Debate shouldn't be sophistry

In high school humanities, that is, English, history, and perhaps a semester of civics, ethics, or politics, a student is supposed to pick up five skills:

1. empathy for others, especially those who are different; 
2. ethical reflection; 
3. a understanding of social and/or government functioning; 
4. expository writing skills: putting together a coherent argument with evidence; and 
5. critical reading skills: analyzing texts carefully. 

It has always seemed to me that doing competitive debate does a really good job teaching a student all but the first. However, I have grown more concerned as I age that what debate teaches is very deep but misses some topics. I haven't become a gray-haired proponent of "cultural literacy" in my dottage: I still think that because debate topics are current, they are inherently more interesting and relevant to students than fusty old treatises. If you think high school students ought to read Aristotle and Plato fully, then I'm not your man. I believe they're far more likely to enjoy learning a little philosophy in order to apply it to current controversies. No, my concern is that, while it is good that debaters learn a lot about their topics, they are missing a few key ideas they ought to be taught specifically. My key recommendation is that second-year debaters take some kind of general critical thinking course that fills in these gaps.

One area I've written about before is logic. It is shocking to me that debaters would not know Toulmin's model, how to model definitions with Venn diagrams, or how to model causal arguments with Ishikawa diagrams. While it's not necessary to get into the complexities of propositional logic and truth tables, the basics ought to be covered.

Another area I've mentioned before too is statistics. Debaters are woefully uninformed about how statistics are collected and interpreted. To be blunt, they'll quote just about anyone, whether or not the method makes a lick of sense. Nothing too much is required: just a little knowledge about sampling methods, sources of sample bias, how to understand different correlational studies (like regressions), and how to understand experiments.

But where I think debaters come closest to outright sophistry is on critical arguments. Critical authors can shed light on complex issues. At their best, debaters quote these authors' anthropological, cultural, economic, and psychological investigations to unpack the standard assumptions most public policy authors approach a topic with. The critical authors can help all of us get behind the positions to see how our assumptions and values shape what we believe and advocate for. At their worst, debaters quote these authors to confuse and bury their opponents under a flurry of ten-cent words.

Why is it that outlandish impacts rule the day in policy debate? This is a bit of an overstatement. But I might argue that the development of critiques was probably driven by outlandish brink-based impacts. Many critiques re-introduce linear impacts into the debate round, i.e., endemic problems that are worsened by the plan. For example, racism exists before the plan, but plan makes it worse. Yet no judge would vote for this argument stated as a simple linear disadvantage. Add on the ten-cent words about critical legal studies and it's a go. The problem for debate theory is that the voting issue on a critique brings in a lot of philosophical and debate theoretical baggage: Is the judge voting against the Affirmative's discourse? Or is he voting against the Affirmative because the false assumptions identified by the critique show the case's logic is suspect (e.g., racist arguments undermine a civil rights plan)? Or is the judge simply voting that the critique's "impact" is bad (e.g., racism bad), like a linear disadvantage?

I believe many critiques only work by stringing together a theoretically inconsistent position: the link is about the topic itself, almost a counterwarrant (a guaranteed link, no matter what the plan actually does, e.g., attempting to improve women's literacy in Africa is based on sexist assumptions); the answer to comparative arguments is about pre-fiat, in-round discourse; and the implication is about real-world, post-fiat, non-comparative assessments of the critiqued impact. I can see some truth in the criticism that critiques are utopian counterplans: even thinking about the topic leads to racism -- just look at how the Affirmative speaks -- but by rejecting this, we can magically live in a world where racism is alleviated. Anyway, back to the main point:

If critiques are just bringing in linear impacts, why not just cut straight to running a linear disadvantage? The answer is that deprived of all the hoopla and sleight of hand (of critique theory and the critical author's fancy words), I believe a linear impact would never win a round.

Part of my solution is to teach every debater in a critical thinking course and to grind to a halt the competitive advantage of poorly-argued critiques. If a debater knows how to construct an argument, she can hammer away at the gaps in a critique. If a debater has a good sense of the basic flavors of philosophy and recognizes a nihilist argument when he hears one, great. Furthermore, many debaters go on to be judges, so getting this basic knowledge in them early is important.

But the second part of my solution is to ask judges to (a) stop rewarding sophistry and (b) recognize that linear disadvantages ought to win sometimes. This is not a theory problem or a rules problem. There is nothing that says linear disadvantages are weak. It is not a problem in the topic literature -- debaters are usually stretching the literature as it is. I am skeptical of the "literature checks abuse" argument. Most debaters' positions are undercut by their own authors; no one thinks the horrible impact scenarios are very likely. We the debate community need to recognize that:

     impact = mag x (duration) x prob / timeframe.

Humans are bad at estimating probability. But debaters and judges ought to make an effort to do better. Unfortunately, as it is, we've decided between offensive and defensive arguments that defense never wins. Never.

If debate could keep critiques straightforward and bring back good old-fashioned linear disadvantages, I would have a lot more confidence saying to other humanities teachers that competitive debating does indeed teach social/governmental knowledge, expository writing skills, and critical reading skills. As it is, I worry that we're doing our own thing that's becoming too divorced from reality.

Critical thinking course

There are a few methods for teaching critical thinking skills to public speaking and/or debate students.

One approach is to include a unit on critical thinking within a public speaking course (usually near the end) or an introduction to debate course (usually near the beginning). The unit might include Toulmin's simple framework for analyzing the claim, evidence, and warrants of arguments; it might teach students to identify informal fallacies; or perhaps the instructor gives students a checklist of basic questions to ask themselves about their arguments, e.g., "Who is the source of this information?", "How was this information collected?", etc. This approach tends to be informal (lacking strict logical rigor), simple to understand and apply, and not specific to any content domain. This is the approach I use in my debate textbook: I have an early chapter on Toulmin's framework.

Another approach is to require would-be debaters to take a separate course to improve their critical thinking skills. Some debate teams require debaters to take an additional course in logic (often in the philosophy department), which tends to be very mathematical and rigorous, perhaps even confusing, and hardly ever useful for debate contexts. I recently saw a team that requires debaters to take an additional course that surveys argumentation in different fields: legal and constitutional reasoning, political science, economics, critical theory, etc. The debaters get a primer on each topic, and some exposure to what constitutes good arguments in each field. This approach certainly gives debaters deep knowledge about various fields, but it leaves them weak on the general evaluation of new arguments in other fields.

Instead, I believe the best approach is to take the informal model but cover it as a stand-alone course (in the Communications department). I imagine this course would usually be taken by second-year debaters, but there's no reason it couldn't be open to other students as well. Perhaps the best way to organize such a critical thinking course would be:

- arguments about definitions
- arguments about facts
- arguments about cause and effect
- arguments about values

And I think the best way to treat it would be, as Neil Postman suggested in Teaching as a Subverse Activity, a collection of questions upon which to discuss. The teacher could ask framing questions, provide key readings, and open the discussion up. Here's what I envision in each section.


Definitions

There needs to be a discussion about language. Specifically, students should discuss the arbitrariness of signs, the inherent ambiguity of language, and the tempting but ultimately false notion of essentialism. A simple example can spark a great discussion: "Define 'table'" or "Define 'bed'" seem so simple but become so difficult as you start to unpack it. It might even be worth starting a discussion about "discourses": how definitions are field-contextual and make sense only relative to other concepts in that field. A great example is the word "reduction" -- you should look at the Wikipedia disambiguation page to see how many different meanings there are.

The students need to discuss how to resolve definitional disputes: etymological-historical, current usage, explicit agreement, etc. It might be worth spending some time looking at Venn diagrams to compare definitions and to model syllogisms; it's good to make sure that students leave this unit clearly understanding that definitions (and syllogisms) never provide us new information about the world.


Facts

Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" makes a great transition from discussing language to discussing facts, since his main point was in how bad actors could intentional mislead with ambiguous language. It's perhaps worth having a more general discussion about the trustworthiness of sources, intentional and unintentional bias, and the appeal to authority. I've always thought it a good idea to fuse the topics of small-"m" cultural marxism and media literacy in one discussion: in other words, discuss biases of class as well as reportorial laziness, enthusiasm for expert sources (government or science), and the herd mentality. Focusing students on what isn't reported is often more effective than letting them getting bogged down in discussions about whether the stories that are reported are biased. All this is an elaboration on the trustworthiness of sources.

Getting into the nitty-gritty of the facts themselves, I think it's wise to spend time talking about the logical process of generalizing. When can we go from limited, anecdotal experience to say safely that something is usually or always true? This can lead nicely into a discussion about surveys, sampling, and statistical concepts about generalizing -- at a non-technical level. If students understand how to interpret surveys and margins of error, understand the basic logic of them, and know what to look out for (biased questions, biased sampling frames, sample size), then they're doing quite well. As a final note, Stephen Budiansky wrote a fascinating article called, "The numbers racket: how polls and statistics lie" (US News and World Report, July 11, 1988). He provides great examples of commonly circulated statistics that are just plain made up. There are books out there, too, such as Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics that have good chapters for excerpting on this point.


Cause and Effect

First of all, it's worth discussing how statisticians and scientists set up experiments to prove cause and effect.

From logic, it's also worth discussing necessary versus sufficient causes. And, of course, the slippery slope fallacy. I like to get them diagramming causal arguments early, and once we start talking about the slippery slope fallacy, I introduce them to Ishikawa fish diagrams. I think it's also important to show them with several examples how cause and effect can easily run opposite to their intuition. A good example: kids who drink more milk have bigger feet. Is it because (a) milk causes bigger feet? (b) bigger feet cause kids to drink more milk? or (c) there's a third variable at play -- age? Self-selection is a wonderful example, too: kids who take the Princeton Review do better, on average, on their SATs. Is it because (a) Princeton Review helps? or (b) kids who take the SAT seriously also self-select to take the prep course?

From a systems perspective, students should learn a little about chaos theory (a system where initial conditions matter hugely, not one that is chaotic, thank you very much Jurassic Park), feedback loops, and the like. Economics provides a useful field here, to discuss how all the various parts of a system might push and pull on each other.

And from a real-world perspective, students should discuss what makes everyday predictions about politics, economics, and international relations credible or not. Is it reasoning by historical analogy? Is it clear analysis?


Values

Students can get overwhelmed with the details of different philosophies, so to try to alleviate their confusion, I kept readings short (or just stick to secondary sources); I keep the number of philosophers I introduce them to at a minimum; I choose the more straightforward philosophers only. No Nietzsche, no Habermas, etc. This doesn't need to be a survey course. Instead, I frame it for them as simply as possible: "What is the right thing to do?" I tell them that the particular language and details of each philosophy are less important than understanding the philosopher's answer to my question. I stress for them that there are really only three kinds of answer to my question: (1) what some set of rules tells us is right (the dogmatists), (2) there is no such thing as a right thing to do (the nihilists); and (3) we don't know what the right thing to do is, but we do our best each time to figure it out (the pragmatists). Realizing that most moral philosophers fall into one of three temperaments is a relief. Furthermore, I make sure to bring in lots of ethical and policy dilemmas, and I encourage them to answer wearing each philosopher's hat, as it were.

For dogmatists, I might start with natural law (perhaps Aristotle or Aquinas), leading into a discussion of the appeal to nature fallacy. Of course, you also have to discuss the utilitarians, Kant, and the social contractarians (Hobbes and Rawls -- it's nice for students to see a conservative and a liberal contract view). All together that makes five philosophers to discuss, and I think it's good for students to see how one dogmatic philosophy can completely oppose another. Given an ethical or policy dilemma, it's very interesting to set up five-way debates.

For nihilists, I would tend to focus on criticisms more generally, rather than specific philosophers. There are the criticisms that no universal moral system can be formulated (but there is such a thing as justice). Then there are the moral relativists who would argue that there is no such thing as morality, period; it's just a social construct. I find that this part of the unit isn't especially interesting and one moves quickly into the pragmatists.

For pragmatists, I think I would start with a little Hume, before discussing the existentialists. (I find Sartre's ideas are fairly comprehensible to students.) Then I would move on to the "democrats": those would argue that morality should be defined by agreement and consent. Again, with two nihilistic positions (moderate and extreme) and three pragmatic positions, one can set up interesting five-way debates.



Those are my recommendations. There are good books out there that support a structure like I've suggested, such as William Hughes' excellent Critical Thinking, but I'd honestly rather piece it together with readings, real-world examples, and discussions. With a typical 12-13 week semester, that would give you three weeks per unit. Debaters would leave with a better sense of how to argue topicality (definitions), disadvantages (cause and effect), and critiques (values) -- and would hopefully be more careful researchers after the unit about facts.

Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates?

Aristotle wrote one of the earliest systemizations of logic, his syllogisms. Unfortunately, he made two tiny oversights. An easy and fun logic lesson with students is to use Venn diagrams to check each syllogism, like so:

Aristotle Logic Venn Diagrams

Thanks to Keith Devlin for the idea.