Brown,+Joshua

Homewood-Flossmoor High School
Edited August 2011.

I've decided to rewrite this philosophy to reflect some changes in the way I think about judging. I've preserved the old philosophy below but have decided that most of what I wrote about is irrelevant to the actual situation of you trying to figure out what to do before a debate. I've come to think the "here's what I think about each kind of issue in Debate"-type philosophy is actually a lot less helpful than some comments about my actual *judging* habits. You can read the old one if you want, but like I already said, I don't think it's that helpful. I've come to see that almost all types of arguments are resolved in similar ways - K's, da's, counterplans, etc. all work in similar ways, and are generally distinguished from each other only arbitrarily by debaters when they are learning to debate. My predispositions about each arbitrary distinction of debate theory, while perhaps interesting for your to know, are rarely things I reference explicitly in my decisions. I really think if you understand my **process** for deciding debates, it will help you more than if you understand how I feel about floating PIC's, for example. So, here is a description of that process, or at least what I think I'm doing (though of course, I may be terrible at seeing what I //actually// do during a debate):

DURING the debate:

- **I try my best to record arguments offered by both teams - please take note of the best way for you to help me do this:** In the paperless era, I've found this has gotten harder as teams have come to respect flowing and answering opponents' arguments in an explicit, well-organized and signposted way much less. I try my best to record your arguments next to the arguments you are responding to. I quite often get lost when you say things like "group the uniqueness debate", and I do not know which 2AC arguments you are referring to, or even whether you have bothered to care whether they have made uniqueness arguments. Characterize their arguments in a clear and concise way so I know which ones you are talking about. Please remember that I can see neither your speech document nor your opponents'. I wrote down what they actually said, not what they flashed you before the speech. You therefore need to respond to what they actually said if you want me to understand your arguments in the context of theirs. I'm pretty sure you want me to understand your arguments, so try your best to organize your speech in a way that doesn't sound like you're just reading stuff you wrote out beforehand and has nothing to do with the speech previous (or is structured radically differently than it for no good reason). My advice to you is: close the viewing computer and flow. You can look at it later, if you really need to (which you probably don't). You will see the debate through the eyes of the judge much better this way.

- **I assess where I think the debate is after each speech.** I think about how far ahead or behind each team seems to be on each position. I do this a lot more when the debate is going well. When it's been clear for an hour who was going to win (i.e., because the 2AC dropped T), I will probably think less about the debate while it is going on.

- **I listen to the cross-examinations**. I haven't taken the step yet of flowing it, but I do listen. I also am not afraid to intervene verbally during the cross-examination period, mostly to deal with things I perceive to be rude. This may happen during prep time as well. Things you say in cx will weigh in the decisions to the extent that you use cx in a way that helps clarify the logic of your positions and your opponents'.

- **I time your prep**. **This includes time you spend saving your speech document and before you have removed the flash drive from your computer**. I appreciate your efforts to double-check and record your own prep time, but ultimately, I will let you know how much prep time you have left. That's not to say I don't make mistakes, but I have become more and more strict as to counting prep when prep is being taken, and I don't think I need your approval to be running the clock.

Things I tend to do after a debate:

- **I meander confusingly through the different flows** on which arguments were made at the end of the debate. **I usually do this because usually neither the 2NR nor the 2AR has provided any sort of explicit discussion about what I should do other than this**. THIS IS GENERALLY A PROBLEM. Label arguments you want me to resolve first, and tell me why they come first and why you want me to resolve them first. You can call them meta-issues, nexus questions, framing issues, voting, issues, whatever. But if you don't actually suggest a procedure for the resolution of the debate, I will just meander through flows in the order I see as important. **Just making formulaic statements about probability, timeframe and magnitude is not what I'm talking about**. I'm talking about when the 2ar timer stops, let me know what you want me to DO first, how you think I should make that decision, and then later on how it will get me to the point of voting for you. It's really surprising how little most of the 2NR or 2AR usually speaks to these questions.

- **I make provisional judgments about which team I think has won the debate.** I do this before I really start to look at any evidence I think is important. It's very important to me to self-consciously reflect on who it seemed like was ahead when the debate is over. I will make an overall judgment (i.e. aff or neg) but will also make judgments on each major issue (i.e., the politics flow) and sub-issue (i.e., the uniqueness debate). I do this by considering what I've written down and recall about the relevant parts of the 2nr and the 2ar. I type out my initial perceptions so I don't forget them and end up voting on the evidence I later read (something I think is a hallmark of bad judging).

- **I read evidence that seems relevant to testing my provisional judgments.** Sometimes this is because debaters have contested some evidence's relevance, its context, or its superiority vis-a-vis other pieces of evidence. More often it is because neither team has described the arguments made in the evidence they are referencing and I am forced to reconstruct that argumentation. When my pre-evidence-reading perception is that one team is just far, far out-arguing and out-explaining their evidence vis-a-vis the other team on a given point, I am much less likely to read evidence than if my perception is that the two teams are really close in terms of argument and explanation. I really try to value your explanation in the rebuttals over your evidence read. Your explanation should incorporate the arguments made by that evidence so I don't need to reconstruct it myself.


 * - I revise my provisional judgments in light of what I've learned from reading evidence.** It's pretty, pretty rare that I change my mind as a result of evidence reading. It's not to say that never happens, but to the extent that my provisional judgments were well-considered, and to the extent that 2nr and the 2ar explained their arguments and suggested an explicit decision procedure for me to follow, evidence reading will be less important to my decision. I would say only 5-10% of the time does evidence reading **change** my decision. I do it anyway, because I think I owe it to the debaters, but if you're hoping to just muddle through and then get a bunch of good cards in my hands at the end of the debate, I'm probably not the judge for you. If it sounds like you're losing when you're done, most of the time, you probably WILL lose.


 * - I then make a more fully informed judgment about which team I think won.** This involves comparing my initial reflections with my post-evidence-reading reflections. I may go back and forth between the previous three steps a couple of times on a couple of different sub-issues depending on how close the debate is.


 * - I then then re-read the flows of the team I think has lost**, and make sure I have not missed anything that would invalidate my decision. If I end up changing my mind at this stage, I do the same thing for the opposite team's flows. I do this until I've satisfied myself that I haven't forgotten anything that was emphasized sufficiently to warrant my attention. Then I fill out my ballot.

(Old philosophy circa 2007)


 * Background** - I teach and coach debate at Homewood-Flossmoor High School, in Illinois. I have been the head coach for 4 years, but have been involved with the program for 8. Before that, I did not debate in college, but debated in high school at New Trier. I graduated from high school in 1995. Back then people also flowed, made arguments of varying quality, and went about as fast as they do now, so have no fear. My undergraduate major (I attended Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut) was Government with a concentration in Political Theory. I earned a M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Chicago. I also teach AP English Language and Composition, Latin 1 and Latin 2.


 * Judging Philosophy** - My major judging predispositions seem to be largely similar to everyone else's, so I'll spare you the long paragraphs about objectivity/intervention/so on. I generally tend to let debaters dictate the terms in which I should evaluate the debate. Everyone thinks they do that, and everyone strays from that goal from time to time, but there you have it.


 * Disclaimer -** //My// opinions about different issues in debate follow. I don't generally use these opinions unless told to persuasively, but if you were having a conversation with me about "how the game ought to be played", this is what I'd say. You can stop reading now if you don't really care about those opinions. Trust me - I know the difference between my thoughts as a coach and my obligations as a judge. I think the former question is much more interesting, but I understand the difference.


 * Plans** - I think the affirmative should have one, so we can argue about whether that plan is a good idea and/or is an example of the resolution. I am skeptical about stories I hear about rounds involving bizarre affirmative advocacies that do not defend a plan. Such debates are generally not very interesting to me. I do not think that the rhetorical situation of a debate round requires //that much// self-conscious analysis or consideration of its performative aspects. I therefore don't find talks (or multiple separate sheets of paper) about "Framework" that edifying. Devolution into self-reference is the last refuge of bad television shows, and so with debates.


 * Kritiks** - see "plans." Also, I think that a kritik should be considered through the lens of other policy arguments, and so, tend to think of a Kritik as a problematic combination of disadvantage and counterplan. I think many affirmative teams let many negative teams get away with way too much on this front. Also, don't be fooled by my M.A. in Philosophy - I know very little about most critical authors, as those people are generally from Literature, not Philosophy departments. The two disciplines don't communicate nearly as much as you might think they do. That said, what I have read, I have been relatively unimpressed by. The Foucaultian/Lacanian/Zizekian/etc. project seems to me a rather naive rejection of straw-person positions never actually defended by any self-respecting intellectuals who would call themselves "liberals." Those naive rejections never seem to be logically rigorous enough for my tastes. Pseudo-oracular pronouncements loaded with neologisms are sort of boring to me.

In short, Nietzsche is very hard to imitate successfully and too many people try. I have read enough scholarly literature to know that the problem here is not my lack of understanding or theoretical sophistication, but a rather low signal-to-noise ratio in the texts themselves. I think a lot of people replicate this problem in debate by reading too many cards in Kritik rounds, the relevence of which is often far from clear to anyone but the 2N.

But, all THAT said, I vote negative on kritiks fairly often. The main thing I look for in these debates is a deep understanding of the underlying literature, by the affirmative or the negative, and real attempt, again, by both sides, to contextualize that literature to the question at hand and to the debate round and the policy world itself.


 * Disadvantages** - I guess there's not too much to say here, except I think there are a lot of things that don't get talked about enough. I'd love to watch a robust defense of a non-intrisicness answer, just because it would mix things up a bit. Similarly, I think there are intrinsicness-type objections to be made to politics positions. I also think Politics is, much of the time, interesting to listen to. Again, I'd like to hear a clear understanding of the underlying literature, not "I read 10 uniqueness cards and the 2A only read 2 so I win."


 * Topicality** - I've always enjoyed a well-crafted topicality violation, even if it exists only for strategic purposes. I think grammar does matter, and it astounds me that there are so many debaters who, though they are only responsible for the DIRECT ADVOCACY of 1 or 2 sentences in the 1AC (i.e., the PLAN), do such a terrible job writing it down, thinking through its possible meanings, or bothering to explain how it serves as an example of the resolution. I think debate about multiple standards is interesting, and I don't always agree that limits is the most important one of those. I find debates in which I am forced to determine how much abuse was perpetrated by the affirmative team to be very difficult to resolve and, at some level, boring to listen to.


 * Theory** - I'm less positively disposed to hearing debates about theory than debates about Topicality, and less interested in hearing it debated for purely strategic purposes. I've never been that clear about why dispositionality isn't just how things work, whether people say so or not. I think conditionality is probably more defensible than a lot of people give it credit for, but I don't think most debaters have thought nearly enough about the issues involved. At the shallow level theory is generally discussed, I generally lean against conditionality. I would like to see theory debates conducted without excessively long, warrantless blocks being read. Most cases where theory needs to be voted on, I think, are relatively clear from the outset.


 * Cross-Examination** - CX is far more important than most debaters realize. What's on the flow is ultimately how judges vote, but how they understand what's on the flow is often a function of strategic questions and answers given in CX. I think Aristotle's logos-ethos-pathos distinction is often midunderstood (and underappreciated) by debaters. Of course, at one level, it's all about logos. I do not think, however, that ethos and pathos are irrelevent because in debate we just think about arguments, cards, etc.

I think what Aristotle meant in calling our attention to ethos and pathos was that these things inevitably involve themselves in persuasion, whether a judge thinks they've involved or not, and that a good speaker knows how to take advantage of this. How credible someone sounds on a question or how emotionally compelling those arguments feel are just things that cannot be eliminated from the evaluation of the truth of an argument as it stands. So while I don't "evaluate" the credibility of a speaker or his/her emotional resonance, at least consciously, I think the best debaters all intuitively recognize that these things are important, whether even the judges themselves recognize it or not.

In many, many close debates, I've //essentially// voted on cross-examination - again, not that I don't read my flows at the end of the debate, but which points each team has emphasized can get a bit lost by then, and cross-examination is an excellent time to develop that emphasis... I think there are usually one or two claims, not 15 or 20, that are important to resolving a debate. Since the two teams tend to disagree about those claims, the most natural place for those 1 or 2 things to be discussed, at some level of depth, is during the cross-examination period. If you use cross-examination to highlight those 1 or 2 issues, and then use your speeches to build around them, you will most likely find yourself winning. If you do not understand the last three sentences, you probably don't win that often.