
Hoppriori
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EDIT: Apparently I had created two accounts for FDR, both variants of Hoppe's name (Hoppriori, and Hippehoppe), and just forgot about the earlier one. I goof'd. That post above me is the same user^
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If you're familiar with college (or, to a lesser extent, high school) policy debate, you might be aware of this situation already. If not, I'll give a brief description of the activity first before describing the particular controversy. Brief Explanation of Policy Debate So, policy debate is a competitive activity in which students (generally a pair of students from a given university) compete in front of a judge, who awards the "team that did the best debating" (note, this is the only mandatory, established parameter of the ballot) a "ballot" (the judge votes for the team that "did the best debating", and they advance, having won the round). Generally speaking, this is the structure of competitive policy debate: every year, a committee gathers and decides upon a resolution. It's generally some sort of statement along the lines of: "Resolved: The United States Federal Government should X", with X differing from year to year (last year's college topic dealt with limiting the war powers of the president, this year's will probably deal with decriminalization or legaliztaion of a number of substances/activities, like prostitution, marijuana, etc.). In each round, two teams are given the positions (either randomly or by a coin flip/mutual agreement - it depends upon the round) of either "affirmative" or "negative", and we generally expect the affirmative ("aff") to somehow "affirm" the truth of the resolution (that the USFG should do X). The most common way of doing this is by presenting a plan - one specific policy in which the USFG's doing X is justified (example: if the resolution is to increase transportation infrastructure investment, one conceivable plan is investment in a particular highway or rail system), and the affirmative will provide advantages to such a plan (investing in high speed rail solves global warming, and global warming is bad because <Day After Tomorrow>). The negative ("neg"), by contrast has to negate the truth of the affirmative, which doesn't mean they have to disprove the entire resolution, only that they have to disprove the plan (they may offer disadvantages to the plan, like that building this specific highway could kill some animals that are important for the environment, and damaging in the environment in this way hurts people because <hippienonsense>, or they might offer "counterplans", which are other policies the United States could adopt that solve the reasons why the plan is a good idea - we could imagine things like cloud whitening or carbon taxes solving warming - but avoid the disadvantages to the plan - a carbon tax doesn't build a highway, which means it doesn't hurt biodiversity). In general, most debates are decided by some calculation of whether or not the plan is a good idea. Teams are expected to take positions that they don't agree with (I'm an anarchocapitalist, but I took the hypothetical position that a certain trade agreement with Europe was a good thing because it would make the American empire sustainable, and I defended reasons why the American empire is a good thing, which basically came down to "American hegemony stops wars between big nations, a decline in hegemony would cause those nations to fill in the vacuum to become local powers", which is obviously something I don't believe in real life), because the theory is that debating multiple perspectives (state good/bad, imperialism good/bad, capitalism good/bad, environmental regulations good/bad, etc.) will make us more educated about these sorts of issues, and education is important. Also, it's a generally fun activity. Now, one thing that is really important is that there are no strictly enforced rules in this activity. There might be guidelines set by the tournament and, depending on who the judge is, enforcement of these guidelines might differ (example: let's imagine the tournament says students have 8 minutes of "prep time" that they can take before their speech to gather their arguments - a judge might arbitrarily just set this to 10 minutes, because there's no policy debate police who come in to check and make sure they're playing 'according to the rules'). This also means that the teams are not actually obligated (by any enforced mechanism) to debate in the style I've described ("aff presents a plan that affirms the resolution+advantages, neg presents counterplan+disadvantages, judge votes for the least-bad policy"), because, in policy debate, "anything is up for debate", including the rules themselves. So, let's say that an affirmative presents their plan to put a lot of troops in Asia, reason being that the Chinese are evil and want to take over the world, and only Uncle Sam can stop from. Well, the negative could conceivably respond not by talking about the reasons why putting troops in Asia is bad (because it could provoke China, is expensive, etc.), but why the affirmative's speech was bad and they should be rejected for it. The negative could conceivably say that the way the affirmative has portrayed China relies on assumptions that are racist or irrational (there's literature on why a constant fear of security threats is bad and results in "threat construction" - the nuances don't really matter for this example), and that the affirmative should be rejected on the basis of these assumptions (even if they aren't actual reasons why the material consequences of the affirmative's plan are bad). Another example: Affirmative says we need to send troops to Iraq to "get the terrorists" or something, with a "terrorism bad" advantage (terrorism causes Middle Eastern war, which kills a lot of people, troops stop it - on face, this seems like a good thing). Instead of reading reasons why sending troops to Iraq is a bad thing (we'd screw up Iraq), the negative reads reasons why the motivations and justifications for "getting the terrorists" are a bad thing (this logic is the sort of thing that justifies eroding civil liberties, that justifies killing innocents, and that creates terrorists in the first place). Some of these might also be reasons why the plan results in bad stuff, but the reason why the affirmative should lose, the neg argues, is that their speech advocates bad representations and the representations/way we speak is (for whatever reason - things like "it's the only thing we learn in this actual round - obviously the judge's ballot doesn't actually change policy" or "representations inform our policy decisions, which means examining them is a prerequisite") more important than hypothetical consequences of the plan. This is called a kritik (the German word for "criticism") because it criticizes one assumption of the plan. Now, going even further, the fact that there are no rules in debate has led us to debate what debate itself should be about. As above, should the judge be voting for a team based on the consequences of the policy that they advocate, or because of the representations and justifications for that policy? It's not entirely clear, because the only condition on the judge's ballot is "Vote for the team that did the better debating" - so debaters debate about what the role of the ballot is, and this is called framework. In other works, the "framework" or structure by which debate should operate. One of the simplest and most common ways this plays out is called "topicality". So, this previous year's resolution on the high school circuit was "The United States Federal Government should substantially increase its economic engagement towards one or more of the following countries: Mexico, Venezuela, or Cuba." One thing that's problematic about this and every other resolution is that we're not really sure what a term like "economic engagement" means. So we could imagine a plantext like "remove the Cuban embargo", which is pretty uncontroversially economic engagement (like, there are certain definitions of the topic that might make this "non-topical", but it's obviously an expected advocacy for the aff). But let's imagine an affirmative that has the United States reform its immigration policy (for simplicity's sake, the plan is just to have open borders). Is that "economic engagement"? Well, that's sort of unclear - some definitions of "economic engagement" say that it's basically just trade agreements, so, in that case, it might not actually affirm the resolution. We could even imagine an argument that this affirmative isn't "towards Mexico" because it reforms immigration policy for immigrants of every other country as well, and the actual object receiving the engagement isn't Mexico, but immigrants from Mexico. So the question of "what should we debate about" is something that frequently comes up, and teams will offer differing interpretations of words on the topic to either exclude a plan (if they're negative) or justify that plan (if they're affirmative). Generally, it's not so clear which definition is right (one definition says immigration is part of economic engagement, another one says economic engagement is solely trade policy. What should the judge prefer?), so debaters debate about what the parameters of the topic should be as well. Generally, this comes down to two arguments: 1) Fairness - we need some predictable barriers on what can be discussed in order to actually have a fair discussion (in which teams are prepared to discuss a topic in-depth). Obviously, if the topic is Iran policy and you start talking about ice cream regulations, I'm not going to be prepared, which is unfair. Fairness is important because it's a prerequisite to having an in-depth discussion of the affirmative (which is the only way I can actually productively engage you and we can become educated about the topic), and because debate is a competitive activity and teams deserve a level of equity in which both can play (if the affirmative's plan is completely unpredictable, they're going to have an unfair advantage and win an inordinate amount of the time). 2) Education - this subject matter is important to discuss because it's educational in nature. We could perhaps limited the topic down to one specific policy (if I'm only allowed to discuss the Cuban embargo and no other area of the topic, the debate is easier and "fairer" for the negative, but we lose out on discussing a lot of important things. Similarly, immigration policy is hugely important, in constant media focus, and constitutes a pretty substantial part of the United States' interactions with Mexico. It seems like an important area to discuss). So this is the basic set-up for policy debate that you have to know. There are some expected standards for discussion that most people approach debate with, but, ultimately, everything is up for debate, which means people have to justify not only their positions in debate, but why those positions should be discussed in the first place. Open borders and free immigration may be very good things, but if they aren't part of the topic and if we shouldn't actually be discussing them in the first place (in this particular forum/debate round), then it doesn't matter how good your plan is, because it should be excluded (for reasons of "fairness" and "education") from the parameters of our discussion. Recent Controversy (Skip Here if you understand current debate) http://www.reddit.com/r/cringe/comments/24py6m/black_university_students_fervently_stutter_about/ Here's a reddit thread that (kind of immaturely) addresses the basic thing I'm going to talk about. There exists a contingent of debaters that do not conform to the traditional model of policy debate. These "kritikal" debaters, instead of advocating a plan text, may affirm the resolution in other ways (again, because there's no set rule that they have to offer a plan text and, even if they were, that rule could probably be up for debate in front of many judges). So, instead of topic about immigration policy, for example (if the resolution is: "Resolved: the USFG should substantially liberalize its immigration policy."), they might talk about the racist motivations for current US immigration policy, without actually endorsing a specific change to the policy. This can make it difficult to be negative for a number of reasons, mostly that the lack of a plan text or stable policy advocacy means the negative doesn't really have policy reasons why the affirmative is bad, so they lose a lot of their traditional "offense" (or routes to win the round). The neg doesn't get to read "open borders are bad" disadvantages because opening the borders isn't something the aff is necessarily advocating. The aff is just saying that their speech (talking about racism in immigration policy) is important irrespective of whether or not the policy is good/bad, and because they don't change the policy and the judge is only voting for "whoever did the best debating", their speech should be rewarded with the ballot. This is not what the debaters in the link I've provided are doing - they are practicing this form of criticism in a more extreme way. These debaters ("race" or "alternative" debaters) are criticizing the institution of policy debate itself. Here are the basic assumptions: 1) Debate is an activity for white privilege - rich suburban debaters (who are predominantly white or Asian) are able to used their privileged position in society (their private schools fly them to tournaments at prestigious universities, they have access to extensive libraries, they have time to do research on their own) to win debate tournaments, so this entire activity is an exercise in white privilege. 2) We debate about "white" issues without any regard for issues relevant to the black community, which: 2a) reinforces "whiteness" in that we talk about the United States federal government (which is racist - the US is a racist, "white" institution that oppresses black people, and forcing black debaters to advocate it because they are 'affirmative' is evil, because they're being forced to advocate an evil institution that oppresses them) and issues pertinent to white debaters (imperialism, trade policy, etc., all of which are "white" issues). 2c) excludes black debaters and ignores issues relevant to the debate community (we don't discuss things like poverty, race, or how the United States is racially oppressive - instead, we generally talk about foreign policy, hypothetical wars with China and Russia, global warming, etc.). In other words, the current model of debate is either itself racist (because it is an institution of 'white privilege') or excludes discussion relevant to the black community, which is by extension racist. So, let's imagine a topic like the one I mentioned previously. "Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially increase its economic engagement towards one or more of the following countries: Cuba, Mexico, or Venezuela." An alternative debater goes into a debate round and is selected to be affirmative (to prove that the USFG should increase its engagement). They would not affirm the resolution. Instead, they would either: A) Talk about how US policy towards Latin America is racist and they cannot morally advocate it (please remember that debate is, by nature, a "switch side" competitive activity, so we are assumed to advocate positions with which we do not necessarily agree, because this is educationally productive). In other words, they would ignore their traditionally conceived obligation to be "affirmative" and negate the resolution on kritikal terms. or B) Ignore the resolution in its entirety and talk about their experiences as oppressed black men/women, how society and debate are racist, and why the judge should vote for them to condemn this racism and approve of some sort of anti-racist, "counter-oppressive pedagogy" that tries to reform debate (or at least doesn't sanction the prevailing racist institution of debate). Obviously, negative teams will read arguments like topicality and framework against these affs, saying that they do not affirm the resolution and that they have a prima facia obligation to do so, but the affirmative will respond that these arguments are exclusionary (obviously, because they try to exclude some type of debating style) and, by extension, racist. Remember that the only two reasons why topicality and traditional framework matter are fairness and education, but, these teams respond: 1) Debate isn't fair, because they're oppressed by it and excluded, and the sort of "fairness" that favors a white, oppressive institution like debate shouldn't be preserved anyway. The fact that the game is "fun" for the privileged white boys who play (because it is fair) is not a reason why that game should be preserved. 2) The subjects that we become educated about in debate do not matter, because our debate round does not actually effect US policy and, even if it did, the US is racist and we should have nothing to do with it anyway, except burning it down. Education about the way racism operates in society and how the affirmative team is oppressed by white institutions is more important because it can change the way that we, in the round, actually interact with one another and confront racism. In other words "screw the rules - they're racist". Many of you might respond that "why would they engage this institution if they think it's racist", and the general answer they'll give is: A) Because they can reform this institution. B) Because they need to prove that it's racist, and exposing racism is a good thing. C) Because they can win prestige and prizes by being awarded in tournaments, which helps them personally (essentially, their lives suck because they're black and oppressed, debate is a form of therapy that ameliorates that oppression). D) Even if they can't reform the institution, racist institutions just need to be destroyed. The author they most cite talking about this (point D specifically) is a guy named Frank Wilderson, who wrote a book called "Black, White & Red". The basic philosophy (Afropessimism) goes something like this: 1) Blacks in the US had their identity stripped away from them through the slave trade. 2) The new cultural identity of "the black" is linked with negativity and slavery ("negritude") 3) This means blacks are beyond the bounds of respectable "Civil Society", which is an 'ontologically white' institution. 4) Being outside civil society means you socially don't matter, so blacks live in a state of "social death" (this means someone who is phenotypically black but within "civil society" like Barack Obama is actually "ontologically white" - he's part of the white power structure). 5) Blacks cannot be integrated into civil society and retain an identity independent of whiteness, nor can they create some positive black identity outside of civil society, because they're still "ontologically dead" (blues music et al is fundamentally linked with slavery). 6) If that's the case, blacks need to "burn down" civil society (institutions of whiteness - the USFG, collegiate debate, etc.) and destroy white institutions, because they're evil and exclusionary. Question Time So, my question is twofold. Anyone can respond with their thoughts - I'd be particularly interested in what Stefan Molyneux (or anyone with policy debate experience) has to say, because, if I recall correctly, he was a successful policy debater in high school or college on the Canadian circuit? (I'm on the US college circuit, so things may be different internationally, because Wilderson's philosophy is very particular to racial culture in America and because its takeover of debate is a pretty recent phenomena in the last ten years or so): 1) What do you think of debate framework in general? Can you come up with a theory for why traditional policy debate should be preserved, why allowing this sort of alternative debate (not just in the abstract, but specifically in traditional policy debate forums) is a bad thing, and why retaining a competitive environment to discuss policy in this way is productive? 2) What do you think of the alternative debate argument? That debate is racist and white or, at least, the attempt to exclude sorts of discourses that do not conform to debate is a racist policy? I'm open to clarify anything about the state of policy debate if you want, or if anything above is unclear. Thanks.
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It seems to me that UPB is a useful argumentative 'tool' to disprove positive theories of morality. That is, it disproves the belief that someone could be morally compelled to act in some positive fashion in what Stefan calls "the coma test". Let's assume there is one individual who is still a rational agent who exhibits preferences and to whom morality applies, but who is completely incapable of action. He's entirely paralyzed (except for his eyelids, let's say, just so he can still communicate - in case you're a Hoppean and the communicative aspect might get complicated). Obviously, a moral statement like "every human being has to make a pilgrimage to Mecca" can't be universalized, then. We could also imagine a scenario in which a man is alone, naked on an island without any natural resources. Principle: "everyone is required to wear a kippah" is just as absurd, because there exist conditions under which nobody could fulfill that principle. Morality implies choice, and if there exists a scenario in which a human being could not make the "moral choice" (in which he has to be 'immoral' by this UPB standard, not because the consequences for being moral are bad - "You'll be shot if you don't cooperate with the Nazis" - but because it's literally materially impossible for him to do so), then clearly the moral premise of that dilemma is wrong. So UPB clearly disproves moral theories that require unconditional positive obligations. What I think is problematic about UPB is that I don't see how it disproves: A) Conditional positive obligations (insofar as one is able to do X, one should should do X. Example: "Insofar as you are able to feed your child, you must feed your child." Clearly the inability to feed your child because your on an island without resources excuses you from this obligation, but the moral imperative is contingent to your particular circumstances). Stefan clearly believes that some of these are true, and there's a logical justification for positive obligations (contract - you have entered into a contract, so you are obligated to fulfill your end of the bargain. Your inability to fulfill your end of the bargain for reasons outside of your control means that you are not morally responsible, even though it might not practically excuse you from the contract itself, as in the above case of a parent and child on a desert island). So this isn't a massive contradiction for Stef, I just think it means UPB isn't as useful as one would first think. Because if we sub in "the poor" for "your child", we get an essential justification of the welfare state/obligatory charity that is the same syllogism as the starving child scenario. The reason why the obligation to the poor is wrong is just that there's no rational reason why it's the case (you haven't contracted with the poor or anything), so there's just no justification for this conditional obligation. I guess the way UPB advocates could get out of this is just to say that the conditional positive obligations are induced by contract, so they really aren't positive obligations, because breaking this obligation through your own volition is an act of aggression. So it's not that I'm obligated to feed my child, it's that I'm obligated to not deny my child food (because this is breaking my implicit contract with the child - sub in "obligated not to murder", etc.). But I think this falls into the same problem as the "obligation to the poor" analogy (sub in "obligated not to deny poor assistance") - the reason why that scenario is wrong is just that there's no contractual obligation, not because of UPB. 2) I agree with OP that I don't think this proves a positive theory of morality. That murder is not UPB just means that one could never justify the claim that it is a universally preferred ("morally good" instead of bad/neutral) behavior to murder. That not murdering can conceivably be UPB (that it conforms to the standards of UPB) does not mean that not murdering is morally good. This is just an instance in which one can disprove a positive moral obligation that is internally contradictory ("You should murder" is obviously wrong - fails coma test; not everyone can do it without collapsing into voluntary euthanasia/Kant theft analogy; results in everyone being dead, so it can't practically be the result of 'good philosophy' because 'good philosophy' requires a set of behaviors to sustain life as a prerequisite to thinking, etc. etc.). NAP as a derivative of UPB, I think, is ultimately just begging the question - we establish a moral standard to which justifiable actions must conform called "universally preferable behavior", and actions that do not conform to that standard are rejected as "not universally preferable". When asked why we are obligated to conform to this standard, the only answer is because it is "universally preferable" to do so, and when we ask why the universality of our actions matter, we get either answers: A) Answer that we are exhibiting universal preference now (for truth as opposed to falsehood - but this doesn't prove a consistent standard for judging our actions based on universality) B) Because the opposite is not universally preferred. I don't think Molyneux is wrong on this because he is stupid or dishonest, it's just an honest disagreement I have with him (I think that building the requirements of ethics into its definition is a logical step he hasn't justified, because there's no standard beyond "universal preference" to justify it). This is sort of a pedantic disagreement, because my own theory of ethics (a variant of argumentation ethics) is very similar to this, and most of the differences could probably be corrected with some semantic changes and nuances. Molyneux's argument is sophisticated and comes very close to proving a consistent theory of ethics - I just think its premises need to be tweaked just a bit, then it's perfect (just like I think Hoppe needs to tweak his syllogisms just a little bit for clarity's sake, then it's perfect). If we just changed "universally preferable" to "justifiable" and fit Stef's argument into a Hoppean mold, I think it's golden. Because then we can prove an unconditional (well, contingent upon the acceptance of justification, which is the premise of our moral debate anyway, so it's necessarily presupposed in this discussion; essentially unconditional) obligation to not break "UPB/argumentatively justified behavior" (AJB?). This is a really small change from Stef's current "you accept universal preference because truth>falsehood, consistency>inconsistency".
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Hi! I'm an incoming freshman university student from the United States, and I've been listening to Stefbot's channel for a while (a few years). My main interest is philosophy, though I love economics and legal theory (David Friedman-type stuff). I also like international relations theory - obviously that doesn't really jive with anarchocapitalism, it's just something I like to read and think about. I'm an anarchocapitalist, a rationalist, and an advocate of (more or less) Hoppean argumentation ethics. I'm also interested in stoic philosophy, and have been recently exploring the possible overlap of Hoppean/Habermasian theory with stoic morality. Registered a while ago but lost track of things because I was busy - glad to have joined!