Debate as a part of sense-making for climate change

This website purports to be a collaborative data collection project for the upcoming UN climate change conference.  They hope to use debate as one of the methods for collaboratively gathering data and perspectives.

What is most interesting is the lack of attention given to format, or to debate in general on the website.  They claim, “The project is founded on principles of openness, transparency, and
discovery; with no preconceptions about the conclusions that will
emerge from the event.”

I think this is a great perspective, and I am certain debate, in whatever form, can contribute to this project. But I wonder if the organizers of this collective intelligence gathering have considered the recalcitrant aspects of debate – that everything comes under investigation, even the idea of “climate change” itself.

This is one of the underdiscussed areas of the use of debate for information construction or pedagogical purposes – the fact that it encourages participants to think in ways that continuously unravel the sweater when all you wanted was to clip a few loose threads.

Sick

Well the timing couldn’t be better – the first weekend off from a tournament in a while and I get a bit of a cold or something. So I’m being lazy around my apartment trying not to get worse.

Since I’m stuck inside on some pretty nice days trying to get well, I plan to just catch up on writing and reading, two things that I rarely have time to do in the middle of the debate season. Here are my projects:

1. Final edits are soon due on an essay about Kenneth Burke and William Carlos Williams that has been accepted to a journal. Today I plan to add in some additional resources I’ve found and tighten up the grammar.

2. I need to make corrections to and major structural changes are needed to an essay (now potential book chapter) about Levinas in conversation with Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrects-Tyteca. That project is one that was back-burnered by me quite by accident. Time to blow off the dust.

3. If there’s time left in the day, begin the preliminary research into an essay about argumentation on the internet through flash animation, using the Roman idea of declamation as a heuristic.

Thank god I got off my ass and did all my grading earlier in the week when I felt somewhat human. Time for some more tea.