“The Rational Actor”
or
Ideas I stole from people who are better than me
Issue one: Foreword and the Principle Challenge
Hello SWORDS members! (and other readers)
Since attending a number of intervarsity tournaments I’ve come to realise that institutional
debating knowledge is something that is a huge boon to novice’s from Uni’s all across
Australia. As we currently don’t have any Worlds debaters in our ranks we have a couple of
options.
1)
2)
3)
4)
Kidnap some of them and forcibly extract the knowledge
Hire them to come and spread the way of the debater
Have everyone go to every intervarsity tournament to learn this stuff by osmosis
Have people who do go to these tournaments write about something they took away
from the experience
One of these options is vastly cheaper than the others (and it’s not the kidnapping one.) So
on that note I’ve decided to write a “pseudo blog” detailing some of my experiences at
tournaments and what I took away from them titled The Rational Actor, or, Ideas I stole
from people who are better than me. So without any further ado, sit down, get your debate
on and get ready to rumble read.
This entry will be about something I’ve noticed happen in many high level debates, which
I’ve decided to call ‘The Principle Challenge.’ This challenge is aptly most appropriately given
during a POI and applies to British Parliamentary (BP) and Australasian (3v3) style debates.
[Note: This may be a little confusing if you don’t know what a principled argument is, but
hopefully some idea of that will be implicit in my explanation of the principle challenge]
So I was watching the grand finale of the Commonwealth debating tournament hosted by
our friends at Macquarie, the topic being something to the effect of ‘That rational unaddicted people should not take recreational drugs.’ Tom Goldie from the aff was explaining
why he thought that rational people have some level of responsibility to set an example for
other around them. There was some good analysis about societal expectations, peer
pressure, and normalising irresponsible life choices. He was interrupted by a POI from Harry
Stratton, who asked him if he would cease drinking forever, lest he influence a child or a
peer for whom the decision to drink may have been a bad one.
At that point the lecture hall was filled with laughter; I gather Goldie’s drinking reputation
probably preceded him; but more importantly Goldie was not willing to respond with a
straightforward answer. (To be honest I can’t remember exactly what he said, but it
certainly wasn’t “yes I’ll stop drinking”) To follow up this line of questioning Harry put to the
audience in his speech that the reason Goldie wasn’t willing to give up drinking was that
their team didn’t really believe that it was the responsibility of rational individuals to forgo
their own happiness lest it influence the most gullible members of society. So to break down
what I believe happened:
1) The aff proposed a principled argument that rational actors/individuals have a
social responsibility not to negatively influence other around them, and then
explained how this would apply positively to the debate.
2) The neg asked if this principle would hold in another similar scenario, but one in
which there were obviously draw backs (Goldie wouldn’t get to drink)
3) The burden was set on the aff to defend the principle and positive outcomes of
both scenario’s
So in a conversation with Andrew from Monash another instance of this principled challenge
arose, which got me thinking: this probably something that can be practiced and used. This
time the topic was something to the effect of “that criminals should be charged for harms
caused to unborn foetuses in their own right.” So in discussing how the debate would go he
said the first POI from the neg is always “would you also support banning abortions?” this
POI follows the exact same principle challenge format.
1) The aff proposes in principle that foetuses deserve to be treated like people in
their own right and why that’s positive
2) The neg asks if this is principally consistent with banning abortion, after all, if
foetuses are people, is abortion not murder? (and in a follow up speech, briefly,
why banning abortions would be negative)
However this time Andrew also provided me with the solution to such a challenge. Just
agree! To an extent that is. Obviously you also have to find other reasonable exceptions that
remove the downsides of the similar scenario. So in response to the abortion challenge
1) Agree that principally yes it would be considered murder so you don’t agree with
abortion.
2) HOWEVER you do recognise the mother right to self-defence so in cases where
the foetus would endanger the mother’s life then abortion is principally and
morally consistent with self-defence, which you also stand for.
The beauty of this sort of challenge and defence to the challenge is that it requires the other
team to rebut with material that isn’t particularly relevant to the debate. Remember how
the topic was actually about charging criminals for harming foetuses? Spend the vast
majority of your time on the actual topic, and don’t get too distracted, just know the most
time efficient ways to dismiss these sorts of principled challenges.
One more example which arose in a debate I was in. The topic was to the effect of “that
insurance companies should be able to use genetic data when deciding whether to accept
potential customers.” In this case when the neg were talking about how being predisposed
to an illness wasn’t really fair on the individual, as they had no control over their genetics
and went on to argue that existing techniques were sufficient. We asked in a POI whether
family history would still be allowed to be considered. Again this follows the same principle
challenge structure.
1) The neg suggests that anything beyond your personal control that makes you
predisposed to an illness should not be allowed to be considered by insurance
companies.
2) The aff asks if they would then also ban checking family history, as in principle,
it’s the same thing. Family history is beyond an individual’s control and reveals
only pre-dispositions, similar to a genetic screening.
So how would you respond to this principle challenge? Also feel free to ask me if you think
of any other examples or have seen any in debates. Here’s to a bright future of stealing
ideas, then creating our own.
Ben Hewitt
President - UOW SWORDS