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Pat and ADA

how is it that some debate educators have so little understanding and 
regard for debate?  rules destroy arguments.

there is a different way to see it, though.

Pat, when the postmodern moves the Ground from Truth to Opinion, it 
equivocates Power with Argument.  look at the basis of your claims: if there is 
no "objective" standard by which to gauge our beliefs, if it is merely a question 
of "Does It Convince?" then Argument becomes a species of Power.  if i am 
asked "how do i convince?"  then my answer is a simple one:  by words, by 
baseball bats, by thugs, by policemen, by propaganda, by lies, by stories, by 
music, by seducing, by threatening, by rules, in short by Power via the available 
means of exercising it.  and why is it not that the Enlightenment merely 
"privileges" rationality over murder as an exercise of Power?

this is not to say that arguments do not entail power, of course they 
do:  arguing opens one's thinking to challenges in a situation of mutual 
vulnerability.  the value of debate is not, however, in the teaching of yet another 
means to power:  debate teaches a way of knowing.  an argument makes a claim 
about the world, it presents the data which support that claim, and it offers the 
warrant connecting the two.  now, a commitment to science/rationality 
is a dual commitment to the nature of the data and warrants which will create our 
claims:  "objective" data and "rational" warrants will inform our claims best.
this is a fundamentally different concept of debate:  the gauge of an 
argument's "effectiveness" is not "how much Power to change our and 
others' beliefs does it contain?"  but is rather "how well does the 
data track the facts, how well do the warrants move from data to 
claims, and are the resultant claims true?".  one of the "contradictions" of the 
postmodern is that the very DISTRUST of power that motivates it is 
used to JUSTIFY it:  the "failure" of the enlightenment is its lack 
of faith in itself.

and the "enlightened" concept of debate collapses as one's commitment to 
"objectivity" collapses.  if there is nothing but opinions, then the proper function 
of arguments becomes the exercise of power over those opinions.  if there is Truth,
however, then arguments are the best way we have found in 10,000 years of 
exploration to get at IT:  and to hell with opinions.

in any case, Mr. Gehrke, your post is AWESOME for many reasons.  but 
the problem in it seems to me that you are privileging discourse over 
rules as a means to POWER:  good arguments, but your ground is squishy.  i 
would privilege discourse over rules as a means to KNOWING:  my arguments 
may not be as convincing, but my ground is rock.  in short, a baseball bat could 
well be a great tool to convince, but it is a lousy tool to get at the Truth.

thank you for reading,
:) michael korcok :)
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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