Fw: Proceduralism & Ethics: Answering Ellis

[Andy Ellis]

On October 4th ken begins with:
>>Pondering the role of 'proceduralism' as it relates to ethics challenges
>>and current procedurals, Ellis seems to suddenly get religion:
>Nope, no religion. Speaking of religion, you seem to be contradicting
>yourself here(i know its a disciplinary tool of power, that is based in
>humanism, but lets just assume for the sake of argument that you have
>convinced me) 1 first you say religion is bad (my thoughts "found" it and
>you answer my thoughts) and 2 you start preaching about faith(you call it
>honesty). But i digress...
>>>                 I started thinking about why some things are
>>>procedurals. Is T not an ethical challenge? Is the negative not saying
>>>you claim to support the resolution, but you are lying. Then we as
>>>debaters engage in our equivelant of the clinton testimony.
>>
>>By balling these issues into a single abstraction, I think Andy is
>>equivocating some important distinctions.  Viewed in this way, I guess
>>that all refutative arguments would be considered "Ethical Challenges":
>>
>>       "They said that they had solvency, but they were LYING..."
>>
>>       "It is FALSE that the turn outweighs case, PUNISH them..."
>
>
>No sooner does ken say....
>
>
>>The distinction is that advocacy is not equivalent to deception.
>>Topicality defenses can only be viewed as deceptive advocacy if one
>>believes:
>>
>>        a.) that there is a single TRUE interpretation of words
>>        b.) there is an UNAMBIGUOUS violation of meaning by aff
>
>
>...then do i see this....
>
>>And for me the bright line is honesty.  When I forward a T defense that
>>you don't buy, you can consider my reasoning second rate without
>>suspecting that I've misrepresented.  When I, however, take the opinions
>>of another out of context, when I fabricate, when I lie about what has
>>been presented, then I undercut the presumption of honesty that this whole
>>evidence system relies upon.
>
>...and I respond with...(ok enough of the elipses)
>To say in one part of the post that there is no absolute meanings to words
>then say latter that the bright line should be honesty, seems troublesome
to
>me. After all honesty is just a thing that we have created out of a blend
of
>social ideas, you can't see honesty, I never get drunk(all those mikeys)
and
>bump my head on honesty, and then try to tell myself that i never get drunk
>enough to hurt myself on something i don't remember(Nothing about this
>story, reperesent any actual events, i just like the imagry, ). And not
>every body sees honesty, the same way. I may think somebody who is telling
>the truth to the best of their ability(institute blocks from four years ago
>must be non-fabriacted , after all its been four years) is being honest or
i
>may think they are being willfully deceptive because they are accepting
>something as truth which they have no reason other than convinenece to
>believe as true. Consider this example I have a whacked out crazy idea for
a
>case, after i can't find more than the one card on lexis, i start looking
>through the four year old backfiles, i also find one set of blocks in the
>camp file that has like six cards that say exactly what i awant them to
say.
>As Stone Cold Steve Austin would say "oh hell yeah" I have a case now. The
>problem i have with that is that i think these cards need to be checked, i
>think the person running them becomes responsible, if anyone is
responsible.
>simply because of the difficulty of finding these cards any debater should
>be skeptical of cards saying what these do, especialy if they did not cut
>them themselves....
>
>I think you would tend to support the latter, and at that point i think the
>honesty standard falls apart. Many people disagree on this issue, on the L
>everyone will take the high road and say "bad,bad,bad, i condemn thee users
>of old unchecked backfiles." But when the computers are off , People will
>say "Hey look, we have really limited resources and our debaters, are way
>stressed out with school so we use backfiled camp evidence."... People
never
>agree about what constitutes honesty, at some point in everyones life a
>fight has occured in which individual 1 genuinly believed individual 2 was
>being dishonest and individual 2 genuinly believes in the honesty of it's
>own  action.  Honesty is different to everybody why...
>...Ken said:
>>Even after multiple Mickey's, Ellis wouldn't agree to either of these
>>because he understands that language is multi-faceted and dependent on
>>context.
>The truth is something which is created by language, different people see
>different things. My conception of honesty is something completly different
>than anyone elses and i may think the other side is being willfully
>dishonest, but unless they just say "yup you called my bluff, we wrote
those
>cards" you are going to have to convince somebody even your self that the
>other team was willfully dishonest. This gets us back to the place when you
>said honesty was a bright line, i think that line is blurry if it even is a
>line.
>
>Ken Predicts my argument and answers it saving you all a level of
emails....
>>  In addition he understands that an argument in favor or against
>>a particular interpretation is just that -- an argument.  It rests on the
>>quality, clarity, and persistence of advocacy and not upon any advantaged
>>appeal to TRUE meaning.
>>My knowing that Andy agrees with all of this (he went Pomo over the
>>summer...) leads me to believe that he is expecting this answer and
>>intends to claim that, in similar fashion, what we call "ethics
>>violations" are similarly subjective, similarly subject to reasonable
>>arguments of accusation and defense, similarly dependent on context and
>>consensus in evaluation.  True enough, but this relativism doesn't and
>>shouldn't destroy our ability to call someone on an ethical problem when
>>we are able to justify it, and in a context that permits argument from
>>both sides, and via a process that permits a considered consensus.
>Yup. I agree with all of this up untill the point that says "relativism
rear
>your critical head elsewhere, we don't want you here, you snuck up with our
>backs turned, and we don't like it. Oh and by the way take you critical
>friends with you, we don't like nihlism, infinte regress, and
>decosntructinion either . So we are going to turn our backs on you and
>assume that you will take your vile stench with you"...This certainly
didn't
>work in kosovo, but after all we should not expect it to, the people who
are
>in power learned this trick well from their professors. When we sit around
>and try to compose ethical codes, we are simply playing a fun mind game,
>kind like when the redskins are 0-5 and playing like absolute crap, and
>people say hey they could still go 11-5(I will dissavow any non humanist
>philosophies if this happens). These mind games are good for us to figure
>what we know the truth to be(there is no doubt some value to that). They
are
>ridiculous at deciding what THE truth should be. Because they simply cause
>other peole to play their mind games and come to an ever so slightly
>different version of truth. No Brightline can be drawn that everybody
agrees
>with, and if it can it has about as much effect as the canadians agreeing
>that the borders with minnesota really are ok. Bright lines that everyone
>agrees with cannot be drawn and if they can its because everybody already
>agrees with them.
>
>
>Andy
>Towson
>