Isaiah Depp competed in Speech and Debate for four years. He began reluctantly, but found a passion for articulating his thoughts, debating arguments, and processing ideas. He was blessed to study under a few master coaches, including Isaiah McPeak and Laurie Dawson. He submerged himself into a deep dive learning process uncovering everything he could from researching an argument, to actually understanding the other side and presenting cases. Isaiah enjoys thinking through the ideas and with new NCFCA resolution out, he thought, “why not dive into it?” and below are his initial thoughts…Enjoy!
The Framework
The following are the relevant definitions from dictionary.com
Rationalism: 2a) the doctrine that reason alone is a source of knowledge and is independent of experience.
Empiricism: 2) the doctrine that all knowledge is derived from sense experience.
The majority of dictionaries seem to define these terms as doctrines or philosophies, although some define them as methods of acquiring knowledge. The difference is critical: you are either debating that all knowledge comes from either sense experience or reason, or you are debating that one method of acquiring knowledge should be valued above the other in some way. You will have to decide which definitions to use, and be familiar with the arguments around both (not to mention cases that don’t identify the difference). One is a philosophy debate, the other is a “valuing” debate.
At this initial stage, I would point out four ways of debating this resolution:1) Debate that all knowledge comes from reason/all knowledge comes from sense experience. 2) Choose a branch of the points that rationalists and empiricists actually debated in the past (look at philosophy encyclopedias and websites). 3) Debate educational theory (“theory of pedagogy” and “theory of child development” may be relevant search terms), and discuss how a developingindividual gains knowledge and creates his own conception of the world.4) Look at ongoing research (science, technology, etc.) andwhich should be valued higher in that, possibly through the lens of a) which is generally a better way to acquire knowledge or b) which should be believed when they produce conflicting results.
(1) and (2) fall within the traditional realm of Philosophy as a discipline, whereas (3) looks at an individual’s developmental acquisition of knowledge, and (4) at the best way to go about getting knowledge. (4) is probably the least precisephilosophically, but it has always been my preferred way to debate Lincoln-Douglas Value, as it presents the best scope in my opinion for clearly defining and then arguing the resolution in a 40-minute debate round. The first two almost always create a vague and circular LD round where very little is actually said.
With that, I will be looking at two specific fields of knowledge that may present interesting lines of argumentation, specifically for (4).
Science: Initially, science seems to be a clear win for empiricism. This may be true for most chemistry, biology, and some physics, but certain scientific questions in the last century seem to tell a different story. Einstein did not primarily develop his Theory of Relativity and time dilation by observing objects travelling at near-lightspeed. He used reason. Also, there is an ongoing debate over fundamental particles—the “traditional”model was that atoms are composed of protons, neutrons, and electrons, but now scientists are saying that protons and neutrons are composed of more fundamental things called quarks and leptons. You do not pull out a microscope to zoom in on a piece of dust and hope to see protons and neutrons, or quarks and leptons for that matter. Scientists develop models based on reasoning, and then they extrapolate to find a secondary or tertiary observable effect that they would expect to see if the model is correct. There are a number of potential arguments from this, like saying that rationalism as the driving element and empiricism is secondary.
Additionally, earlier I mentioned a when-in-conflict standard of deciding which to believe when they contradict each other. Newtonian physics was based on simple observations of the world, and fails to incorporate General Relativity (which is fine when the effects of relativity are negligible, which is the case in almost every setting we encounter in our mundane lives). General Relativity “contradicted” Newton’s physics and it was rationalism vs. empiricism, and General Relativity has been largely confirmed by later experiments. Further, these experiments that confirmed relativity would never have been done without rationalism—few empiricism-users would think to spend millions of dollars constructing machines to slam tiny particles together at high speeds for no practical reason unless there was something they expected to find.
Political theory: While not the first thing that comes to mind, this realm may have some interesting implications comparingrationalism, which gives theories of what should work, and empiricism, which puts those theories into practice. Take Marxism, which, to egregiously oversimplify, is a political theory based on the premise that people are defined by their economic class in a way that transcends ethnic, national, religious, or any other boundaries and conflicts. Thus, it speculates that the final utopia will come when the working class throughout the world recognizes this solidarity and unites against the oppressive wealthy class. This philosophy can be seen as a product of rationalist methods. Empiricism would apply that theory to real life, and the results are (perhaps arguably?) disastrous. In this example, there are a few things going on. First, you could point out that rationalism was wrong. Second, the acquisition of empirical knowledge in a realm like political theory is necessarily risky. Third, Marxism was built on a premise—that class solidarity transcends other boundaries—that has been empirically denied by religious, ethnic, and political conflict going back as far as mankind’s collective memory. There are other things going on here too, and there are several points you could argue from this example. You could argue that empiricism is a method not without cost, and it should only come after rationalism has been used as far as possible. Human beings are not test subjects for governments. You could also argue that rationalism is often wrong, and once a theory has been denied empirically it should be scrapped (rather than being tried again and again…)
These are only two examples. You could also look at history/archaeology, mathematics, or even philosophical knowledge itself, and plenty of others that I have not thought of.
A suggestion:
One extreme way to debate this is to argue general principles with no basis in specific examples (“this is value debate, not policy debate” type thinking) and the other is to attempt to go over every example to fulfill a 51/49 burden of proof. My preference is that a case look at a specific field and build their arguments, which are still applicable to other fields, around thatexample. That way, you can clearly articulate what is actually different when you value one or the other. I would also suggest that, for both sides, you select one or two fields of knowledge that initially seem like a win for the other side, and then show how it actually goes your way. As a debater, you should be able to convince the audience/opponent of an idea they didn’t already hold—not just that you fulfilled a technical “burden of proof” or that your side of the debate is what the judge already believed walking in.
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