Annoyed

I absolutely hate the transition from spring to summer. My conversion into the enemy of my childhood self is complete. When I was younger this was my favorite moment of the year. Now it just means I don’t get to do any of the things I like to do for three months. And it’s a really bad time for me to encounter pet peeves, such as when journalists go to scientists to explain things that rhetoricians should be explaining.
I ran across this post the other day which I thought was really interesting. I find logical fallacies quite interesting, and this post seemed to promise that it would investigate not only the fallacy, but the origin of the phrase that we use for it.
The fallacy discussed is the Begging the Question fallacy, the only one that I’ve experienced, next to Argument from Ignorance, that students don’t really ever understand. It’s simply when you make your argument in a manner that assumes the more controversial and less agreed upon assumption within your claim has already been answered in your favor. Therefore, the opponents might “beg your pardon” on the way you dealt with that question.
I have no idea if this is historically accurate or what, but it’s just how I rationalized it in my head when teaching it. At least I’m better off than the New Yorker, who thinks it means “to raise a question.” So what do they do to solve their problem? They turn to a Computer and Information Science Professor to answer it.
This is my greatest pet peeve – how the media ignores rhetoricians, and how hard scientists are consulted to explain everything. Rhetoricians are notoriously bad about attracting the attention of the media as well, so the fault is on both sides. But if you are a rhetorician and you haven’t talked to your media relations department at your University about what you study and what you can comment upon, shame on you.
So they ask the computer scientist (who has this blog, which is amusing until you realize that the sediment of working with computer languages informs his perspective on what “good” natural human language should look like) what he thinks and he responds by first claiming that begging the question is the same as the circular argument (Sorry professor, easy trap to fall in to but more studying on your part would spot the difference). Then he responds this way, which I simply must quote at length because it’s too jaw-droopingly annoying to avoid:

In my opinion, those are both bad choices. If you use the phrase to mean “raise the question”, some pedants will silently dismiss you as a dunce, while others will complain loudly, thus distracting everyone else from whatever you wanted to say. If you complain about others’ “misuse”, you come across as an annoying pedant. And if you use the phrase to mean “assume the conclusion”, almost no one will understand you.

My recommendation: Never use the phrase yourself — use “assume the conclusion” or “raise the question”, depending on what you mean — and cultivate an attitude of serene detachment in the face of its use by others.

As we can plainly see, this is why a rhetorician should be called in to answer such a question. For the Computer Scientist, the audience is unteachable, unchangeable, static, and with unproblematic and impossible to break ties to their understanding of the term. His solution is to “zen out” somehow about the words when they are misused. A quick check of the rest of his blog indicates just how easy that is to do – most every entry is about an annoying practice of language that is either worth our scorn or our laughter. This representative anecdote, in Burkean terms, shows us the limits of using any science – be it computer science, psychology, or any other go-to science for explaining “correct” use of language. The rhetorical moment of being able to trump your opponent, or broaden the audience’s understanding is lost because “nobody will understand you.”
That might work for computer languages, but identifying question begging, explaining it succinctly, and then using it as an argument itself as to why the opposition shouldn’t be accepted is a powerful rhetorical move that just might work in a situation or two. Cultivating the ability to explain difficult, old, and complex ideas related to how we use language can boost one’s ethos and improve the audience’s appetite for looking a bit deeper into fallacies.
Of course, I agree with our noble computer scientist that adaptation to audience is vital. But at what point does it become pandering? At what point is the ethical duty to try to push that audience to richer understanding lost? I suppose for a computer scientist it makes sense to “re-code” the language to get rid of the annoying, meaningless “memory call” command (wow I really don’t know enough about programming to write that last sentence). But for humans, language writes us. We didn’t invent language, we were born with it. We came into “being,” as humans, because of language. And that understanding is why scientific explanations of proper use of language will always be lacking.
We mold ourselves and each other with our words. This is what we lose when we crumble to the idea that “they just won’t get it.” It is good advice for getting a computer to do something though.

Internet Debate Workshop in the Arctic Circle


UVM debater Karen Nelson, one of the founders of the University of Tampere Debate Society with me on the webcam.

This morning was my second encounter with the debaters from The University of Tampere, Finland in a debate context and I have to say that again I am impressed. We did about an hour and twenty minutes of exercises where students came up with some opening and whip speeches based on motions. I think they have some good speakers there that will be outstanding debaters with some refinement and some more public speaking experience.

Karen, pictured above, was a UVM debater near the beginning of “The Experiment,” which by now you know is the term used to describe the introduction of WUDC/BP debating in the Northeastern United States. Now studying abroad, Karen has done a great job of introducing the BP format to her colleagues and peers at Tampere. The UTA Debate Society blog chronicles a lot of their great activities. Most importantly (in a selfish way) the experience she’s invited me to participate in has me thinking in new ways about the relationship of the internet to teaching.

What is the model of education that we have been placed in our whole lives? What terrain does that model inhabit? This brings us to the thoughtless requirements of one board, desks facing a certain way, a lectern, four walls, and a closed door. Classes meet at a particular set of four dimensional coordinates. Internet communication technologies have the potential to shatter this model, placing student engagement and adaptation to student need on a different metric of education entirely.
Observing debate practice in Finland from my study in Queens. I really like my super-serious academic face in this picture.

Teaching over the internet is something that I am convinced we are going to have to accept as a part of our daily lives as educators. The extreme costs of physical, embodied and immediate education combined with a political will (at least in my country of the United States) that wants to see fewer resources go toward education make it a necessity that communication technologies over the internet be explored by those who understand the value of good teaching. Without that important pioneer work, we are going to be left thrown into the world of online education without a lot of thought, principles or ideas to help us figure out how to do it well. And the students will suffer.

A good example of this is the unthoughtful uncritical application of Powerpoint at all levels of the University. Nobody questions following the generic slide order, slide style, or thinks about ignoring the demand for a title and a name on slide one. Everyone uses the bullet points without reflection. How did we miss the part where we interrogate the new communication technology in order to bend it to our purposes? Does communication always bend to the demands of the new technology? They aren’t even demands, so perhaps the frames offered by the new technology are read as demands? This would be in line with Freud’s observation that a capacity quickly becomes an obligation. “Because I can, I should.”

In the fall I hope to do a lot of experimenting with another instructor from the University of Vermont with our debate classes. With this new inexpensive technology available, why teach in a vaccum at all? Why must online courses replicate the closed off, walled-in classroom? I see a future where online courses are not just bad copies of physical classrooms, but challenge the idea of a classroom directly. What sort of distinction is this, and what are we endorsing when we make such distinctions?

Breaking out of a paradigm of education that extends at least as far back as the Roman Republic is not easy. But we kid ourselves we are making advancements in education when we simply inject these technologies into our pedagogical frame and fail to light the fuse. Debate and these newer modes of internet communication have explosive potential and I look forward to seeing what innovations to the paradigm as a whole come out of this mix.

Pikes Peak Community College Joins Second Life Debating


Recently I have been using the language of building “machines” that “do things” as a metaphor for most everything happening intellectually around me. After the Denver Nationals hosted by Regis and The University of Denver I referred to the growing BP national circuit in the US as a machine that we are excited and thrilled to build, yet we are not quite sure of all the functions. What features are being built in that we can’t or won’t notice?

Second Life debating is similar to me. After the great debate on the 20th, last night I was invited to offer some comments on a debate held by Pikes Peak Community College Students on their virtual campus. I think it was an excellent demonstration of the potential of Second Life and debate, as none of us in the room had met before, and we were thousands of miles apart. Even so, the debate went on fine, and I could comfortably listen and take notes from my (soon to be under renovations) office.
The topic was “Women professors make better teachers than male professors.” Pretty interesting potential there. The format was a modified L-D format with shortened speeches and some built in prep time for questions. A pretty good beginner format I must say. I thought it worked well to create a debate that was not intimidating or overwhelming for brand new debaters.
I find myself less interested, or perhaps less distracted by the technical elements of Second Life debating the more I do it. I attended a lot more to the debate itself, which became much more a debate about whether women and men have measurable or distinct differences rather than about whether one is a better sort of teacher than the other. I think that the elements were there to have that debate, but everyone became bogged down in information. This is why I always paradoxically say the less information the better the debate.
Also I think that LD and other such formats attempt to run away from debate about larger ideas, ideology, goals and principles. The debate tends to condense around smaller matters of statistical validity, source verification, and the collision of facts. A larger frame really helps make the information presented “do something” to or for the minds of the audience.
But the statistics and fact-based approach has benefits in a format that is disembodied. No clear way outside of vocal variety to indicate passion or conviction. The bodies are not vibrant. There is a connection lost to the aesthetic dimension of debating.
This debate helped me think about a hybrid Second Life format that captures the conviction and big-picture sensibility of BP/public debating along with the hard evidence nature of LD and Policy debating. Both are not well suited as they are for Second Life and need some adjustment for the virtual world. I hope to think about this more as I have an upcoming project – I’ve been invited to work on how to transition a High School CX debate format into Second Life. The biggest challenge there is the demand for shared documents during the debate. How can you normalize this in the Second Life environment?
The first of many questions, I’m sure.

The Second Second Life Debate in Review


Not the biggest crowd, but who cares? The debate was fantastic, and as soon as I figure out how to edit the video I will post it.
I really think this debate pushes the idea of virtual debating to the next level for a few reasons.
First, the debate occurred without much call or attending to the strange format. Several speakers did start their speech with “Can everyone hear me?” which wouldn’t happen in a normal competitive debate because of the presence of body language/feedback from embodied interlocutors makes it unnecessary. Second Life avatars have the same blank, blinking stare of a reanimated corpse no matter if someone is at the keyboard or not. It’s an uneasy environment in which to engage in something so embodied, so engaged, and so immediate. There’s a disconnect that debaters must overcome to feel comfortable arguing in this environment.
Again, just like the last Second Life debate, I really enjoyed the banter in the chat window occurring parallel to the actual verbal debate. I think it’s fascinating how the audience and other members have a commentary on the live debate going on in a form that doesn’t interrupt and doesn’t mess with the debate as its happening. It’s sort of like the commentary you would have in your head during a debate (when you split yourself into two people) or that old fashioned good time of passing the paper back and forth in the final round giving your thoughts on the debate that, of course, you should have been in.
Pedagogically it allows a teacher to do “simultaneous translation” of a debate in progress for new students. I think this is the most exciting and coolest idea related to the parallel chat feature. This will make Second Life workshops have an advantage, or at least something unique, over real life workshops. For a while I have thought of Second Life debate training as a stop-gap or a place holder, something you do because you can’t do the “better” thing.
Finally the technology of Second Life is just better. The new updates since last February really made the avatars smoother and more interesting. The sound was better and the lag was non-existent. I am really interested in doing some debate training in Second Life now due to this realization.
I also think there’s something here for those who suffer from communication apprehension. They are not their real selves, so self-disclosure and risk plummet when they have to give a presentation or do a debate in Second Life.
I think the next Second Life debate will push things forward by making these events more regular and expected in the SL community as well as the debate community. With the right publicity (like we had last time) I think we will be able to normalize virtual debate for many people. But what me must be careful of is not advocating this as a replacement for debating tournaments. We must be very clear that this augments the debate experience, and makes it accessible for those that cannot or do not want to travel to tournaments.

The Finale of the First On Campus Public Debate Series

Here is the video from our last of the first public debate series we held on campus this semester. It was a fully student organized, student led, and student run initiative. And it was a great success I think, except that I would have liked more people to come. But I always feel this way about any and every public debate event with which I am associated.

I like the abilities that debate training fosters in people. Student initiatives like this one are great forums for that initiative to come out. They are also good moments to practice persuasion in front of general audiences (read: non-tournament). They also force people who are strongly invested in individualism, forwarding their own ideas, finding flaws in others’ ideas, etc. to work together and find more strategic ways to interact with other intellectuals outside of a “I must demolish your ideas to make way for mine” perspective. It’s debate eroding its own creation to create new growth. Yes, public debate projects are forest fires in national parks.
A public debate series serves the students and community if it is attentive to actual controversy and brings it in a clearly adversarial format to the audience. This way, audience members can find clear and intellectual expression of feelings they may have about controversial issues. The current climate eschews such engagement in favor of diminutive models of discussion. This breeds a seething hate for political opponents instead of a strategic willingness to explore. Public debates take the edge off a bit, and can be enlightening to audiences on many levels. They can certainly steal argument structure for their own purposes, or look into an argument they believe to be persuasive after the debate ends. I wonder if they do either. How would you study this?
Perhaps we will do this again. I think it has the potential to continue indefinitely. Whoever takes charge of it next year has quite the nice foundation to build upon.