Broken Beyond Repair Intrinsicness: Theory Headed for Collision

Michael Mankins, University of Kentucky

1984 - Waging War on Poverty

It has been argued, and no doubt will continue to be countless times in the future, that our planet sits at the juncture of two cross-roads, on the brink, at a precipice. One fork, it is maintained, will lead mankind to "the end of -poverty, unemployment, and human misery," and the other will dislodge him from this precarious perch and hurl him into the abyss of thermonuclear flames. It is when these dichotomous oaths are forged into one--when economic growth becomes disastrous ,liberty becomes tyranny, and black becomes white--that one begins at last to realize that he has abandoned the archetypal "real world" (whatever that is) and has entered the realm of competitive high school debate. As argumentation becomes more and more developed and stylized, debaters' lines of argumentation become increasingly divorced from political reality. One example of this trend is the direction in which debate theorists, and more importantly, practitioners, have taken the concept of intrinsicness, both in terms of disadvantages and counterplan competitiveness burdens. Continually one notices debaters smugly tossing aside huge chunks of argumentation with the simple phrase, "this isn't intrinsic to the resolution, we could minor repair." The purpose of this article is not to provide a normative guideline for determining whether high school debate (or any other form of forensics for that matter) has gone too far astray--clearly, the college experience with such "normative guidelines" should provide some presumptive value to abandoning that line of reasoning. Rather, it is to examine some of the strategic ploys which seem to permeate this--our--activity. More specifically, I hope to probe the issue of intrinsicness, as it relates both to disadvantages and counterplan advantages, and to provide some useful insights into this area.

Disadvantage Intrinsicness

The concept of intrinsicness is grounded in the ideal that the resolution should represent a necessary and sufficient causal factor from which advantages are accrued and disadvantages result. In this respect, intrinsicness stems from the inherency burden placed upon the affirmative (more or less absolutely, however the case may be). For those who hold this view, just as the affirmative must gain its advantage from a necessary and sufficient action of the resolution, so too must the negative's disadvantages stem from similar conditions. This definition of inherency is largely a byproduct of the hypothesis-testing paradigm for debate.1 Under this format, at least as currently formulated, necessary and sufficient conditions are simply a means to introduce causal dynamics into the model. However, the notion of necessary and sufficient conditions has become more of an albatross hung upon affirmative teams than the infusion of scientific rigors into debate. With the extension of these burdens to negative plan objections, the weight becomes all the more prohibitive. This theory has evolved to such a degree as to place similar burdens of necessity and sufficiency upon disadvantages. As it is argued, if the resolution isn't the unique causal factor in stimulating the chain reaction embodied in the disadvantage, the plan attack is simply unacceptable. For example, if a negative team argues that Poverty employment programs, of any sort, result in a New Right Backlash--that is, that neoconservative political groups would be strengthened politically by the negative reaction generated by the Plan, resulting in tyranny and Political repression--the affirmative would have a host of alternative mechanisms at its disposal with which to alleviate the problem. It could simply implement quiescent countermeasures to Placate the right-wing political actors, or it could take the direct approach, as I have heard done, and simply "ban the New Right." From a theoretical standpoint any of these alternatives would be acceptable; however, from a Dolitical perspective probably none of these options hold much promise for adoption.

Intrinsicness and "Political Reality"

This sort of argumentation would seem to abandon Political reality altogether. Philippe Van Parijs sees our current political svstem as a Janus of sorts--with one face looking forward, and the other looking backward. One face, the forward-looking or pure case as Van Parijs calls it, is a model or political decision-making which states that the agent's action is a subjectively rational outcome of a decision process in which all the varying alternatives are weighed with different consequences ascribed to them.2 The guiding principle in the final decision, under this case, is the maximization of "utility",--in debate terminology, :net benefits--for all involved in the final decision and not solely those responsible for the decision. This brand of political logic needs to be compared with the scheme of politics which dominates our system of Congressional policy-making, most notably the degenerate case. In this second or backward-looking 'face," the political agent or actor merely executes a program which he has already learned, without deliberation--a preconceived bias of sorts towards that which he has already attempted. It is this continual re-implementation of the status quo which all but petrifies political conversion.3 In a world dominated by the latter face of degenerate politics, it seems unlikely that Congressmen or Senators would take such radical steps as full-campaign funding or 'banning the New Right." Unless such minor repairs or alternative mechanisms are within the spectrum of political possibility it appears to be pragmatically ridiculous to consider them. Worse yet, to allow entire portions of negative speech time to be discarded on the basis of such casual suggestions seems on face to be unreasonable. To grant the affirmative such exclusive rights to fiat over the resolution and non-resolution serves little theoretical value and is, I believe, pragmatically destructive to the debate process.

The socio-scientific justifications for intrinsicness, offered by those few remaining hypothesis-testers, are unprophetic, if not overly simplistic. Certainly, one can maintain that "theoretically these minor repairs would not be employed simply to junk-up debates," but as, in practice, they are rarely developed beyond a hollow shell of argumentation, this "theoretical" perspective is, alas, unpersuasive. Indeed, the burden of intrinsic disadvantages would seem to allow the plan to be tested in the best of all possible worlds--a Utopia which Thomas More or Charles Fourier could have never imagined possible. The laboratory in which the debaters are permitted to perform their "test" of the resolution is far too sterile--every bit of clutter which the political system presents as obstacles to plan implementation neatly stored away or eliminated with the adjunct of minor repairs. It is difficult to understand exactly how an "experiment" (if that is what we are supposed to be doing) performed in this type of germ-free environment could possibly be replicated in the Political, often tumultuous, climate of real world decision-making. Like David, the boy raised in the plastic bubble, the plan's "immunity system" must eventually be examined in response to real world stimulus. Policymakers, when confronted with a choice of political systems, do not evaluate them in a vacuum; rather, they measure the marginal costs and benefits of the system based upon how it might operate in the external world as it is currently constructed--or would most probably exist after plan implementation not upon how they might like it to be constructed. Although I would hardly be one to claim that debate in any way reflects real world politics, it seems reasonable, at least in part, to proximate our discussion as closely as possible to the world outside the twenty-by-thirty-foot classroom where each debate takes place. At least if one team needs to taper its advocacy to a politically feasible frontier, so, too, should the other team also be constrained.

Fairness: The Case for whining

The concept of intrinsicness, as currently argued and formulated, has the potential to destroy huge quantities, if not all, of negative ground. The irreparable disadvantage is a dying breed, if it is not altogether extinct, and as alternative mechanisms are permitted to become increasingly abstract and counter-intuitive, the affirmative can conceivably minor repair anything and everything. As a result, there is no disadvantage ground left to the negative from which to argue against the plan and/or its adoption. Additionally, lack of any clear-cut constraints placed upon minor repair usage enables intrinsicness positions to be shifted from speech to speech. The plan in essence becomes a moving target, altering itself in form and content with every speech until the final rebuttal when time constraints dictate that this transformation become complete. Indeed, the potential for such infinite regression is quite great and when combined with the incentive of competitive victory the use of the intrinsicness strategy is sure to increase in the future. As soon as a repair is offered as a means of alleviating the disadvantage the negative has an opportunity to advance attacks (either in the form of a disadvantage or plan-meet-need) against it, which of course, could be subsequently repaired and that repair again attacked as disadvantageous, and on and on until the second affirmative rebuttalist ends the competition with one last onslaught of minor repairs which would remain unarguable since only the affirmative is granted the luxury of the last speech. Consequently, nothing would remain truly arguable--in the sense that positions could not be advanced and advocated as presented from beginning to end. The plan becomes a labyrinth of argumentation held together by a hodge-podge of Band-Aid like appendages stuck on in later affirmative speeches (more resembling an advertisement for adhesive bandages or Scotch Tape than a package of adoptable legislation). It would seem theoretically justified to reverse the entire intent of the plan's provisions if necessary in order to come up with a satisfactory "test" of the resolution's truth. With little thorough analysis going into the construction of these "appendages," in practice they become little more than one-line justification arguments advanced against the disadvantage--a strategy which some have argued should be "consigned to the dustbin of debate history."4

To a large degree intrinsicness is a theory whose time has come and, I hope, gone. As resolutions become broader in scope and depth, the resolution-plan tautology clearly breaks down. Once upon a time (as the story goes), the plan and the resolution were but two labels for a synonymous entity; however, in recent years hundreds, perhaps thousands, of plans may reasonably fail under one particular topic area. Consequently, the affirmative now justifies the resolution by example rather than by a mere statement of the resolution and its advantages. While theoretically a plan may not be necessary, most debate critics find it more than a courteous gesture on the part of affirmative teams to provide one; they see it as an integral part, if not the focus, of the debate process. The growth of generic disadvantages--arguments stemming largely from the advantages of the affirmative's proposal rather than the particular plan provisions themselves--have made the workings of the existing political structure essential to testing the resolution's truth or falsehood. The plan is judged as desirable or undesirable based upon its consequences on the world around it; based upon its indirect rather than direct effects. As a result, where it may have been possible to find disadvantages rooted in the exact wording of a particular debate resolution in the past, it seems improbable that a debater would find this to be the case in all but the most specific of debate resolutions (and even then it may be arguably impossible). For example, a debater may find evidence indicating that welfare programs are undesirable, but this evidence is hardly applicable to the specifics of minimum wage laws or CPR courses. As resolutions become broader and plans become narrower, the workings of the political network encompassing the plan becomes critical ground for negative disadvantages. And more importantly, the timeliness of the general theory becomes all too obviously dated and impractical.

The final objection to this ostensibly useful theory is surprisingly one of equal burdens. While intrinsicness stems from the inherency burdens placed upon the affirmative, the burden of proof placed upon the opposing sides appears to be disproportionate. In evaluating debate decisions, it would be foolish to expect a negative ballot based upon inherency arguments as poor in quality as those advanced against disadvantages. For example, if the affirmative maintained that the capitalist structure inherently leads to unequal and unfair income distribution and consequently gross poverty, and the negatives sole argument against this claim was, "this isn't inherent, we could simply abolish the capitalist structure," it is doubtful that the judge would award the negative much more than a slight chuckle. Yet, as disadvantage minor repairs are currently utilized they are rarely this well develooed. All too often, the minor repair is merely an undocumented assertion made in the fleeting minutes of the first affirmative rebuttal with little consideration or sense built into it. Cries for "banning economic growth," "mandating worldwide disarmament," and "preserving a protectionist equilibrium," are not uncommon and are, unfortunately, often successful. It seems that as a minimum burden the disadvantage minor repair should meet the same burdens demanded of the traditional minor repair, namely, propensity, solvency, and some sort of implementation procedure. If the affirmative can demonstrate that the proposed minor repair is a logical out-growth of the affirmative plan and is reasonably compatible with its implementation it should be accepted as legitimate. However, if the alternative mechanism is more a heavendirected "wish" than a realistic and probable policy action, it should hold little or no weight in the final decision-making calculation.

Another question is that of resolutionality. It is generally accepted that minor repairs advanced as an inherency objection by the negative need to be non-resolutional; however, this seems not to be the case for disadvantage intrinsicness challenges. The affirmative, under this view, is permitted to utilize any and all potential solutions at its disposal in order to prove the disadvantage non-inherent to the resolution. It would seem that if the negative is not permitted to implement resolutional action, then the affirmative should also be limited to action specified under the resolution with which to repair disadvantages to the plan. The non-resolutional minor repair would fail to meet the test of sufficiency--since it would be deemed extra-topical-and not within the realm of affirmative fiat. It would demonstrate that the resolution is insufficient to gain a particular advantage and/or solve a potential disadvantage. An alternative, but reinforcing view holds that the tonic, as worded, stipulates the jurisdiction from which the affirmative may advocate action. In essence, the affirmative has no standing under the resolution to argue nontopical action. If fiat emanates from the resolution, the judge cannot adopt, or select, action which is outside that source of political power embodied in the topic.

Counterplan Competitiveness

Numerous standards have been advanced for counterplan competitiveness. Mutual exclusivity utilizes set theory to demonstrate that the plan and the counterplan cannot simultaneously be adopted or coexist in the same political world. Redundancy argues that even if such coexistence is possible it would be unnecessary and, therefore, should not be done. Net-benefits answer the "should" term in the resolution. It states that if the counter-proposal and the plan were adopted simultaneously it would not be net beneficial--the adoption of the plan and the counterplan is less beneficial than implementation of the counterplan alone. All of these standards are designed to determine whether the mandates, or actual Provisions of the two plans, can be implemented (or should be imolemented) side-by-side. Certain, more recent, standards have been developed to determine whether the advantages of both svstems can be achieved simultaneously while still justifying resolutional action.

Answering the "Inherent and Compelling Need"5

Like intrinsicness of disadvantages, intrinsicness of counterplan advantages is grounded in the inherency burden placed upon the affirmative. But rather than asking whether or not the advantage stems from a resolutional plank in the plan, intrinsicness of counterplan advantages attempts to answer whether or not the counterplan advantage stems from a competing plank in the counterproposal. For example, if the resolution calls for safety regulations to be placed on consumer products and the negative chooses to counterplan by abolishing all safety regulations, the counterplan mandate itself may be reasonably competitive by both mutual exclusivity and net benefit (and a whole host of pseudo-standard) criteria. However, the advantage of the counterplan, for instance, preserving investment confidence, would not be Competitive with the plan. It may easily be possible that the affirmative's particular safety standard would have little or no effect on business confidence (it may actually stimulate investment); however, when implemented side-by-side with the counterplan mandates it would appear impossible or net-undesirable. Clearly, in this case the negative has failed to deny the desirability of the plan provisions although still meeting all traditional competitiveness burdens. For if all safety regulations were eliminated, with the exception of the plan, business investment confidence would still be preserved while also assuring that the safety regulations implemented by the affirmative -could gain its advantage, no matter how trivial in comparison. In this particular example, the actual provisions of the two proposals probablv met acceptable burdens of competitiveness, but the advantages of the two systems were not at all in conflict. Therefore, the advantage of the counterproposal was not intrinsic and failed to deny the "inherent and compelling need" demonstrated by the affirmative case advantage.

This standard of inherent counterplan advantages transcends the more traditional guidelines for determining competitiveness. In fact, the intrinsicness standard enables the decision-maker to discover pareto optimum policy systems--in that it measures whether -or not the affirmative plan and some facsimile of the counterplan can be reasonably permutated in such a way as to develop the most desirable, pareto superior6 poli-tical system. Since a counter-proposal is advanced, the limitations of resolutional jurisdiction--or standing--have already been violated. Policy-makers are asked not ."whether this particular plan is desirable," but rather, "which of this group of systems should be implemented alone, or in some combination, in order to gain the greatest marginal utility?" The term marginal is critical, for the intrinsicness standard forces the debate judge to evaluate the plan's marginal costs and benefits. In the previous example, the critic is not left with the task of determining whether safety regulations, in general, are "good" or "bad;" on the contrary, the judge must decide whether the marginal costs of the affirmative program outweigh its marginal benefits. The counterplan is not permitted to become a pessimistic magnifying glass through which the negative enlarges the potentially catastrophic consequences of plan passage. Instead, the judge, like the social scientist, can select which system of organization, or network, to follow--in essence he chooses the pareto efficient critical path.

Just as the negative need not demonstrate the probability that the counterplan would be adopted, so, too, the affirmative need not demonstrate that a permutation of the two systems would be implemented by real world decision-makers. Since both teams have reconciled that the debate is to determine which, of any number of political systems, is the most desirable, -the issue of probability is effectively moot. Essentially, neither team is requesting that new action be taken as a logical outgrowth of the current regimen (this is the nature of the minor repair); instead, they are propositioning policy-makers to take new action divorced from that which is already in place (they are offering a counter-proposal). These stipulations, like those limitations placed upon intrinsicness of disadvantages discussed earlier, are simply a call for equal burdens. The negative in this case need not demonstrate that political actors would eliminate all safety regulation (which, in-a degenerate world, would seem unlikely), only that they should; therefore, it is reasonable that he affirmative should not have to meet any more stringent standards in arguing for permutation of the plan and counterplan advantages. This criterion destroys no legitimate negative ground, it only asks that the plan be compared in a real world forum (or laboratory if one chooses), and not under the bombardment of unrealistic, often unfathomable, policy comparisons.

Theoretical Evolution: A Means to Swerve and Miss

It is axiomatic that these conclusions will not save debate from going over the edge of theoretical madness; they may not even improve its practice a great deal. However, I hooe that they shed some light on a bewildering strategic development. If they serve merely as a crucible in which to purify this particular debate practice they will have gone beyond their desired end. If debaters are truly attempting to answer "the great questions," it is important that they do so in a format which lends itself to the most useful and desirable conclusions. Only through the purification of the debate process will the division between those two archetypal paths be clearly separated and will debaters be able "to see the forest for the trees." Otherwise, debate is truly nothing more than a game--a game governed by no rules, and serving no useful ends.7 --festina lente--8

Notes

L for a complete analysis of the disadvantage and its burdens from the hypotesting perspective see J.W. Patterson and David Zarefsky, Contemporary Debate, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, Chapters 13 & 15.
2 For an expanded definition see Phillipe Van Parijs, Evolutionary Explanation in the Social Science . (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman field,1981), pp.19-23.
3 Van Parijs, pp.21-23. It should be made clear that Van Parijs does not specify that the "degenerate case" is used by the current policy-making system.
4 The "some" referred to here is Mr. Roger Solt, "NDT Judge Sheet," 1984 National Debate Tournament Booklet.
5 This phrase is the title of Robert P. Newman's article in the Journal of the American Forensic Association.
6 A useful definition of "pareto optimality" is Dresented in Paul Burrows, The Economic Theory of Pollution Control, Cambridge, Massa!hsetts: The MIT Press,, 1980), pp.55-80.
7 The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of destined-to-be professor John S. Gatton of the University of Kentucky in the completion of this article.
8 "hasten slowly"