Fitzmier,+Dan

Dan Fitzmier - Judge Philosophy for NDT 2004 Northwestern University Judging Experience: 5 years Rounds on Topic: 50-60 I’ve found that over the past several years I’ve changed the way that I judge. I’ve been told by others that this is the case as well. I used to make my decisions almost entirely based on a combination of a taking a ‘relative risk’ oriented approach to argument evaluation and an ‘exclusively flow oriented approach to truthfulness.’ This is not to say that I have now excluded such considerations from my approach to judgment. In fact, I find myself making many decision along such lines. However, I have been disabused of the notion that there is ‘always some risk’ of an argument. I have assigned zero risk to disadvantages and case arguments on a number of occasions in which the debating and evidence pointed towards such a conclusion. I have also been pushed away from what I just called the ‘exclusively flow oriented approach to truthfulness.’ This does NOT mean that I will ignore dropped arguments. I usually give an un-refuted argument more weight than a refuted argument. But I used to almost exclusively regard a ‘dropped’ argument as a trump, so to speak, with which to evaluate all other arguments. I now find myself more willing to compare a ‘dropped’ argument to the core claims which refute it. Let me highlight here that I said ‘the core claims which refute it.’ What I mean by this is that I no longer think that an argument has to have its responding argument ‘next to it’ in order to count as ‘refuted.’ I now think that refutation has more to do with conceptual clash and my own judgment of persuasiveness than with my flow. This could be because my flow has deteriorated in my dotage. It also could be due to a widespread collapse of technical proficiency. Maybe I’ve just started to get over my ego involvement and can now admit that my flow does not represent a perfect transcript of the debate (although let me assure you that I really am very clever). Anywho, let me go back to something that I said at the outset which is that I still often do find myself making decisions which turn on a ‘dropped’ argument or a ‘relative risk’ oriented approach. When I do this, its almost always because one side in the debate has made a strong case that I ought to do so. This provides a nice point of transition into the last important thing that I wanted to say. I often find myself making my decision by virtue of the way that ‘the framework for evaluation’ has been debated or perhaps has not been debated. I encourage you to spend a great deal of time thinking about the way that you want to position my perspective on how the debate ought to be evaluated. There are simply too many different approaches that have cropped up in the past few years for me (and I suspect many of us judges) to pledge my allegiance, as it were, to any one or number of them. I try to take my evaluative bearings from the way that the debate transpired. A parallel point is that I find it to be frustrating when you forgo the opportunity to engage in such a debate. In such a situation I will usually try to feel out a sense for the way that your arguments operate, which is to say: how they lend themselves toward evaluation. If any of the preceding makes you think that I have altogether lost my marbles, that THEY have finally gotten to me, or that something really quite strange is afoot in Evanston, I encourage you to give me the old strikerooo; of course, drunken rage, angry sobbing, and barely-concealed disdain are all available alternatives, but I must say that I would much prefer the more dignified anonymity of your strike. In all seriousness, please enjoy your NDT 2004!!