COM 234: Public Debate

Lecture 1, Sept 25

• Syllabus and course info on Canvas
• Three example topics for this quarter:
  • Should elite universities reinstate the SAT?
  • Is Initiative 2124 good for Washingtonians?
  • Be it Resolved, TikTok is a NatSec threat and should be sold or banned.
• Argumentation:
  • “Argumentation is the practice of justifying claims under conditions of uncertainty”
  • We use reasons to justify claims, where claims are assertions where another person’s assent is sought
  • We argue over uncertain assertions
• Debate:
  • Debate as the “presentation of mutually exclusive claims by competing advocates to a design maker for adjudication”
  • Normally involves trying to persuade a third party
• Preconditions of argument:
  • Genuine disagreement on a non-trivial matter
  • Seeking agreement from another party
  • No simpler means for resolving the conflict

Lecture 2, Sept 30

• Product: you make an argument
• Process: you have an argument
• Procedure: the rules that govern arguments
• A simple argument has: one claim, piece of support, and warrant
• We need to make the unexpressed aspects more explicit

Lecture 3, Oct 2

• When in doubt, take the harder option and treat an argument as multiple
• Diagramming:
  • New arguments get a new number
  • Supporting arguments get an extended number
• Diagramming complex arguments:
  1. Read/listen (and note) the piece
  2. Do a draft diagram
     • Mark external evidence
     • Flag implied claims
  3. Refine the draft
  4. TODO
  5. Check the diagram against the original text
     • “Would the author agree with your diagram?”
  6. Polich up the draft and make arguments

Lecture 4, Oct 7

Missed

Lecture 5, Oct 9

• Flow:
  • On-case: things brought up by the affirmative, responded by negative
  • Off-case: brought up by negative without responding to affirmative
  • Charting out discussion of different issues by person
  • Flow is a a dynamic report on where time and effort was spent
  • You shoudl be able to “relive” the debate and know who (probably) won
  • It lets you know the clash points
• Resolutions:
  • Typically the main claim in a debate
  • Statement of judgement that identifies the central issue in a controversy
  • Establishes the issues
  • A good one is clear and controversial
• Claim types and topoi:
  • What’s the nature of the thing being debated?
  • Topoi are common issues that show up in claim types
• Definition topoi:
  • Is it relevant?
  • Is it fair?
  • How to choose between definitions?
• Value topoi:
  • What values are at issue?
  • How should we judge based on the values?
  • Are there competing considerations?

The Practice Of Argumentation Notes:

Chapter 1:

• Def: “Argumentation is the practice of justifying claims under conditions of uncertainty”
  • Practice: argumentation is something people do
  • Justifying: we give good reasons for claims
  • Claims: assertions where another person’s assent is sought
    • It is not enough to simply assert a belief, we want others to accept it
  • Uncertainty: we only argue about things which we cannot know for certain
• Logic is concerned with the relationships of statements in an argument:
  • Deductive logic is the mathy type of logic - like CSE 311
  • Informal logic is concerned with ordinary-language reasoning
• Dialectic is the process of discovering and testing knowledge through questions and answers
• Rhetoric is the study of finding the available means of persuasion in a given case
• Preconditions of argument:
  • There must be a genuine disagreement between arguers
  • The argument must be non-trivial and real
  • The agreement of a party must be sought
  • Honest and freely given agreement of the other party is desired
  • There are no simpler means of resolving the argument
• “Reasoning with the audience in mind” means we use the assumed audience’s beliefs as a starting point
• Controversies can be mixed or unmixed:
  • Unmixed controversies: an arguer has a position, another arguer attempts to disprove it
  • Mixed controversies: both arguers have a position
• An inferential leap is going from a known statement to an unknown one
  • This requires a “warrant”, a justification
• Argumentation has three dominant genres:
  • Deliberation: a process by with people come together to jointly try to solve problems
  • Debate: advocates present opposing arguments and another party chooses between them
  • Public address: asynchronous one-sided debate

Chapter 2:

• Diagramming arguments can be done using Venn diagrams, in a more formal sense
  • It can show us if an argument is valid, not necessarily if it is correct
  • It struggles to consider variations of “some” within arguments, so it is less useful
• Diagramming simple arguments:
  • It looks like a digraph, with warrants as edges and evidence/claims as nodes
  • Claims: the assertion about the controversy being discussed
  • Evidence: the grounds for believing a claim, this must not be in dispute to be used
  • Warrant: the authorization to believe the claim from the evidence
• Diagramming complex arguments:
  • Most complex arguments have a main claim and supporting subsidiary claims
  • Those subsidiary claims are evidence for the main claim, but need to be supported themselves
  • When the subsidiary claims are independent and each justify the main claim, this argument is called “multiple”
  • When the subsidiary claims are independent but jointly justify the main claim, this argument is called “coordinative”
  • “Chained” arguments, where one step relies on the previous ones, are called “subordinative” structures

Readings:

Why elite colleges are bringing the SAT back, Vox:

• Several elite universites (Yale, Dartmouth, MIT) are reinstating the test requirement
  • Some are allowing other standardized tests to be submitted instead
• It has been found that disadvantaged students perform worse on tests than advantaged students
• However, it has also been shown that test-optional practices harm disadvantaged students more than requirements
  • This is because disadvantaged students submit their scores less often, even if their relative scores would overall show positive indicators

The Misguided War on the SAT, NYT:

• Similar in many points to the above Vox article
• Makes a point about the difference of elite vs non-elite universities in admissions rates, as well as their goals

• “If selective colleges made admissions decisions based solely on test scores, racial and economic diversity would indeed plummet. Yet almost nobody in higher education favors using tests as the main factor for admissions. The question instead is whether the scores should be one of the criteria used to identify qualified students from every demographic group.”

Should colleges and universities bring back SATs and ACTs?, EdSource:

• Comments from various students, most students against the SAT policy because of disparities between advantaged and non-advantaged students

Editorial: Why it’s smart for universities to bring back the SAT requirement, LA Times:

• Strongly pro-SAT, however I feel it has only barely covers the downsides of the SAT

Peck: It’s time to ditch standardized testing, The Tiger:

• Provides a counterargument that SAT scores make admissions offices jobs easier, but there could be other options

Bring back standardized testing, The Michigan Daily:

• Test-optional policies can discourage lower-income students from submitting scores
  • It seems that could be alleviated by being visible about the process or weighting of scores, e.g. like UW
• Makes a similar argument in support of SAT reinstantiation

Opinion | Do away with standardized testing, The Crimson White:

• Makes an argument about all U.S. colleges and universities
• Uses a 2020 study as evidence, which contradicts the SAT’s predictive ability