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Re: Narratives and the use in debate

Steve describes the narrative with much greater clarity than previous 
posts have. I understand the point now - but two fundamental objections 
remain.

A) The narrative provides no clear advocacy - a plan is necessary to 
provide fair ground division.

B) The arguments for the narrative are tautological.

Just thought that I would use this format to address Prof. Meany's 
concerns :)

On the A subpoint...

Steve's description of the narrative as advocacy for an implied change 
makes more sense than the previous postings (Gehrke) that implied it was 
a fundamental rejection of our decision making and debating. However, 
"should" still denotes a policy topic - something we can all agree on I 
think. In Steve's world the change that is advocated is contained inside 
of a story - it is the job of the negative I assume to pull it out to 
refute it. What is the negative supposed to do - research competing 
stories? Spend time reading fiction and short story novels to find a good 
narrative to counter "Space Traders"? Additionally, indeterminate 
advocacy makes the job of an opposing team infinitely harder...the risk 
of a strategy being completely clashless is high - and I am inclined to 
say that it isn't the opponents fault. 

To take a step back, what is the narrative exactly advocating? Some sort 
of change? The example of "Space Traders" that Steve cites doesn't help 
me much - what choice? how does it save millions? I would be inclined to 
say that an affirmative that fails to specify a policy would probably end 
up haveing to defend the whole resolution - which is something that I 
would like to avoid.  

Go to the B subpoint....

Steve's description of how the judge makes a decision is "whoever tells 
the better story." This is begging the question. Why do "stories" take 
precedence over other developed arguments? A combination of arguments is 
woven into a "story" by both teams in any debate round - I fail to 
understand how the "evidence" provided by a narrative is more persuasive 
than factual evidence presented so as to form a cohesive argument. In my 
mind there's no reason narrative fidelity and consistency are better 
served by abandoning the task of weaving a story that is factually 
descriptive for one that is merely illustrative.

Steve's description is that the narrative is a way to prove the need for 
change - which means that it is merely a different form of evidence. I 
don't see how that absolves him of having to specify what that change 
would be or responding to evidence (stories writ small?) an opponent 
might use to answer him.

I don't think "the narrative" is anything special - I think that some 
people think its bigger than it is. It seems to me to be nothing more 
than a different way to prove claims true - evidence.

Aaron Klemz
SMS Debate

PS => Didn't Fisher specifically say that the narrative format was 
inappropriate for academic debate?
References:
Archive created by Jonathan Stanton (jonathan@cs.jhu.edu)
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