Making debaters focus on arguments, not cards

Every time my debaters say, "I found a good card," I cringe. Is there a good argument in the card, perhaps?

I have found that my debaters, especially my beginning debaters, get overwhelmed when trying to do research to put an argument or case together. One part of the difficulty is that there are so much new information coming at them (they are learning the content about their topic); another part of the difficulty is that the structure of an argument is new to them, and so they have trouble (a) interpreting the structure of the arguments they are reading (and trouble evaluating these arguments) and (b) imagining how to use these arguments for their own case. The result is that beginning debaters tend to focus on the conclusions in a quotation, missing the arguments that get the author there, and thus essentially are guilty of an appeal to authority.

But the same thing happens, in a different way, when an advanced debater turns in a file with fifty uniqueness cards that all repeat one basic fact. I have a hard time persuading advanced debaters that a ten-card file might be the most excellent disadvantage they have seen all year. I have tried different techniques to get my point across, most notably handing a debater back a card he says is good with the instruction to highlight every argument and fact but not any claim. This can help the advanced debater who reads without reading, but it does not help the beginning debaters in the moment of research.

Rather than ask themselves, "Does this argument or fact help me?", beginning debaters -- maybe even many advanced debaters, too -- focus on whether something is "card"-able. The beginning debaters spin themselves into fits worrying about the threshold for cutting something, mostly ignoring the content. (And my injunction that, if the fact or argument is good but the author is lousy and unclear, then they should look for and will find the same fact by a better writer is completely ignored.) Direct quotation is a labor-saving device: it is easier to copy and paste than paraphrase, and it is easier to verify the claim (tag) is a correct interpretation of the author's work. But it can short-circuit the thinking process. I have been sorely tempted to prohibit my debaters from direct quotation in debating, forcing them to paraphrase, to get them to focus on the actual, essential arguments and facts they are gleaning from their research. (It is certainly a great technique for practice rounds.)

Instead, I have come up with argument sheets. I tell them that the first stage of research is merely about mapping out the terrain; they can fill in the sheet and save links or PDFs but not cut cards. Of course, I created different sheets for the three types of claims: factual (uniqueness or harms), causal (links or solvency), and value and philosophical claims. If a student is researching uniqueness for a disadvantage, I give her the first kind of sheet, which directs her to pay attention to what facts she finds, how those facts were collected by the original researcher (e.g., statistics do not fall from the sky), and what the facts mean for her claim. For example, perhaps she is making a claim about the effect of a law for her inherency. I want her to point to specific text in the law or to point to Congressmen's statements, and to recognize that each method has limits. With causal arguments, I want students to pay attention to the complexity of causation. I want them to move away from the simple, pat story or scenario; I want them to think about effects being overdetermined. The hardest arguments for most debaters to analyze are value arguments. I want my debaters to pay special attention to the broader philosophical ideas that are tied into, as well as to clearly think about what is included and what is excluded in a philosophical judgment. The idea I am trying to hammer home is that philosophical concepts are all about distinctions. (I am reminded of the old joke about a philosopher, asked how he liked his job: "I make some distinctions. It's a living.")

Below is an example of what filled-in sheets might look like.

Argument sheet (example)

After they have filled in a sheet, then we will discuss the case and organize the key ideas into an idea map or web. (I have found that they can not jump straight from reading, without note-taking, to idea-mapping.)

Finally, they go back to start to cut cards. I have found that debaters now tend to cut cards on factual claims that are shorter than before, but that are more likely to have some context for the collection or meaning of the data presented. I have found that debaters now tend to cut cards with causal claims that are longer than before -- they are trying to include more complex analysis. And I have found that debaters are now less likely to cut cards making value claims that are just conclusions. The students look a little more carefully for cards that link an issue to a big philosophical concept. Which is to say, the debaters are more thoughtful and discriminating.

Reflections on argumentation

As any debate coach knows, a course on formal logic does not help debaters much. I had a very bright, mathematically-oriented student who had just taken a formal logic course tell me such recently. As I have written before, part of the issue is that logic is not what is being done in economics, politics, and other social sciences; academics in these fields are not attempting to prove some fact absolutely follows from other facts (i.e., internal consistency from given or known facts); they are attempting to construct ideas that explain the world (i.e., external consistency).

I was struck recently to read how the Bank of England's advisory board works: the board members are presented with statistics, data, and other facts from the Bank's staff; then, the board members interpret these facts and debate each other about what the British economy is doing. The key act is interpreting -- putting the facts into one theory or framework to make sense of them, deciding which facts are noise and should be ignored -- not rising to proof. Obviously, each board member's prior experiences, opinions, and ideology probably have more to do with their interpretation than the specific set of facts presented in any given session. If the complexity of epicycles did not kill off the geocentric view of the solar system, then surely an economist is not going to abandon his pet theory so easily. Thomas Kuhn might have some things to say how what it would take.

There is a reason Toulmin's model is about the structure, not the content, of arguments: what counts as good reasons differ from field to field. It makes sense to talk about a research field as a discourse community: people talking to each other, in some sort of agreement about what constitutes evidence and good arguments. I do not want to get into whether discourse communities are successfully developing objective standards to evaluate evidence (I am sure it differs from community to community). My real point is that theory formation is at the heart of a research field. All arguments, evidence, and reasoning needs to be understood in terms of the eventual goal of building a theory. My own personal experience was trying to publish an article based on my thesis, which was about how California newspapers reported the new exit exam requirement for high schoolers. One rejection was very clear: the article did not advance theory, which was true. While the article certainly did reference mass communication theories to explain and interpret the reportage, it did not refine, clarify, or refute those theories, so it was not publication worthy.

I had all these thoughts jostling in my head when I was talking to my debater. It occurred to me that argumentation in debate is really about theory formation. In other words, arguing successfully is not about presenting sufficient evidence to back up your claims (otherwise, defensive arguments would win way more often that they do); arguing successfully is about presenting a coherent theory. Disadvantages are not done in by inconvenient brink problems here or there, so long as they seem to present a credible story. I would say, no one has lost a disadvantage because he did not prove the (highly improbable, totally speculative) internal link; he has lost it because it did not have a plausible, causal story. If the judge says, "A leads to B how?," the debater has lost. If the judge says, "A causing B seems pretty unlikely, but there's a risk...," the debater has most likely won. My point is that debate is not about analytical, deductive reasoning; debate is about synthetic, theory-building reasoning.