Freeley, Late, John Carroll University and David L Steinberg, University of Miami, Argumentation and Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making, p.232-3) As has been discussed earlier in this book (Chapters 2, 4, and 6), one thing intrinsic to debate is selfexamination and change. Although what you have read thus far in this chapter will provide a sound traditional framework for policy and value debate, the traditions are slowly evolving. An unbounded creativity in practice has evolved, with new conceptions of fiat as the reflexive authority of those participating in the debate round itself, and with critical examination of the battle to give rhetorical space to marginalized voices and open the debate experience to more viewpoints, standpoints, and cultures. Debate approaches may disregard the traditional frameworks in favor of storytelling, hiphop, music and film, poetry, and other novel challenges to the conventional approaches. In more subtle structures, debaters can build their comparative advantage cases with philosophical foundations. More radical challenges to tradition may offer argumentation (sometimes in aesthetic forms) to defend the resolution and/or to challenge the framework of policy debate. Critical approaches focus on philosophical and value-based interpretations of propositional terms, and performance-based approaches find clash in music, visual communication, role playing, and other creative forms of self expression. Elizabeth Jones of Louisville University presented the following rap as a part of her affirmative case in favor of U.S. withdrawal from NATO: Roma people feel just like me, tired of being deprived of their liberty. Relegated to ghettos, held as slaves, poor health care leading to early graves. Prison scars, from prison bars, walking round the prison yard. No running water, no heat, no jobs, and everything you've seemed to love, you've lost. While the rich get richer, who's paying the cost? George Soros, Bill Clinton, to Dick Cheney, the so-called bearers of democracy. NATO represents the military wing, of the all-powerful capitalist regime. While you think gangsters listen to rap and sag, They really wear suits and carry leather bags. Politicians with the power to pick, define, and choose who will win and who will lose. Not hearing the Roma or Palestine, I guess it depends how genocide is defined. SOURCE: USED BY PERMISSION OF ELIZABETH JONES.
Contest debating rewards strategic behavior and domination via attempts to win that make it impossible to use as a space for deliberative democracy Lovbrand, Assistant Professor Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research Linkoping University and Khan, Assistant Professor Environmental and Energy Systems Studies, Lund University 10
(Eva Lovbrand, and Jamil Khan, The deliberative turn in green political theory, Environmental Politics and Deliberative Democracy: Examining the Promise of New Modes of Governance, Ed. Backstrand) Deliberative democracy can consequently be understood as an expression of the Enlightenment devotion to reason as an arbiter of disagreement (Baber and Bartlett, 2005. p. 231). Largely under the influence of Jurgen Habermas, the theory defends a communicative account of rationality based on free discussion, sound argument and reliable evidence. In contrast to instrumental forms of rationality (for example administrative or economic), which according to Habermas (1971) colonize the life-world and repress individual freedom and creativity, communicative (or deliberative) rationality has been described as a form of social interaction that emancipates the individual from myth, illusion and manipulation (Dryzek, 1990). At the core of the theory are a number of procedural criteria that boil down to two fundamental conditions; inclu-siveness and unconstrained dialogue (Smith. 2003. p. 56). lnclusiveness requires that all citizens are allowed to participate in public discourse and have equal rights to advance claims and arguments. The discourse is in turn unconstrained when the only authority is that of a good argument (Dryzek, 1990, p. 15). Hence, communicative rationality requires that social interaction is free from domination, manipulation and strategic behaviour.
Their climate policy change impacts assume applied debate, not academic debate Freeley, Late Communications Professor, John Carroll University & Steinberg, Comm Professor University of Miami, 8
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 109 Brovero/Lundeen Framework (Austin j. Freeley, and David L Steinberg, Argumentation and Debate: Critical Thinking for Reasoned Decision Making, p.19) Debate can be classified into two broad categories: applied and educational. Applied debate is conducted on propositions, questions, and topics in which the advocates have a special interest, and the debate is presented before a judge or an audience with the power to render a binding decision on the proposition or respond to the question or topic in a real way. Academic debate is conducted on propositions in which the advocates have an academic interest, and the debate typically is presented before a teacher, judge or audience without direct power to render a decision on the proposition. Of course the audience in an academic debate does form opinions about the subject matter of the debate, and that personal transformation may ultimately lead to meaningful action. However, the direct impact of the audience decision in an academic debate is personal, and the decision made by the judge is limited to identification of the winner of the debate. In fact, in academic debate the judge may be advised to disregard the merits of the proposition and to render her win/loss decision only on the merits of the support as presented in the debate itself. The most important identifying characteristic of an academic debate is that the purpose of the debate is to provide educational opportunities for the participants.
Deliberation waters down environmental policy to lowest common denominator Lehtonen, Research Fellow Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex, 6
(Markku, Sussex Energy Group. Science and Technology Policy Research, The Freeman Centre, University of Sussex, Deliberative Democracy, Participation, and OECD Peer Reviews of Environmental Policies, American Journal of Evaluation; 27; 185) Another problem with the OECD's approach from the perspective of true deliberation is that the "soft" advocacy for policy integration and "win-win" rhetoric that underpin EPRs may win the support of the more powerful sectors only at the cost of excessively "diluting" the message of sustainable development. This might lead to the search for consensus around the lowest common denominator, largely dictated by the more powerful "economist community" within the OECD by transforming sustainable development into simply an issue of efficient environmental policies. This could imply that environmental (or social) concerns should be taken into account, but only as long as they do not harm economic development. One possibility of avoiding such risks would be to abandon the requirement that, for instance, all public documents produced by the different units of the organization should be in strict coherence with one another. In concrete terms, instead of attempting to harmonize the views across the different OECD peer reviews, destined to represent an "OECD view on sustainable development," it might be more fruitful to allow each one to defend its own perspective, even if this would lead to contradictory conclusions across the reviews. Of course, this would require that any peer review would clearly make explicit its underlying basic premises. Such an approach would be more in line with the ideas of plurality of values, uncertainty, and complexity and recognize the often irreconcilable differences between the descriptions of reality from different disciplinary and methodological perspectives (see, e.g.. Norgaard. 1994).
A2: Switch-Side
Switch side doesnt solve it misunderstands the purpose of debate Greene, University of Minnesota professor of Communication, and Hicks, University of Denver Associate Professor of communication, 5 (Ronald Walter, Darrin, Lost Convictions:
Debating Both Sides and the Ethical Self Fashioning of Liberal Subjects http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=ronaldwaltergreene, pg. 105 date accessed 7/10/13 igm) The description of debate as a dialectical method did not mean that the proponents of switch-side debating rejected the importance of conviction for public argument. They did, however, claim that sound conviction, as opposed to dogmatism, was a product of debate, not its prerequisite. Baird (1955), arguing that debate should be understood less as public advocacy and more as a dialectical method of inquiry, claimed that sound conviction was a product of a rigorous analysis of all aspects of a question and that this analysis was best conducted through a method which had students practice defending and rejecting the major arguments on both sides. Thus, debating both sides should be understood as an educational procedure designed to generate sound convictions prior to public advocacy. Baird urged that the critics of switch-side debating should understand the practice as a pedagogical device and to judge it accordingly. These student exercises, he told debaters and their coaches, are to be sharply distinguished from the later practical life situations in which you are preachers, lawyers, business men and women, politicians and community LOST CONVICTIONS 105leaders. Debate and discussion training is essentially training in reflective thinking, in the defence of different sides (role playing as some call it), and in the revelation of strength and weakness of each position (p. 6). It was Bairds recognition that debating both sides was equivalent to role-playing that warranted re-thinking the fit between the speaker and the words spoken. Furthermore, if a debater did in fact appear to be shallow, insincere and prone to manipulate public opinion for her or his own ends, this was certainly not, argued Wayne Thompson (1944) and Nicholas Cripe, the fault of switch-side debating, but the result of other causes / weakness in the character of the offender or a misunderstanding of the proper functioning of debate (Thompson 1944, p. 296). The proper way to deal with any ethical shortcomings in debaters, the proponents argued, was for the national forensics associations to develop a code of ethics that would stress the ethical responsibility of intercollegiate debaters (to present the best possible case according to facts as the debater understood them) and to forcefully condemn individual acts of malfeasance such as misconstruing evidence, falsifying sources, and misrepresenting their opponents positions. For Robert Newman (1963), the controversy over debating both sides was simple to resolve: as long as a good case could be made on each side of the resolution and individual debaters did not lie or cheat, there simply was no ethical dilemma and certainly no need for a disciplinary-based ethic to guide debate practice. Finally, debate coaches justified switch-side debate on the pragmatic grounds that it was a necessary component of tournament debating and that abandoning the practice would mean the end of intercollegiate debating. In fact, if the proponents of ethical debate are correct, Cripe warned, and it is immoral for a team to debate both sides, then many schools would have to discontinue debate as we practice today (1957, p. 209).
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 113 Brovero/Lundeen Framework five years; minority participation remains exceptionally low at the two major national policy debate tournaments, the Cross Examination Debate Association championship and the National Debate Tournament (Hill, 1997; Stepp, 1997)
Latin American critical discussion is key to depth on the topic Desmond, University of Iowa American studies, and Domnguez, director of the Iowa Center for International and Comparative Studies 96 (Jane C., Virginia R., Resituating
American Studies in a Critical Internationalism http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_quarterly/v048/48.3desmond.html, American Quarterly 48.3 (1996) 475-490, date accessed 7/10/13 igm) This call is not just for an internationalization of views, a way of giving voice to foreign scholars who rarely get read or heard by U.S. humanities specialists, but for the activation of institutional and intellectual grounds for the generation of a new kind of scholarship about the United States. It is important to note the limits of current foreign humanities scholarship on the United States. Most of it now falls into three categories: immigrant topics, U.S. influence, or comparative analogies. The first body of work investigates immigration from the home community to the United States and the historical influence or contemporary lives of such populations. This kind of work is especially popular in Europe. In Spain, for example, scholarship often concerns Spanish colonial possessions in what is now the United States, or the contemporary Spanish speaking population in the United States. 27 Scholars also investigate the effects of U.S. foreign policy or U.S. commodities on their home country . For example, the fall 1991 issue of the Tamkang Journal of American Studies in Taipei, Taiwan, featured articles on
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 117 Brovero/Lundeen Framework "China and the Far East in the Vision of William H. Seward" and "The U.S. Role in the Post-World War II Struggle Between the Nationalists and the Communists." Currently, a great deal of foreign scholarship on the U.S. focuses on drawing analogies between the foreign scholar's country and that of the U.S., yielding papers such as "The Comparative Discourse between the American West and the Argentine Pampas," presented by Hugo Gaggioti at the 1994 U.S. ASA conference. At an institutional level, work done abroad often means retaining frameworks of U.S. criticism. For example, in 1994 the American Studies Association of southern Africa issued a call for symposium papers with "a comparative and interdisciplinary focus on a wide variety of American and southern African [End Page 484] experiences," including "accommodating diversity," "multiculturalism," and "political correctness."
Latin American literature has been largely ignored inclusion in the debate sphere would allow for the paradigm of inclusion of Latin American studies Moreiras, Texas A&M University Hispanic studies professor, 1
(Alberto, 2001, The Exhaustion of Difference, pg. 4-5, JZ) Taylors notion could curiously constitute a basis for the rigorous metacritical defense both of the literary-critical apparatus and of cultural studies, especially in reference to the theoretical analysis of the symbolic production of peripheral and semiperipheral societies in the world-system.4 The Latin American literary tradition is almost exhaustively definable as the quasi-systematic exploration of the specificity of the Latin American alternative modernity from what today are outdated concepts of identity and difference. Latin Americanist tradition never really subscribed other than marginally to acultural theories of modernity. All the great figures of the tradition, from Francisco Javier Clavijero, Andrs Bello, Domingo Sarmiento, and Jos Mart to Angel Rama, or Antonio Cornejo Polar through Alfonso Reyes, Pedro Henrquez Urea, Antonio Candido, Emir Rodrguez Monegal, and Roberto Fernndez Retamar, were culturalists in Taylors sense. But the master concepts of identity and difference keep finding a new if precarious life in the new space of cultural studies . It could be said that a large part of the work of Latin American cultural studies is nothing but an engaged reproduction and transplantation of the old historiographic categories to new texts: the literary referent is often rather mechanically substituted with alternative referents, but the questions remaina bit farcically the same. It is trueit has the truth of tautologythat something is gained when criteria for inclusion are expanded and it becomes possible for a literary scholar to read the cinematographic text, or the text of the new social movements, in a situation where it had not previously been allowed to move beyond the essay, the novel, or the poem. In this cultural studies does return to the philological spring, since philology wanted to explore cultural specificity through an ample repertoire of discursive traces. And it is also tautologically true that something is lost when those who read such textsthe preservers do it on the limiting basis of a certain weakening of their technical capacity. Their reading capacity is in principle weakened because readers educated in an exhaustive attention to the literary cannot simply transfer their attention to the nonliterary and expect to produce results of a similar strength. But there is no reason to think that the history of reading is ecstatic and that adequate tools for the kind of reading that is pertinent to the widening of textual space will not be developed soon. It is, however, truer, and more interesting, and not tautological, to conclude that if the simple considerations above are more or less accurate, then cultural studies today, from a literary perspective, is still far from having created a new paradigm for Latin Americanist reflection. Cultural studies, from the point of view of its reading practices, its master concepts, and its geopolitical inscription, is, to a certain
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 118 Brovero/Lundeen Framework extent, more of the same. The old and the new thus share a similar anachronismor a similar novelty.5
Epistemic structures reinforce unethical policies criticism is key to effective decisionmaking Owen, Reader in Political Theory at the University of Southampton, 2 (David, Millennium:
Journal of International Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3, http://mil.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/31/3/653, pg. 660 date accessed 7/10/13 igm) The point of these remarks is to call critically into question the background picture (or, to use another term of art, the horizon) against which the disciplinary discourse and practices of IR are conducted in order to make this background itself an object of reflection and evaluation. In a similar vein, Rob Walker argues: Under the present circumstances the question What is to be done? invites a degree of arrogance that is all too visible in the behaviour of the dominant political forces of our time. . . . The most pressing questions of the age call not only for concrete policy options to be offered to existing elites and institutions, but also, and more crucially, for a serious rethinking of the ways in which it is possible for human beings to live together.15 The aim of these comments is to draw to our attention the easily forgotten fact that our existing ways of picturing international politics emerge from, and in relation to, the very practices of international politics with which they are engaged and it is entirely plausible (on standard Humean
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 123 Brovero/Lundeen Framework grounds) that, under changing conditions of political activity, these ways of guiding reflection and action may lose their epistemic and/or ethical value such that a deeper interrogation of the terms of international politics is required. Whether or not one agrees with Walker that this is currently required, it is a perfectly reasonable issue to raise.
Epistemological debate is necessary to test policy Owen, Reader in Political Theory at the University of Southampton, 2 (David, Millennium:
Journal of International Studies, Vol. 31, No. 3, http://mil.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/31/3/653, pg. 663 date accessed 7/10/13 igm) The third dimension concerns the relationship between positivist IR theory and critical IR theory, where Whites distinction enables us to make sense of a related confusion, namely, the confusion between holding that forms of positivist IR theory (e.g., neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism) are necessarily either value-free or evaluative. It does so because we can now see that, although forms of positivist IR theory are not normative theories, they presuppose a background picture which orients our thinking through the framing of not only what can be intelligibly up for grabs as true-or-false (the epistemic framing) but also what can be intelligibly up for grabs as good-or-bad (the ethical framing). As Charles Taylor has argued, a condition of our intelligibility as agents is that we inhabit a moral framework which orients us in ethical space and our practices of epistemic theorising cannot be intelligibly conceived as existing independently of this orientation in thinking.21 The confusion in IR theory arises because, on the one hand, positivist IR theory typically suppresses acknowledgement of its own ethical presuppositions under the influence of the scientific model (e.g., Walt s neorealism and Keohanes neoliberal institutionalism), while, on the other hand, its (radical) critics typically view its ethical characteristics as indicating that there is an evaluative or normative theory hidden, as it were, within the folds of what presents itself as a value-free account. Consequently, both regard the other as, in some sense, producing ideological forms of knowledge; the positivists claim is that critical IR theory is ideological by virtue of its explicitly normative character, the critical theorists claim is that positivist IR theory is ideological by virtue of its failure to acknowledge and reflect on its own implicit normative commitments. But this mutual disdain is also a product of the confusion of pictures and theories. Firstly, there is a confusion between pictures and theories combined with the scientistic suppression of the ethical presuppositions of IR theory. This finds expression in the thought that we need to get our epistemic account of the world sorted out before we can engage responsibly in ethical judgement about what to do, where such epistemic adequacy requires the construction of a positive theory that can explain the features of the world at issue. An example of this position is provided by Walt s neorealism.22 Against this first position, we may reasonably point out that epistemic adequacy cannot be intelligibly specified independently of background ethical commitments concerning what matters to us and how it matters to us.
Ontology informs action determining the implications of a policy start with questions of ontology Cambell, Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, and Shapiro, Professor of Political Science at the University of Hawaii, 99 (David, Michael J., pg. 96,
Moral Spaces: Rethinking Ethics and World Politics University of Minnesota Press, igm) As Heidegger-himself an especially revealing figure of the deep and mutual implication of the philosophical and the political-never tired of pointing out, the relevance of ontology to all other kinds of thinking is fundamental and inescapable. For one cannot say anything about that is, without
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 125 Brovero/Lundeen Framework always already having made assumptions about the is as such. Any mode of thought, in short, always already carries an ontology sequestered within it. What this ontological turn does to other-regionalmodes of thought is to challenge the ontology within which they operate. The implications of that review reverberate through the entire mode of thought, demanding a reappraisal as fundamental as the reappraisal ontology has demanded of philosophy. With ontology at issue, the entire foundations or underpinnings of any mode of thought are rendered problematic. This applies as much to any modern discipline of thought as it does to the question of modernity as such, with the exception, it seems, of science, which, having long ago given up the ontological questioning of when it called itself natural philosophy, appears now, in its industrialized and corporatized form, to be invulnerable to ontological perturbation. With its foundations at issue, the very authority of a mode of thought and the ways in which it characterizes the critical issues of freedom and judgment (of what kind of universe human beings inhabit, how they inhabit it, and what counts as reliable knowledge for them in it) is also put in question. The very ways in which Nietzsche, Heidegger, and other continental philosophers challenged Western ontology, simultaneously, therefore reposed the fundamental and inescapable difficulty, or aporia, for human being of decision and judgment. In other words, whatever ontology you subscribe to, knowingly or unknowingly, as a human being you still have to act. Whether or not you know or acknowledge it, the ontology you subscribe to will construe the problem of action for you in one way rather than another. You may think ontology is some arcane question of philosophy, but Nietzsche and Heidegger showed that it intimately shapes not only a way of thinking, but a way of being, a form of life. Decision, a fortiori political decision, in short, is no mere technique. It is instead a way of being that bears an understanding of Being, and of the fundaments of the human way of being within it. This applies, indeed applies most, to those mock-innocent political slaves who claim only to be technocrats of decision making. While Certain continental thinkers like Blumenberg and Lowith, for example, were prompted to interrogate or challenge the moderns claim to being distinctively modern, and others such as Adorno questioned its enlightened credentials, philosophers like Derrida and Levinas pursued the metaphysical implications (or rather the implications for metaphysics) of the thinking initiated by Kierkegaard, as well as by Nietzsche and Heidegger. The violence of metaphysics, together with another way of thinking about the question of the ethical, emerged as the defining theme of their work. Other, notably Foucault, Deleuze, Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Bataille turned the thinking of Nietzsche and Heidegger into a novel kind of social and political critique of both the regimes and the effects of power that have come to distinguish late modern times; they concentrated, in detail, upon how the violence identified by these other thinkers manifested itself not only in the mundane practices of modern life, but also in those areas that claimed to be most free of it, especially the freedom and security of the subject as well as its allied will to truth and knowledge. Questioning the appeal to the secure selfgrounding common to both its epistemic structures and its political imagination, and in the course of reinterrogating both the political character of the modern and the modern character of the political, this problematization of modernity has begun to prompt an ontopolitcally driven reappraisal of modern political thought.
Critical discussion is crowded out by state focus kills education Biswas, Associate Professor of Politics, 7 (Shampa Empire and Global Public Intellectuals:
Reading Edward Said as International Relations Theorist Millennium - Journal of International Studies http://mil.sagepub.com/content/36/1/117.short, pg. 123, date accessed 7/10/13 igm) The space for a critical appraisal of the motivations and conduct of this war has been considerably diminished by the expertise-framed national debate wherein certain kinds of ethical questions irreducible to formulaic for or against and costs and benefits analysis can simply not be raised. In effect, what Said argues for, and IR scholars need to pay particular heed to, is an understanding of intellectual relevance that is larger and more worthwhile, that is about the posing of critical, historical, ethical and perhaps unanswerable questions rather than the offering of recipes and solutions, that is about politics (rather than techno-expertise) in the most fundamental and important senses of the vocation.21
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 129 Brovero/Lundeen Framework It is not surprising that the cult of expertise that is increasingly driving the study of global politics has occurred in conjunction with a larger depoliticisation of many facets of global politics, which since the 1980s has accompanied a more general prosperity-bred complacency about politics in the AngloEuropean world, particularly in the US. There are many examples of this. It is evident, for instance, in the understanding of globalisation as TINA market-driven rationality inevitable, inexorable and ultimately, as Thomas Friedmans many writings boldly proclaim, apolitical.22 If development was always the anti-politics machine that James Ferguson so brilliantly adumbrated more than a decade ago, it is now seen almost entirely as technocratic aid and/or charitable humanitarianism delivered via professionalised bureaucracies, whether they are IGOs or INGOs.23 From the more expansive environmental and feminist-inspired understandings of human security, understandings of global security are once again increasingly being reduced to (military) strategy and global democratisation to technical recipes for regime change and good governance. There should be little surprise in such a context that the war on terror has translated into a depoliticised response to a dehistoricised understanding of the roots of terror. For IR scholars, reclaiming politics is a task that will involve working against the grain of expertise-oriented professionalism in a world that increasingly understands its own workings in apolitical terms.
Well impact turn roleplaying - State focus denies agency neorealist frameworks eliminate the possibility of localized political changes Bleiker, professor of International Relations, 2k (Roland, Popular Dissent, Human Agency and
Global Politics pg. 9, Cambridge University Press, igm) Questions of agency have been discussed extensively in international theory, mostly in the context of the so-called structureagency debate. Although strongly wedded to a state-centric view, this debate nevertheless evokes a number of important conceptual issues that are relevant as well to an understanding of transversal dynamics. The roots of the structureagency debate can be traced back to a feeling of discontent about how traditional approaches to international theory have dealt with issues of agency. Sketched in an overly broad manner, the point of departure looked as follows: At one end of the spectrum were neorealists, who explain state identity and behaviour through a series of
Gonzaga Debate Institute 13 131 Brovero/Lundeen Framework structural restraints that are said to emanate from the anarchical nature of the international system. At the other end we find neoliberals, who accept the existence of anarchy but seek to understand the behaviour of states and other international actors in terms of their individual attributes and their ability to engage in cooperative bargaining. If pushed to their logical end-point, the two positions amount, respectively, to a structural determinism and an equally farfetched belief in the autonomy of rational actors. 24 The structureagency debate is located somewhere between these two poles. Neither structure nor agency receive analytical priority. Instead, the idea is to understand the interdependent and mutually constitutive relationship between them. The discussions that have evolved in the wake of this assumption are highly complex and cannot possibly be summarised here. 25 Some of the key premises, though, can be recognised by observing how the work of Anthony Giddens has shaped the structureagency debate in international relations. Giddens speaks of the 'duality of structure,' of structural properties that are constraining as well as enabling. They are both 'the medium and outcome of the contingently accomplished activities of situated actors'. 26 Expressed in other words, neither agents nor structures have the final word. Human actions are always embedded in and constrained by the structural context within which they form and evolve. But structures are not immutable either. A human being, Giddens stresses, will 'know a great deal about the conditions of reproduction of the society of which he or she is a member'. 27 The actions that emerge from this awareness then shape the processes through which social systems are structurally maintained and reproduced.