In Defence of Moral Error Theory

Moral error theorists typically accept two claims - one conceptual and one ontological - about moral facts. The conceptual claim is that moral facts are or entail facts about categorical reasons (and correspondingly that moral claims are or entail claims about categorical reason); the ontological claim is that there are no categorical reasons-and consequently no moral facts-in reality. I accept this version of moral error theory and I try to unpack what it amounts to in section 2. In the course of doing so I consider two preliminary objections that moral error theory is (probably) false because its implications are intuitively unacceptable (what I call the Moorean objection) and that the general motivation for moral error theory is self-undermining in that it rests on a hidden appeal to norms. | Direct Link to PDF

Moral Minds: The Nature of Right and Wrong

THE CENTRAL IDEA of this book is simple: we evolved a moral instinct, a capacity that naturally grows within each child, designed to generate rapid judgments about what is morally right or wrong based on an unconscious grammar of action. Part of this machinery was designed by the blind hand of Darwinian selection millions of years before our species evolved; other parts were added or upgraded over the evolutionary history of our species, and are unique both to humans and to our moral psychology. These ideas draw on insightsfrom another instinct: language. | Direct Link to PDF (e-book)

Oxford Studies in Metaethics

The full book is available online for free:Oxford Studies in Metaethics is designed to collect, on an annual basis, some of the best new work being done in the field of metaethics. I’m very pleased to be able to present this third volume, one that has managed so successfully to fulfill the aims envisioned for the series. | Direct Link to Book

Moral Judgment

i. Moral rules are held to have an objective, prescriptive force; they are notdependent on the authority of any individual or institution.ii. Moral rules are taken to hold generally, not just locally; they not only proscribebehavior here and now, but also in other countries and at other times in history.iii. Violations of moral rules involve a victim who has been harmed, whose rightshave been violated, or who has been subject to an injustice.iv. Violations of moral rules are typically more serious than violations ofconventional rules. | Direct Link to PDF

Boredom? ADHD?

John Plotz in the New York Times: Their Noonday Demons, and Ours

These days, when we try to get a fix on our wasted time, we use labels that run from the psychological (distraction, “mind-wandering” or “top-down processing deficit”) to the medical (A.D.H.D., hypoglycemia) to the ethical (laziness, poor work habits). But perhaps “acedia” is the label we need. After all, it afflicted those whose pursuits prefigured the routines of many workers in the postindustrial economy. Acedia’s sufferers were engaged in solitary, sedentary, cerebral effort toward a clear final goal — but a goal that could be reached only by crossing an open, empty field with few signposts. The empty field is the monk’s day of spiritual contemplation in a cell besieged by the demon acedia — or your afternoon in a coffee shop with tiptop Wi-Fi.

via

Obama/Clinton?

Nobel Prize winner and former US Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, makes the case for the "natural" Obama/Clinton ticket in 2012:

Why do I say this? Because Obama needs to stir the passions and enthusiasms of a Democratic base that’s been disillusioned with his cave-ins to regressive Republicans. Hillary Clinton on the ticket can do that.

via

The Boundaries of Justice

The overarching concern in the idea of justice is the need to have just relations with others—and even to have appropriate sentiments about others; and what motivates the search is the diagnosis of injustice in ongoing arrangements. In some cases, this might demand the need to change an existing boundary of sovereignty—a concern that motivated Hume’s staunchly anti-colonial position. (He once remarked, “Oh! How I long to see America and the East Indies revolted totally & finally.”) Or it might relate to the Humean recognition that as we expand trade and other relations with foreign countries, our sentiments as well as our reasoning have to take note of the recognition that “the boundaries of justice still grow larger,” without the necessity to place all the people involved in our conception of justice within the confines of one sovereign state.

Amartya Sen, in The National Review, "The Boundaries of Justice."

What Position Will Win the TOC?

First, I just want to give a shout-out to the Mountain Brook tournament in Birmingham. This is the second year I've been, and once again the hospitality and timeliness have been exceptional. Jeff Roberts really goes out of his way to bring good judges to the tournament and put on a good show (and the MB students do a great job keeping things running). If you live in the South and don't make it to this tournament, you're missing out!On to the substance of today's post: what position will win the TOC?

I'll try not to answer my own question (since I'm more interested in others' thoughts), but I will say this: debaters are doing themselves a strategic disservice by running away from the plausibly true positions on this topic. I describe the loss as a "strategic" one, because I'm reasonably certain that no one will be persuaded by pedagogical risks.

The debates that start off on dubious premises (thanks to ridiculous case positions) almost always become side-tracked by theoretical and procedural questions that can rarely be resolved predictably. This is especially true in elimination rounds against strong competitors—the marginal utility of a "non-stock" position is significantly diminished when assured that your opponent will either shift the debate to theory or respond with an even more "outside the box" argument. The race to the bottom of absurdity can quickly become a counterproductive exercise, or one that at best terminates in a coin-flip decision.

While I hesitate to make any predictions, I certainly hope that high-level debates will explore the contextually unique accounts of self-defense that tend to permeate this topic in real-world discussion. I believe that the most researched account of this issue can and should take center stage. Off-the-wall positions may be decisive in prelims and lesser tournaments, but the most consistently and universally successful positions are true ones.

What do you expect to see come out on top?

Three Judging Practices That Need To Stop by Adam Torson

All of these practices are tempting, but a moment’s reflection should suggest to most judges that they are inappropriate.

1. Speaker Point Games

Enough with the paradigms that promise increased speaker points for goofy behavior. You might think it’s hysterical to promise a thirty for bringing you a cookie, saying “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” or dancing a jig, but it’s not. Judging is not about you – the debaters aren’t there for your entertainment.

If it were harmless fun nobody would care, but speaker points matter. They affect who you debate in prelims (especially later in a tournament when brackets are smaller), whether you break, and out-round seeding. On more than one occasion I have seen a speaker point game change who breaks and who doesn’t. It’s not fair, and it should stop.

2. Berating Debaters

A certain amount of irritation at poorly debated rounds is natural, but it’s stunning how often judges go way over the top. Expressing outrage at the state of debate or the obnoxiousness of some particular practice may be cathartic, but it’s hardly constructive. Getting angry and berating debaters is self-indulgent; the oral critique is not about your anger. It is reprehensible to be proud of making a debater cry.

Sometimes anger is appropriate, as when a debater is rude or patently offensive, but this is relatively rare. Yelling at someone because they made an argument you don’t like suggests a dramatic lack of perspective – the kids are learning what a good argument is, people have different views on what a good argument is, and students are coached in different ways. The RFD is not about showing off how smart you are or how much you know about debate. Get over yourself and make your comments constructive. You are not entitled to adjudicate a tournament full of mistake free rounds.

3. Calling Tons of Evidence

Everyone seems to want debaters to be clearer, but many of us engage in a practice that incentivizes exactly the opposite. The debaters’ opportunity to effectively convey the meaning of their evidence is the constructive. Figuring out what evidence means after the round and making it part of the decision calculus is blatant intervention. There are judges who routinely call virtually every argument read in the round and reconstruct their flow on that basis. Give me a break.

I suspect this is mostly motivated by ego – none of us likes to admit that we didn’t understand an argument. But – I feel like a broken record – it’s not about you. It is unfair and pedagogically unsound to vote for arguments you straight up don’t understand – even more so when you are doing things like supplying evidence comparison for the debaters. Have enough courage to admit when you don’t get something, even at the risk of teenagers thinking you’re not as smart as they otherwise would.

**SPOILERS** Breaking Bad - Final 3 Ep. Predictions

Click the title to go directly to a discussion about Breaking Bad. 

Live from the Collegiate Round Robin

Click the title to go straight to vb3. Post your updates there. 

Changing Our Minds by Jake Nebel

I think debaters are particularly bad at changing their minds. This includes former debaters who have already graduated -- including me. I suspect that current LD norms encourage debaters not to change their minds for a few reasons.Some of those reasons have to do with in-round norms. Because you have to defend both sides of the resolution effectively, you might conclude that you can argue effectively for any position, so it doesn’t matter whether your position is right (or that there is no “right”). Some people think that good strategy is a function of coming up with the greatest number of arguments, so many debaters learn how to rationalize, not how to think rationally. (Rationalizing is when you come up with reasons to defend your opinion after already forming an opinion.) And you can’t switch sides in the middle of a round, so you’re used to defending your advocacy until the end. Also, if you think your opponents’ arguments are bad, then you’ll be more confident that you’re right, and this confidence can help you in rebuttals. But thinking poorly of everything your opponent says, no matter what they say, may lead you to think that no one has ever given you a good reason to change your mind.

Other reasons have to do with community norms. I used to feel like changing my mind about some issue is a sign of weakness in the LD world, so that changing my mind about something I defended publicly or to my friends would show that I was weak. The LD community, I think, is at least as concerned with status as any other social community. Status gets you respect and “rep,” which may (unfortunately) help you (a) win over impressionable judges and (b) gain allies who help you prepare by giving advice, information, or files. I think we should try to minimize the importance of status in LD, but insofar as status is important now, there may be strong pressure against changing your mind.

Why is it bad if we’re bad at changing our minds?

1. Being good at updating your beliefs in light of new evidence will win you more rounds. Issue selection is largely about conceding arguments that you’re losing. Although argument quantity is a factor here, the toughest debates require close calls based on argument quality: you have to figure out where you and your opponent are each most likely to be correct or incorrect. If you’re bad at changing your mind, then you’ll be bad at making those kinds of judgments. That’s because you won’t be used to thinking about whether you’re actually right or wrong. Debaters who are good at changing their minds are also good at pre-round preparation, since they make better decisions about which arguments are good. If you never admit that your idea was not as strategic as you thought, then your positions won’t be very strategic.

2. Changing your mind is key to being rational and having productive disagreements in life. If you treat out-of-round disagreements as debate rounds, then you’ll be irrationally stubborn, and you'll rationalize to avoid admitting defeat. Rationalizing is bad because those reasons don’t really explain why you have that opinion, so it doesn’t advance the conversation to focus on those reasons. It’s also bad because you’re more likely to be right if you form an opinion after considering all the evidence, assuming you do a good job of considering the evidence.

3. We want judges to evaluate arguments impartially and rationally. Judges who are bad at changing their minds are bad at making fair decisions. They may decide who to vote for early in the debate and only later come up with a reason for decision. Judges may do this because, as debaters, they learned how to be expert rationalizers.

4. Changing our minds is particularly important for progress in debate theory. Theory is the ethics of LD, and people’s views about what LD should look like affect what LD in fact looks like. Everyone should want to improve their theoretical views, but stubbornness prevents us from making progress in debate theory. If we all changed our minds about theoretical issues more often, then LD would be a better activity -- more fair, and better at developing the skills that we should value (whatever those happen to be).

What do you think? Do you think debate makes us bad at changing our minds? Do you think that’s a problem? If so, what can we do to improve?

The Six Truths Judges Will Never Admit

The Six Truths Judges Will Never AdmitBy: Sasha Arijanto and Cory Wynn

Ask any debater, coach, or parent and they’ll say debate should be a fair, objective, quality activity where debaters are evaluated by their performances in round. Yes, ideally this activity would run off educated and objective judges, but it is a mistake to believe that distracted college freshmen and rigid 10th grade teachers are completely apt blank slates. To help you in your realistic-adapting endeavor here’s a list of tips to demystify yourself of the myths debaters want to believe about their judges, in other words, the six truths that judges will never admit.

1. They can’t actually take your speed

Most judges probably flow about as well as you do.  If that doesn’t give you pause, then you probably actually flow better than most of your judges. Speed is relative to experience, region, and content and even a positive answer to the question “Can you handle speed?” confirms only that a judge will not admit a deficiency.  And when you factor in the facts that you’re only flowing about half of the time because you know what you’re going to argue, you’re much more familiar with the arguments on the topic, and that no matter how clear you think you are you are clearer to yourself than you ever will be to a third party, some of your arguments are going to get lost between their inception in your brain and the recapitulation in the after-round RFD.

It’s a step in the right direction to ask if a judge will yell “clear,” but judges have egos too. Whether they’re an older judge who may have not debated so quickly or a second-year out with a less than stellar career finish, most judges are embarrassed to yell “clear” to eager and precocious young debaters.  And if they actually do, you should probably be embarrassed by how unclear you’re being. By the time a judge has yelled clear they have already missed something.

2. They haven’t been judging in a while

Never underestimate the power of familiarity with a topic. Knowing the topic’s literature, history, active authors, and common arguments will give you a huge advantage over your opponent, but the “curse of knowledge” translates to disadvantage if you leave your judge scratching her head. A confused listener is never a convinced one.

Before you start slinging acronyms, author names, buzz words and abbreviated argument labels, be sure a judge is familiar with them or take the time to actually explain an argument before assuming a judge knows what you’re talking about. Other than the risky move of straight asking how familiar they are with a topic, consider what their team has been running if they are a coach, look up what tournaments and how many they have already judged on the topic, and ask other debaters whom they have judged how familiar they seemed in the RFD and what arguments were ran in the rounds. Because without the proper background knowledge, ICC, TRC, and HIPC are just random letters.

3. They have an idea of who they’re voting for before the end of the round

While most judges are not consciously using reputation (“rep”) to make win/loss decisions, it takes a serious smack down to have a judge give a win to a sophomore newcomer over a senior who broke at the TOC last year. Don’t give your judge any excuse to not vote for you, so in-round and out-of-round dominance is essential.

4. They have their own opinions

We wish judges could check their political leanings at the door, but there’s a reason why on most topics the general debate crowd finds more truth in one side. That preference doesn't necessarily translate into decisions, but with lay judges and TOC-tier “tab” stars, keeping a pulse on the pre-conceptions the judge brings to the round can pay off. Play to the beliefs a judge holds and you have already begun to exploit the truth that lies in the topic.

5. Their paradigms are outdated and obtuse.

Walking into a round without having read a judge’s readily available paradigm makes you careless. Believing that paradigm 100% accurately reflects the judge’s decision making process makes you foolish. A judge’s wiki he made the moment he was out at the TOC does not carry over 2, 6, 8 years into his judging career. Most paradigmatic details are from particular situations and don’t even represent a general judging attitude but a one-off event they may have felt particularly emotional about.  These scarring moments probably happened toward the beginning of their judging experience or even a bitter round they lost as a debater.

Clarify important paradigmatic points before the round and try to give scenarios that would help suss out how they actually apply their written paradigm when they judge a round. And if you aren’t sure, reference the paradigm during a round to hold them to their points.

6. They aren’t in the right mind

If you think tournaments are fun as a debater, your mind will be blown when you realize how fun they are as a judge.  No, not because judging debaters is especially enthralling, but because tournaments represent a break from our daily lives of studying and taking tests and give us an opportunity to see friends we don’t get to see more than a few times a year.  Unfortunately the symptoms of such enjoyable weekends include exhaustion from staying up with friends and working late with their debaters and nerves or discontent about how their debaters will do the next day. Even events in the day or round can distract judges and keep them off their A game.

I (Sasha) once had a judge who left the room during prep to answer a call, as judges often do to tend to business, get water, or check on their debaters. When he returned we continued the round as normal and when I lost, I commenced the routine after-round questioning, only for the judge to admit that during his exit he had received emotionally disturbing news and hadn’t paid attention for the rest of the round.

Clearly you cannot control for this sort of situation, but your keen perception of a judge’s attention can help you know when your words are sticking or simply flying over head.

Now, obviously, not every point is a steadfast rule that applies to every judge, so tips you can get from other debaters and your own judgment (no pun intended) are your best allies. Make sure to approach every round with a skeptical mind, focusing on closing doors and keeping the round simple. Judges are doing their best to follow along and adjudicate, but remember, judges are humans, too!

And as another bonus, one extra truth.

7. There are bad policy judges too

This one’s a little bit of a stickler. Familiar with that moment when upon reading a schem some kid goes around asking people about whatever John Doe they have judging her bubble round and as soon as they hear “policy judge” or “he did policy in high school” or “he has a background in policy” and the kid stops asking as if that policy association is an end-all be-all marker of judge competence? There are bad policy judges, just like there are bad LD judges.

10 Things You Don't Know You're Doing That Really Annoy Your Judges

10 Things You Don't Know You're Doing That Really Annoy Your JudgesBy: Cory Wynn and Kyle Allen-Niesen

You may think that you’re pretty awesome. You might even be awesome, but you still probably do things in rounds that you aren’t even aware of that really annoy your judges.  Unless you know how your judges think or you are Winston Churchill, and practice each speech a billion times in front of a mirror, odds are you probably do at least a few of these important don’ts. If you can’t seem to crack the speaker point code, or live in the desert of 27s and 28s, then it might be because you do some of these things:

1. You start your timer like it's the beginning of a horse race.Swinging your arms through the air doesn’t make time pass any slower. Not only does it make you look incredibly silly, but also often causes you to start speaking far quicker than you should be.
2. You act like you’re super close with the judge.You may think you’re playing mind games with your opponent when you schmooze with the judge before the round, but the only person you’re hurting is yourself.  Trying to appear close to your judge makes him or her uncomfortable, especially in a round where your opponent doesn’t have the same kind of relationship.  (Also, if you really cared about us, you would have asked how we were doing before we were judging your round... It’s really hurtful :[ )
3. You steal prep-time.This should be really obvious, but don’t steal prep time.  That means stopping your timer before you pull out your papers, organize documents, or drink water. Not only is it unfair to your opponent, but it also wastes the judge’s time.  And obviously that doesn’t make the judge happy.
4. You use a computer without a hard copy or a flash drive.This sort of follows from the “don’t steal prep time” commandment, but it takes FOREVER to transfer files during round, and it creates unnecessary dead space which can annoy the judge. On the other side, if they do have a flash drive, don’t ask for the AC to be flashed, with all files in one document, in reverse alphabetical and chronological order. It’s not that hard to open multiple documents.
5. You tap your foot so loudly that your judge can’t hear anything you’re reading.No, its not because you’re unclear. (Well, it might be…) It’s because I can’t hear you over the sound of your jackhammer foot crashing into the ground every other word. I’m not sure where this trend started, but I can tell you it needs to stop.  It’s fine if you are using it to help you keep a rhythm, but there’s no need to stomp so loudly. Not only will the people in the room below you appreciate your using a softer touch, but it will also help your judge to focus and understand your arguments. Also, to the random-stompers, what gives?????
6. You blatantly lie about how far you are ahead in the debate.It’s fine to say that an argument was dropped when it really was, but claiming that your opponent failed to answer your entire contention when they clearly made responses not only frustrates your judge, but also makes the round far more confusing. When you are losing an argument, don’t lie about it and act overly confident.  Reevaluate your other arguments, figure out another way to win and go for it.  Don’t just pretend your opponent just stared silently at the judge for the past seven minutes.
7. You show up late to rounds.You want to prep before the round with your coaches and pairings were just posted five minutes ago! I get it, but that is no reason to keep the entire room waiting.  While you might think that stealing an extra few minutes to prep will really make all the difference, it frustrates your judges and slows down the tournament. Be considerate, and if you really need to meet with your coaches, make sure you do it quickly (and don’t walk in with your entourage 40 minutes late, Johnny Drama.)
8. You give excessively long road maps.“Start on the AC on contention two, then move to contention one, then up to the framework.  Then go to the cross application of contention three to the disad.  And after that, then go to the overview on my shell, then go to his theory argument and then topicality.  Oh yeah! And voters throughout...wait…Actually its going to be the T debate and then his theory, then my theory. Then go to the AC on contention three with the cross application to the disad, then my framework, contention one, down the case. Ready?”
   What?
9. You show up to rounds unprepared.Knowing most debaters, you probably have a ton of stuff to get ready to debate. You need to pre-flow, and, wait, sorry, we forgot to write anything more for this section.  Give us a few minutes?
   Okay, thanks for waiting.  See how annoying that was?
10. You immediately ask the judge if they need to see any evidence after the round.Look, we get it.  Maybe you asked for the judge to call for the evidence, or you just didn’t want to have to get it back out of your expando after you just packed up.  But asking if he or she wants to see the evidence is kind of annoying when you are trying to make a decision, not to mention the fact that you presume that he or she didn’t get it the first time.

It might seem a little crazy to attribute ten random, annoying and common practices to your current speaker point dilemma or your win to loss ratio, but keep in mind, that the judge is still human and that annoyances still factor into decisions subconsciously. And regardless, many of these types of practices can also play a role on how you debate substantively!

Try these out in your next round and let us know how it goes! And other judges: what annoys you in round?

And one bonus annoying thing you might do in round:

11. You start your questions after the round with “didn't you think”…No. We didn’t think that…