“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) Kidnap some of them and forcibly extract the knowledge

2) Hire them to come and spread the way of the debater

3) Have everyone go to every intervarsity tournament to learn this stuff by osmosis

4) 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 un- addicted 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