Here's a transcript from a recent conversation in the Ace Peak Society.

Ainsley

Thank you so much for the wonderful camp! I am curious to hear your opinion on topical CPs (you touched on them very briefly yesterday). Do you think they can ever be justified? 

Coach Joseph

Good question! These two definitions are at the heart of debate theory: 

• Resolution: a true/false statement that is evaluated by a vote.

• Resolutionism: the theory that an affirmative ballot supports the resolution, and a negative ballot negates it.

If you take that away, formal debate collapses. You can still have informal debate, like when you get into a political argument with a friend. But that is only possible because you were lucky enough to find someone who disagreed with you and was willing to debate you.

To have a series of rounds in a tournament where people prepare in advance, and then are matched against each other, and give a series of speeches testing their ideas against each other, there MUST be a resolution. And people MUST be assigned positions on that resolution. If there are two pro-resolution teams in the round, you can create the illusion of disagreement, but it's all flash and no substance. It winds up being more like a series of platform speeches.

Everything comes back to the resolution. So: no, barring once-in-a-lifetime scenarios (like the judge opening their judging philosophy by demanding the neg affirm the res), it is never a viable strategy to run a topical counterplan.

Ainsley

Right, that totally makes sense. For the purpose of playing devil’s advocate/exploring theory ideas, what do you think of the argument in defense of topical CPs that the resolution of the year is not the same as the resolution of the round? More specifically, that the neg doesn’t have to disprove that The USFG should considerably decrease its military commitments, they only have to show that the Aff plan should not be passed. By that logic, the neg isn’t upholding the Aff advocacy by running a topical CP, they are changing their advocacy from the SQ to an alternate plan that solves the problems proposed by the Aff in a more effective way. (This is assuming that the two team’s plans are mutually exclusive, of course.)

Coach Joseph 

Really good thoughts here, Ainsley. First, this conversation strikes at the most fundamental level of debate theory. At this level, it is impossible to say something is definitively correct. You can't prove anything because all of it rests on this. It's the Prime Mover of debate.

So whether you use resolutionism or planism or parametrics or something else, it is ultimately an arbitrary decision. You can throw out some models for being incoherent or unfair, but at the end of the day, when you do pick a model, you have to say, I choose this because it produces the best debates. No one is wrong for disagreeing. That said, I have a very strong preference for resolutionism because coherent debate is impossible without it.

In the resolutionist model, everything is evaluated in terms of the burden of proof. If you make a positive statement that falls outside common knowledge, it needs proof. Since the resolution falls outside, it needs the affirmative team to provide proof in the form of a logical syllogism, AKA a debate case. The entire reason for the existence of the affirmative case is as a form of proof for the resolution. The negative case does the opposite, it is a logical syllogism concluding that the resolution is false. Within that structure, all other arguments have a place and a meaning. They compete against each other. Perhaps most exciting, you can track the impact stream from every argument back to the resolution. Why does this matter? Because of this, therefore that, therefore the resolution is true or false.

If you back away from that, yes, it is possible to have disagreement, but you lose the ability to have cases that are meaningful logical syllogisms building toward a conclusion. You lose the concept of impact stream. Arguments no longer have any purpose. It is contrarianism masquerading as counterpoint.

And the attempts to fix that problem are all woefully inadequate. Fairness and arbitrary shape-shifting burdens are sad substitutes for robust logical competition.

There's a lot to be said about Planism and this response is already getting lengthy. A few quick thoughts:

• Planism means that the burden of the negative changes every round based on what their opponents decide.

• Planism can only policy debates. It is flabbergasted by value or fact debates (for example, the resolution of the round has now become the aff's value-centric case; the neg decides to run an affirmative application-centric case to counter it). By contrast, Resolutionism has the same strong foundation no matter what.

• Under planism there is no non-kritik way to impact topicality. If the resolution of the round is just whatever plan the affirmative produces, the only way to run topicality is to complain about fairness. 

• Planism falls apart if the policy resolution is not specific, like "It would be good to order most of the things on this menu."

Without an impact stream, both sides have to cooperate closely to create the illusion of debate. Effectively, the affirmative agrees to run a topical plan because it would be annoying not to, and the negative agrees to argue against that plan because, well, they came all this way. But again, because I can't stress this enough: if there is no stable resolution, there is no impact. Instead of refutation, you have a state of being disagreeable.

There is no definitive answer here. All models are preference and some people prefer planism and that's allowed. What do you think? Does planism appeal to you?

Danielle 

I have been researching topical CP theory for the past several months, and of all the coaches and blog posts I’ve heard from, that explanation makes the most sense. Personally, I strongly prefer resolutionism for its elegance and clarity. However, I’m not sure how to use this information in a round. I have used resolutionism to argue against topical CPs three times, the first time it brought us a definitive win, the second time it was ignored, and the third time I received an automatic loss for my “fundamental misunderstanding of debate theory”. Arguing resolutionism against topical CPs seems like a very risky strategy, but does that mean I should never use it? How would you recommend dealing with a topical counter plan in a round? 

Ainsley

Yes, that does definitely make sense! I was just exploring these ideas as thought experiments because I have little experience with CPs. Your point that resolutionism is the only really viable way to address debate makes a lot of sense. I have heard/thought of several other justifications for topical CPs but none of them are as strong as your defense of resolutionism (e.g. that the best policy should be passed and that the Aff had the opportunity to choose the CP but didn’t, that the Aff has so many options for advocacy so the neg should have much more than just the SQ to chose from, that just because the Neg affirms the res doesn’t mean the Aff has successfully proven it true, etc.) So this big picture perspective is really helpful to hear. Thank you!!

Coach Joseph 

Great to hear Ainsley! I love that you're doing a deep dive into this topic. Keep us posted if you find anything cool. And of course, if you hit a topical CP in a round, be sure to let us know how it went. 

Danielle, how you handle topical CPs as aff varies depending on the judge. In general, the simplicity of resolutionism gives you a big advantage. You just need to fight to maintain clarity.

• "We accept the entire previous speech and we welcome our former opponents over to the affirmative side." 

• "Vote for either case - we have no preference. The main thing is, we all agree that the resolution is true." 

• "Take a look at the top of your ballot. It says the resolution right there. The ballot asks: do you affirm it or negate it? And fortunately, we all agree that you should."

As long as you're disciplined with your rhetoric, the coherence of your position should carry you to a clean win in front of most community and parent judges. With college students, alumni, and coaches, you'll have to adapt more precisely. The judging philosophy should give you some good ideas.

If you're an Air-element speaker (more on this at Persona Camp), you might get mileage out of antics like:

• "There are some serious problems in the status quo. Affirmative team 1 pointed that out, and affirmative team 2 agreed."

• (turns to aff #2) "Hey, there's some extra room at our table if you want to pull your chairs over."

Two more powerful techniques:

1. Don't throw the rules at your opponents, even implicitly. It's not that they CAN'T do what they're doing. It's that they totally CAN and you're glad they did.

2. Adamantly refuse to raise your fists. The negative will keep trying to prove that their model works by creating the illusion of conflict. But there is no conflict. Don't disagree with anything except the impact of their case. Keep it short and simple.

One more thing. There are some judges who are predisposed to topical CPs - some to such an extent that resolutionism may not be persuasively viable. Judges from highly-technical leagues often fall into this category. Often it's because they want to FEEL SMART. This draws them to convoluted theory even if they have to give up coherence. The harder it is to understand, the smarter they feel for being able to keep up. 

Always adapt to the judge. If your judge loves topical counterplans, let them have their fun and beat the CP on competitiveness.

Danielle

I argued it in a similar way to how I would argue topicality against an obviously off-topic aff. It was the most important argument in the round, but it was still just one argument. I would then continue on to argue against the CP. Your explanation makes a lot more sense. In a way, I was almost proving myself wrong by supporting a strong clash right after explaining why resolutionism is the only way to clash effectively.

Your judge explanation makes a lot of sense as well. The only judge my resolutionism argument worked positively on was a parent. The second judge was a coach, and the third was a competitor at a practice tournament. I will pay closer attention to my type of judge next time I try to run this argument. 

Coach Joseph

Sounds good Danielle. Keep up the good work!

Danielle

Thanks! Would you consider posting your answer in your blog? It would make it much easier to share with my friends. 

Ainsley

That would be really nice...

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