Engage Contrast
When you are trying to teach or argue for something—whether in a debate, speech, lecture, or blog article—you should present the points as uncontroversial, perhaps even intuitive (so long as you aren’t...
View ArticlePurposes of Debate pt. 1: The Goals and Anti-Goals of Debate
Government team: “The purpose of debate is to have civil discussions about the topics before us.” Opposition team: “No, the primary purpose of competitive debate should be fair competition.” And so I...
View ArticlePurposes of Debate pt. 2: The Problems with Popular Alternative Paradigms...
In my previous article I discussed some of the “goals and anti-goals of debate.” This was partially a standalone topic, but it also served as a lead-in to this broader series on what I’ve decided to...
View ArticlePurposes of Debate Part 3: What Pragmatism is (and is not)
In the previous article in this series, I discussed some of the flaws with paradigms that rigidly rely on things such as traditions/norms and rules as the foundational metric for good theory arguments,...
View ArticlePurposes of Debate Part 4: Using Pragmatism as an Argument
This post is part of a series:See part 1 hereSee part 2 hereSee part 3 here Throughout this series, I’ve been setting the stage for and summarizing Pragmatism as an expansive paradigm/weighing...
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