Truth, Comparison, and Justification in LD Debate
Eric Palmer
Lincoln-Douglas debate characteristically faces periodic and largely intractable identity crises. This is perhaps natural, given that LD is often defined merely in terms of its perceived opposition to its older sibling, Policy Debate. This sentiment finds its most obvious expression in the oft-lampooned mantra “this is LD not policy!” What is needed to give sense to this expression is an account of what exactly makes LD distinct from Policy, or any other form of debate, for that matter. This issue is, in my view, at the heart of recent disputes about the role of debate theory, “pre-standards” issues, skeptical argumentation, and perhaps critiques as well. To be sure, these disagreements are likely amplified by the factious (and thoroughly regrettable) culture which currently plagues national circuit debate, but perhaps one might hope that efforts towards furnishing an intellectual center for LD might help us regain our lost sense of unity otherwise.
These broader aspirations may be hopelessly naïve, but it is still, I think, worthwhile to consider the prospects of grounding LD in some fundamental picture of what counts as good or worthwhile debate. One such proposal is the “comparing worldviews” paradigm, most recently defended by Adam Nelson. The animating notion behind this position is that the burden of the affirmative is not to defend the resolution as true (and consequently, the burden of the negative is not to say that the resolution is false), but rather to argue that it would be good for people to use the resolution as a principle governing conduct. This idea is not unique to him: Michael Mangus developed a similar proposal roughly a year ago. My aim here is to state some potential problems for this view and to recommend a potential alternative.
The comparing worlds paradigm is distinguished by two basic elements. These are:
The supposition that debates should not concern whether or not the resolution is true or false, but whether or not people (or governments, depending on the wording of the topic) should act on the resolution. In other words, we should compare which world (affirmative or negative) we should want to live in.
A repudiation of standards debate in favor of the “direct comparison” of impacts.
It is worthwhile to note that these elements are logically independent of one another, that is, acceptance of one does not entail acceptance of the other, and vice versa. One might think that debates ought to concern whether or not we should act on the resolution without supposing that the best method of ascertaining what we should do follows from a “direct comparison” of the impacts of acting on the resolution or failing to do so, and one might likewise reject the value criterion model without supposing that resolutions are not truth-apt. My own view will involve a rejection of (A) coupled with a qualified acceptance of (B). I share the comparing worlds view’s rejection of standards debate, as it is currently conceived, but I think the notion of “direct comparison” of impacts is suspect.
To unpack the first claim, it is worthwhile to consider precisely what proposition the truth-testing and comparative paradigms commit the affirmative to defending. Mangus says that this claim requires that we debate about whether “[the resolution] would be a good maxim for people to follow”. To make sense of this idea, consider the resolution “It is just for the United States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations that pose a threat”. What the truth-tester thinks the affirmative’s basic position can be given as follows:
Truth-Testing: The sentence “It is just for the United States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations that pose a threat” is true.
For the comparative view, I suggest the following parallel analysis:
Comparing worlds: We ought to act as though the sentence “It is just for the United States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations that pose a threat” is true.
This analysis requires some further modifications. For one, the word “we” requires the specification of a referent for the thesis to have any significance. The operative “we” could be human beings or rational agents in general, or one might want to replace the expression altogether with the agent embedded in the resolution (in this case, the United States). I assume this problem can be rectified by considering particular topics. Topics which do not state an agent of action may be read in the broader, unrestricted sense (as applying to human beings or rational agents generally).
Now one might naturally ask why I have implied that the comparativist should hold that agents ought to act as though the resolution is true. There is a straightforward route to this conclusion. Mangus’s claim that the resolution should be affirmed if “it would be a good maxim to follow” may be interpreted as stating that the resolution should be affirmed if it would be good for us to believe. This is because of the action-guiding character of beliefs: when we accord with a principle in action, it is presumably because we believe that principle to be true. If I pull a drowning child from the water and say that I did so because I accept the principle “save innocent lives”, my action and my avowal of the principle guiding my actions are (at least in normal circumstances) to be explained by my belief that I should save innocent lives. Now, one functional characterization of what it is to have a belief runs as follows: an agent believes a proposition p only if that agent acts as though p is true. To see why this is so, consider the previous example: I am credited with believing the proposition one should save innocent lives because I act as though that proposition is true. I prevent kids from drowning, and I assert things like “one should save innocent lives”.
With this analysis on the table, we can state an objection to the view. Call this objection no difference. One of the touted benefits of the comparing worlds theory is that it allows us to undercut skeptical arguments about whether, say, objective moral norms exist. Even if there are no objective moral norms, it might be desirable for us to act as though there were, or so the reply goes. The problem is that the claim which the affirmative defends on the comparative view (“we ought to act as though the resolution is true”) is still false if there are no moral norms. The “ought” which occurs in the proposition expresses an objective, action-guiding requirement for rational agents (or whatever other agent is substituted). If there are no facts about what we ought to do, then the affirmative cannot show that we ought to act as though we believe some proposition to be true. In other words, the comparing worlds paradigm only pushes the problem back from the direct question of whether a certain principle governing how we ought to act is true, to the second-order question of whether it is true that we ought to act as though a certain principle is true.
At this point a defender of comparing worlds might reply: “sure, by winning a moral skepticism argument the negative might successfully undermine the affirmative’s reasons for thinking that we should act as though the resolution is true, but on our account, to negate requires showing that we should act as though the resolution is not true, so the negative has only succeeded in showing that there is no reason to affirm or negate.” The immediate problem with this reply is that it allows debaters, whether affirmative or negative, to immediately force a resolution of the round via presumption by winning a moral skepticism argument. The affirmative could do this by extending the negative answers to the affirmative case then answering the negative case with “the NC says we should not act as though the resolution is true, but there are no facts about what we should and should not do, so decide on presumption” and winning the skepticism arguments. This is a ridiculous outcome for the comparing worlds view.
The broader issue with this reply is that thus far, most of the defenders of the comparative view have said little about what negation actually is, according to their view. There are three ways of understanding negation if we take affirmation to constitute an endorsement of the proposition “we should act as though the resolution is true”, depending on what scope the negation operator takes with respect to that proposition:
It is not the case that (we should act as though the resolution is true).
We should not act as though the resolution is true.
We should act as though the resolution is not true.
Under (1), there is no way of making this reply to the no difference objection, since it is not the case that we should act in any particular way if there are no facts about what we should do. (2) permits the reply, but doesn’t give the result which most comparativists seem to want. For example, if the resolution is “It is just for the United States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations that pose a threat”, then the negation “we should not act as though ‘It is just for the United States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations that pose a threat’” could be true either because it is unjust for the US to act as the resolution prescribes, or because even though it is just for the US to act in that manner, there are good reasons to act contrary to justice in some circumstances. (3) likewise does not give the right result: it might be good for us to act as though the resolution were false because it is good to act contrary to justice sometimes, because the action prescribed is unjust, or because say, state action in particular is never just nor unjust, and as a result states should act on the basis of self-interest. In short, if the expected result is that the negative should defend that preventing acquisition would be unjust, on no reading does the comparativist thesis deliver.
I turn now to the issue of “direct comparison” of impacts. As I understand it, the idea works something like this: the affirmative says that acting as though the resolution is true leads to some good result x, the negative says that doing so would lead to some bad result y. The affirmative argues that x outweighs y. Now, this basic schema works well in Policy Debate, but this is because Policy generally presumes a form of utilitarianism (at least until this is challenged with some critical framework). One can say that extinction due to environmental collapse is worse than genocide, or vice versa, in utilitarian terms simply by comparing the expected utility of the two impacts. Expected utility is given by magnitude of effect multiplied by the probability of those effects occurring. Now, utilitarianism lets us state all impacts within the framework of expected utility because it supposes that all impacts are reducible to a common metric of evaluation in which all outcomes can be compared: outcomes are good if they cause more pleasure than pain, and outcomes are bad if they cause more pain than pleasure. If we do not assume that all values are commensurable, and that all values are measurable, then no such metric is readily available. Regardless, there is no reason why we ought to proceed in lockstep with our policy brethren and presume that utilitarianism is true, because as every debater knows by now, there are many good reasons to think that it may not be (at least in its crudest form).
Adam Nelson suggests what may be an alternate tack. He backs up his recommendation to switch to “direct comparison” of impacts with the claim that in our everyday lives, we often give weight to both deontological and utilitarian considerations. This may or may not be true. If it is true, then there are at least two explanations for that fact. It may be the case that in general, people do not have any form of systematic ethical theory in mind when they deliberate. If this is true, so much the worse for people in general, since this means that their decisions are motivated by disparate and incompatible justifications. There is no need for debate to cater to that fact. Alternately, it might turn out that there is an ethical theory which gives weight to both utilitarian and deontological considerations (such as Tim Scanlon’s Contractualism or Sam Scheffler’s hybrid theory) which can account for all of the average person’s seemingly disparate moral beliefs. If this explanation is right, then it seems like what is happening when one “directly compares” impacts is tacitly relying on an ethical theory, but without the aid of an explicit version of that account for the purposes of correcting errors in moral judgment. So it seems like Nelson’s alternative results either in adopting a fragmented picture of how to evaluate impacts, or an under-theorized version of something which could actually be made explicit as a standard.
My last objective is to sketch a possible alternative to both traditional truth-testing and comparing worldviews. For lack of a better name, call this the best justification paradigm. The animating idea behind this paradigm is the thought that the job of the affirmative is to justify accepting the resolution as true, while the job of the negative is to justify rejecting the resolution as false. The judge ought to affirm if the resolution is better justified than its negation, and vice versa. Returning to our now well-worn example, this yields the following analysis of the affirmative position:
Best Justification: The sentence “It is just for the United States to use military force to prevent the acquisition of nuclear weapons by nations that pose a threat” is better justified than the sentence “It is not the case that…”
There are two basic advantages of this account over traditional truth-testing. For one, truth-testing generates the problem of wayward “pre-standards” arguments. If, for instance, some argument which claims that the resolution is self-contradictory is dropped, truth-testing requires a negative verdict because the dropped argument entails the falsity of the resolution. On the best justification picture, however, the fact that the dropped argument entails the falsity of the resolution merely provides some evidence that a belief in the resolution is unjustified. How strong that evidence is depends on how strong the dropped argument was. If the argument was particularly well-developed, this may warrant a negation, but if the argument was a mangled blip, then it may be better to hold that the arguments developed by the affirmative are sufficient to justify the resolution’s truth in spite of the drop. To get a better grip on how this is supposed to work, consider a mundane case. My friend drives me to work one day in a Volvo. Suppose I have every reason to believe that she owns this car: I’ve seen her drive it many times, her family members all say it belongs to her, and I have seen her registration papers. On the basis of this evidence, I infer the proposition “my friend owns a Volvo”. Now suppose that someone else tells me that in fact she does not own that car; she was just borrowing it from her brother. For the sake of the example, assume that I have no way of discounting this evidence. Now, if true, my evidence that my friend was just borrowing the Volvo entails the falsity of my belief that “my friend owns a Volvo”, but given my preponderance of evidence to the contrary, it seems plausible to assume that I am better off retaining my belief and discounting the conflicting evidence. We can treat underdeveloped skeptical or other “pre-standards” issues in much the same fashion (note, however, that I do not want to exclude skeptical arguments altogether; if you want that result then find another paradigm).
Another advantage of the best justification paradigm over traditional truth-testing is that it preserves something like the offense/defense distinction employed in Policy. If the negative is not providing proactive reasons for thinking that the resolution has got to be false, then there is no reason not to accept the affirmative’s argumentation. The same more or less holds true for particular arguments. An argument may provide a good justification for some claim even if there are standing reasons for thinking that argument might be false in the event that the initial justification is more powerful than the reasons standing against it. This is more or less the moral of the “Volvo” example.
The account I have sketched thus far is compatible with the traditional value-criterion model, and nothing about it turns on whether or not we reject that model. I do think, however, that there is good reason to doubt the soundness of standards debate as it is currently practiced. My reasoning is somewhat different from that offered by defenders of the comparing worlds view. Oftentimes debaters will present warrants for a standard which are in truth, impacts to another standard which they are taking for granted. For example, consider a negative case which makes the following claims: (1) oppression can lead to genocide, genocide is bad, so the criterion is preventing oppression, (2) affirming allows the construction of threats, which stifles some criticism of the state; (3) not being able to criticize the state is a form of oppression. Given the supposition that sometimes oppression does lead to genocide, this NC is able to warrant the criterion “preventing oppression”. This in turn allows the negative to win off of the tiniest link to oppression, even if that form of oppression is probably not sufficient to lead to genocide, which is the real reason why we are supposed to be worried about oppression in the first place, according to this case. This is clearly a bad result: what this case has done is smuggled in a link to genocide which has virtually no probability of occurring. Additionally, the first premise of the case is clearly unwarranted without appeal to some genuine ethical framework. The case does not tell us why genocide is bad; it just takes it for granted. Of course, it is not particularly hard to prove that genocide is bad in virtually any ethical framework; the problem is just that one is not entitled to assume that without appeal to some ethical principle which tells us why genocide is a particular type of action which we should count as immoral.
The obvious remedy to this problem is to insist that standards express ethical theories. A better version of the case in question should fix on some ethical framework and then argue that the affirming is likely to lead to some form of oppression which is likely to lead to genocide, which is bad in terms of the given framework. Some might object to this suggestion on the grounds that it generates an unacceptable situation in which all standards debate devolves into a hackneyed dispute between deontology and consequentialism. This is not so: there are not only a wide variety of versions of each of those ethical theories which are designed to cope with the familiar objections, but there are also some alternative moral theories which break the deadlock altogether. I have already mentioned a couple options. If any reader is interested in hearing some suggestions about where to learn about these theories or others, don’t hesitate to email me (epalmer@fas.harvard.edu).
One parting thought: some have suggested that there is no reason to have a comprehensive theory of LD because part of what is best in debate is that students are able to challenge assumptions about what standards should be used to evaluate arguments. I am partly sympathetic to this point: it seems like debaters ought to be able to argue in-round that any judge should set aside some aspect of their default paradigm in order to make space for some particularly unusual sort of argument (a performance, for example). It is problematic, however, to suppose that we could get by without any fundamental picture of how arguments should be evaluated at all. How could judges evaluate a debater’s reasons for adopting a different paradigm for the purposes of a round at all without taking for granted certain assumptions about how arguments ought to be understood? At root, debate is a social practice which is constituted by the norms we choose. If no norms remain fixed, if there are no rules for the game at all, then judges would have no resources to use in evaluating proposals to adopt new norms. Judges must take some principles for granted when they approach rounds, and reflection is needed to determine what exactly those principles should be.
Thank you to Jon Cruz for posting this piece, and to Wade Houston, Michael O’Connell, Michael Mangus, and Mike Spirtos for comments and suggestions.
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