Watts,+Stephen

Stephen Watts
I have studied philosophy extensively, as it was my major, and this is the primary lense through which I judge. Being a philosophy student does not make me more or less likely to vote on critical issues; it does make me more likely to know more about the critical issues than most prior to hearing the arguments. Because I read philosophy, misunderstood and misexplained philosophy often jumps out at me during debate rounds. Some try to supress their own knowledge, or 'prejudice', but consider if a debate team were to suggest that our current President, Mrs. Clinton, needed to be stopped from doing X. Hopefully the other team would jump on this, but if they did not I simply could not vote for a team that wants to enact a plan because of X when I have knowledge that X is not true. I cannot set aside my knowledge of philosophy in judging debate; teams far too often throw out 'epistemic', 'metaphysical', and 'vote neg' in the same breath when what they have said has nothing to do with what they are reading and when what they are reading has no relevance to the issues at hand.

I thoroughly enjoy debates over judging philosophy in round. Saavy teams IMHO should be reading things like Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics and Two Concepts of Rules by Rawls; these texts deal with meta-judging, or the judging of the judging of the judged. It is very difficult to determine what is most important, a skipped RVI on T (*shutter*), real world implications of sexist language, or a post-fiat nuclear holocaust. There exist at the very least three different realms in which the judge must adjudicate; but in the end, its apples and oranges. Thus arguments explaining why voting on things like procedurals is more important than voting on some post-fiat implication are what I look for in order to adjudicate.

If I am given no help on adjudication procedure then it is left up to sheer luck whether or not I am offended enough by sexist language or a violation of the rules to bypass voting on a post-fiat world war 3.

There are no arguments which I feel should not exist in a debate round, and I would be equally likely to vote on stock issues, disads, cps, k's, or anything else that a team can come up with. I have never voted for an RVI or on a one second 'this is a voting issue for fairness' tagged onto a non-procedural that was dropped. Speed is fine, however I take clipping and power tagging seriously and would be inclined to vote a team down for these practices even if not told to by the other team. I have never judged a college debate round, though I have judge all levels of high school debate for five years.