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Responding to Roskoski on Dispositional Counterplans

I know  that  all these  issues are  important,  but still  I  yearn for  a
theoretical  discussion  that has  nothing to  do  with "the  state  of the
activity," politics, or religious  holidays.  Accordingly, I would  like to
get  back  to  an Issue  that  Matt  posted  some  time ago  (April  16th):
dispositional  counterplans.     This  is kind  of long.    The gist  is: I
disagree with Matt.

THE DEFINITION

In case you can't remember what I'm talking about, Matt defines his focus:

     >A definition  first - when I say dispositional, I mean the assumption
     >most  (I  think) people  make that  if  a counterplan  is  topical or
     >non-competitive, it "just goes away."

So, for our purposes, I think  that "dispositional" means the same thing as
"conditional on non-topicality and competition"  in effect meaning that  if
the counterplan  is found  to be topical  or non-competitive it  leaves the
round.

MATT'S ARGUMENT

     >My  argument is  that a  non-competitive counterplan  ceases to  be a
     >reason the negative can win, but can still be a reason they lose.

In other  words,  a topical  counterplan or  a non-competitive  counterplan
cannot  matter  for  the negative,  but  can  matter  for the  affirmative.
Instead  of being  dismissed  as an  irrelevant  argument, the  counterplan
becomes a vehicle for the affirmative to link disadvantages to.

     >Suppose, for example,  the aff is losing an LIC disad to plan, with a
     >regional  war  impact  (assume   also  case  has  little/no  impact).
     >However, they are winning  a German prolif disad to  the counterplan,
     >which  has  a  european nuclear  exchange.    If  the counterplan  is
     >dispositional and  a perm has been argued, it goes away and Neg wins.
     >If the counterplan is not dispositional, aff wins.

MATT'S THEORETICAL JUSTIFICATION

     >Theoretical  justification: I  think  when a  negative  is given  the
     >advantages of fiat, they take on a burden of advocacy just as the aff
     >does.  I  see competition as  a substantive  issue which affects  the
     >implications of  advocacy but not  the act  of advocacy  itself.   In
     >other  words, if  one doesn't  say the  counterplan is  conditional I
     >think you advocate it whether or not it competes.

The  gist of  Matt's claim  here, I  think, is  that competition  is  not a
procedural, so  it  should not  simply leave  the round  like a  procedural
would.  Neg has committed  to the impacts, Matt argues, and if  the impacts
are turned they  should not be able to  walk away.  While this  has obvious
intuitive  appeal, I  think that  it  ignores the  issue  of relevance  and
specifically  competition's role as a  relevance claim, and  fails to place
parameters of attacks on advocacy.  I will be developing these arguments as
I look at Matt's reasons underlying his theoretical justification:

  PART ONE: PROCEDURALS

     >1. Competition relies on evaluation of substantive arguments.  99% of
     >the  time you have  to resolve a  solvency debate and  disad links to
     >judge  competition.   No  other "procedural"  question requires  such
     >substantive evaluation first.

Every procedural argument requires  substantive argument first.  Procedural
arguments  are  fundamentally  arguments   telling  us  what  to  do   with
substantive  arguments.    Topicality  has to  do  with  which  substantive
arguments  are relevant to the  resolution.  Whole  resolution regards that
which is substantively necessary to justify the resolution.   Intrinsicness
tell us  which substantive  links should  be required.   Critique  tells us
which  substantive acts of advocacy ought to be evaluated.  At the level of
the link, the violation, or the  model of what is required, procedurals are
100% grounded in the  substantive.  Procedurals are maps,  substantives are
territories.  Procedurals  are recipes,  substantives are the  dish.   Pick
your analogy, but all  procedurals require substantive application just  as
all   substantives  require  (either   contested  or  accepted)  procedural
judgements.   I think what Matt means  is that the competition debate tends
to  focus  on  the  substantive  issue  of  net  benefits  as  measured  in
disadvantages and turns, rather  than the "theory of competition"  but this
is just analogous to a topicality debate that focuses more on the violation
than on the standards.  Competition remains procedural in its function: the
determination of relevance.  Just like topicality,  justification, etc., it
is an argument about what matters in the round  and what does not.  Actions
which compete  with the affirmative  plan matter in  the evaluation of  the
affirmative  plan.    Actions which  do  not  compete,  independent of  how
wonderful they may  be, do not  logically matter in  the evaluation of  the
affirmative plan.

     >2. No  parallel affirmative procedural burden  exists.  Nontopicality
     >makes sense as a  procedural question for a counterplan  because it's
     >procedural for the plan.  No such analog exists for competition.

The parallel is relevance.  Affirmative advocacy must be relevant.  So must
negative counter advocacy.  For affirmative, relevance means being topical,
and  it might mean more depending upon your attitudes toward justification.
For  the negative  relevance is  more  complex.   It can't  mean just  non-
topicality:  Aff's would  institute the  death  penalty, negs  would invade
Bosnia.  The negative's  requirement for relevance is more  complex because
our standard  for relevance now includes  the affirmative plan.   This is a
consequence of a parametric focus: affirmatives engage in relevant advocacy
simply by offering a topical plan, negatives engage in relevant advocacy by
either talking  about that plan or  by offering a plan  that is non-topical
and  that  has  a  reason  for  being  compared  to  the  affirmative  plan
(competition).  The burden to  make relevant claims exists for both  sides,
it just manifests in different ways for each.

     >3. The  question of competition addresses  substantive not procedural
     >concerns.    Competition asks  does  the  plan (a  substantive  item)
     >preclude (in a substantive  way) the counterplan (another substantive
     >item).  Now,  if competition isn't "procedural" then  I don't see how
     >it can make an advocacy statement "go away".  The only thing that (to
     >my  mind) can  do that  besides a  won claim  of conditionality  is a
     >procedural argument proving it was illegitimate advocacy in the first
     >place.

Being related  to  substantive  issues does  not  render  competition  non-
procedural.  Competition is a procedure for determining relevance.  This is
not a "law of debate" but a  norm of argument and conversation in a  larger
societal sense.  If  I say "lets drive to Chicago!" and  you say, "no, lets
take my  car" this would not be  seen as a relevant  response or a sequitur
conversational move unless there was some reason taking your car would mean
that we either couldn't or wouldn't want to go to Chicago (It wouldn't make
it, we wouldn't want to add the milage).   When the claim "lets  get pizza"
is  met with "lets  go out for  ice cream" the  latter is only  taken to be
rejoinder  when  there exists  some explicit  or  understood reason  why we
couldn't or  wouldn't want to do  both (not enough money,  not enough time,
indigestion).   This is  the *natural* phenomenon  of competition including
the principles of mutual exclusivity and net benefits.  It exists as a norm
within at least  our culture's  language game.   It is part  of the way  in
which logical comparisons are made.

The  first part  of  Matt's theoretical  justification is  that competition
masquerades as a procedural.   I'm rejecting Matt's claim  that competition
isn't  a  procedural  by  arguing  that  not  only  is  it  a procedure  of
determining comparative relevance,  but it is one which is  embedded in our
society's sense of logic and not just in our debate theory books.

  PART TWO: ADVOCACY

     The second part of  Matt's theoretical justification, is that  the neg
advocates  the counterplan  and  that  advocacy  should  remain  and  be  a
legitimate affirmative  target  even  if  negative  is  granting  that  the
counterplan doesn't compete.  In making this argument, Matt (of all people)
is placing advocacy higher than argument relevance and in effect advocating
a "critique" argument as Murphy and I  have been talking about.  In  Matt's
hypothetical example, the negative would be  in essence granting a take out
to their counterplan.  They would be granting that it doesn't compete so it
is not a  relevant comparison to  the affirmative plan.   Nonetheless, Matt
says the fact that they once did advocate the counterplan should serve as a
link base  for the  affirmative.   By extension, it  seems that  this would
apply to  disadvantages as  well:   negative advocates  it, aff  argues "no
link,"  neg  grants  that  and  the  argument  "just  goes  away."   To  be
consistent,  wouldn't Matt  wonder  why  it  "just  goes  away"  when  link
arguments are not "procedurals?"   What is the ground to link  arguments in
away which has nothing to do with affirming or denying the res (as manifest
in case)?  Matt's answer is "their advocacy still matters" and this is  the
essence of critique.
     To be fair, I have to admit that I  don't have a problem with critique
per se  (though, based on his judging philosophy, Matt does).  I do however
have  a problem with  critiques that lack  parameters.  When  any action or
advocacy  of  the other  side becomes  grounds  for critique  the resulting
argument  is ad  hominem  (refer to  my exchanges  with  lovechild and  the
upcoming Murphy &  Broda-Bahm article).  For  a critique to be  legitimated
there needs to be some reason why it would be considered independent of the
resolutional (or if you prefer "case") question.  Affirmative disadvantages
linked  to  a  counterplan which  both  sides  agree does  not  compete are
similarly  unrelated to  the resolutional/case  question.   Unlike advocacy
based on sexist language or a flawed resolutional framework, however, there
is  no  reason why  advocacy based  on  a noncompetitive  counterplan would
supersede  that  resolutional/case  question  in  importance.    So  Matt's
argument that claim  that advocacy provides a reason why  aff gets to claim
those disadvantages constitutes an undeveloped critique.

MATT'S PRAGMATIC OBJECTIONS:

     >I  think dispositionality gives negatives defacto superconditionality
     >without having to defend it...

Aside for the  theoretical problem, Matt  is arguing that  dispositionality
allows a  strategic advantage to the  negative.  The problem  seems to stem
exclusively from the following rare scenario:

     >Consider the following:   1NC runs a counterplan and  claims only net
     >benefits.  If  2AC makes primarily competition  arguments and doesn't
     >link  a disad that scares the  neg, 2NC adds their mutual exclusivity
     >arguments to the debate.  If, on the other hand, 2AC runs nothing but
     >disads to the counterplan, 2NC points out that  the disads refute the
     >claim of  net benefits,  thus proving the  counterplan noncompetetive
     >and causing it to "go away."  Under my scenario, a negative  can have
     >a  substantive  argument straight  turned and  make  it just  go away
     >without having to defend conditionality.

Again, the intuitive appeal  is "how unfair" but that last  only as long as
we  fail to remember the function of  competition.  When the affiramtive is
denying net benefits (as they would be doing in arguing disadvantages) they
are not "straight turning"  they are denying competition and  hence denying
relevance.   Competition responses are take-outs not turns.  Affirmative is
saying "there  is no  forced choice  between the plan  and the  counterplan
because there is no reason the counterplan alone or in combination with the
plan would  be better than  the plan."   This denies  the relevance  of the
counterplan.   Lets return to  food in order to  simplify (this is  for the
larger  audience,  not Matt).    Aff advocates  that  we should  get pizza.
Because we believe in parametrics/case focus, the value of getting pizza is
the  focus.   Negative says  that we  should get  ice cream.   That  has to
compete so neg says doing both would lead to an upset stomach.  Affirmative
has several sugar-based  disadvantages and turns the upset stomach argument
saying cold foods are worse.  These arguments, if won, prevent the negative
from  claiming ice cream  as a net  beneficial alternative, and  hence deny
competition.   Ice cream then becomes irrelevant because there is no reason
to compare it  to getting  pizza.   What sense does  it make,  in a  debate
focusing on the merits of getting pizza, for the harms of ice cream to have
continuing existence when they have  no relevance to getting pizza?   Aff's
aggressive  counter-attack  may  stylistically   resemble  turns  in  other
contexts (like disadvantages) but are functionally take-outs again in a way
that  comports with our culture's  comparative logic, not  just with debate
practice.
Which leaves us just  with the pragmatics implications of  Matt's scenario:
Negative has  the ability to make  aff's time and arguments  "just go away"
and  strategically shift  the meaning  of competition.   This  latter harm,
however,  much  more  easily  justify  a  stipulation  that  a  reason  for
competition is  a prima-facia part of  a counterplan and hence  needs to be
presented on  first hearing.  Even if this doesn't happen, however, I don't
see the injustice  in the counterplan  leaving the round.   The ability  to
dispositionally select arguments,  kicking out of some  based on take-outs,
is not an  ability that is enjoyed only by the negative (as the advocate of
the "big  stick" should remember).   Even if  there is some benefit  to the
counterplan which is  not reciprocated,  there are many  good things  about
being  affirmative, not  least of  them  being the  ability to  decide what
everyone will  talk about (refute, link to, compete with) during the round.


My argument is not that pragmatic concerns can never come  before the logic
of  the argument.    I  think  there are  instances  where  the  functional
imperative to  promote a debate that is fair and balanced would come before
the  need to rigorously explore  and obey the  logic of a  claim.  However,
before we make  such a  move, we would  want to ensure  that the  pragmatic
purpose  is compelling: the  lack of balance  created by the  type of claim
would have to be clearly manifest.  As long  as the toss of the coin before
outrounds is nearly always followed by "aff!" and the sound of two partners
high-fiving each other, I don't  believe we need to worry about  a negative
bias  that is extreme enough to ignore  the natural dispositionality of the
counterplan and the logical consequence of a won claim against competition,
which is at base a won claim against relevance.

                         Ken Broda-Bahm
                         SIUC--->Towson State
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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