Why You Should Ditch Your Criterion
Having a criterion had always been a no-brainer for me. At the very first debate tournament I attended, I noticed that almost all the debaters there were using criteria. A coach I met at that tournament explained that criteria help to simplify your case, strengthen your logical links, and overall help your judge to understand your position. However, my experience has been quite the opposite- criteria draw attention to your case’s weaknesses, expose it to new levels of attack and distract the round from what really matters.
As most of you already know, LD centers around a value. Your side leads to an excellent value, and the fact that you can achieve that value means that you should win the round. That connection should look like this:
My Side –> My Value –> I Win!
In order to really win a round, you need to do more than attack examples and taglines- you need to disrupt those logical links. If you can prove that their side doesn’t lead to their value, you’ve beaten the case. OR if you can prove that their value shouldn’t win them the round, you have again beaten their case. Either one of these arguments are what I like to call Case Bombs- arguments that can single-handedly win you the round. Let’s see what this looks like with the addition of a criterion:
My Side –> My Criterion –> My Value –> I Win!
You just significantly increased the number of logical links within your case. If your opponent can prove that your side doesn’t lead to your criterion, your criterion doesn’t lead to your value, your side doesn’t lead to your value as a whole OR that your value shouldn’t win you the round, your case has been beaten. You just increased the number of case-bombs from two to four, effectively DOUBLING your opponent’s chances of winning.
But in addition to making your case increasingly vulnerable, I have also found that criteria help to alienate tired judges and inexperienced judges. As I’ve already shown, criteria double the number of logical links in your case, forcing your judges to think harder about exactly what you’re trying to say. For some judges, criteria are an entirely new concept, so it may take them longer to understand the thesis of your case. Since your criteria will give your opponent more venues of attack, your opponent will have more arguments. That will make it appear as though your opponent has found many, many flaws in your case that you never knew about. Even if you do respond to these arguments, the sheer number of arguments coming from the negative will enhance the appearance that the negative is winning. That’s a dangerous position to put yourself in, especially when your judge is tired or inexperienced.
A criterion can even draw attention to the weak points of your case. I remember this being a huge problem for me two years ago, the last time I used a criterion. I was arguing that the will of the people is the basis for all society. To make this concept incredibly clear, I had a value of Stability and a criterion of Social Contract. I explained that societies need to be stable, that the social contract stabilizes societies and the will of the people creates social contracts. It was a huge time suck for me to explain these details in a way that made sense, and the fact that my case needed so much explanation made my judges somewhat suspicious of my logic. Additionally, by providing all these details up front, I was inviting my opponent to explore every detail of my case. (What exactly is the will of the people and how can we measure it? If the will of the people is always changing, how can we achieve stability? What if the social contract itself is unstable?) Later, I saw [a debater] run a case very similar to mine in out rounds at nationals. Instead of using all these details, he focused only on the social contract as his value, without using a real criterion. By this design, he could overcome details to focus on the big picture. In every philosophy debate, there are unanswerable questions. Criteria tie you down to these questions and draw attention to the fact that you don’t know the answers.
Overall, I see criteria as an unnecessary waste of time. The time spent introducing your criterion could be better spent on another example, a breathtaking closer or a great quote. I have found that it’s much more beneficial to rely on a value that clearly links with your case without the use of a middle-man criterion. Of course you should still know the details of how your side links with your value. But imagine this- instead of using up valuable time in your speech explaining why your side leads to your value, wait for your opponent to ask you in cross-examination. Then you can strengthen your logical links during his cross-ex time, without the use of messy criteria.
Couldn’t disagree more. A criterion acts as the middle term in a logical syllogism. Ergo, you have three links. You also don’t need to prove that “your side” is worth debating….the people who voted that Res already did that. So with out a criterion, your left with 1 real link: value_> resolution….and more than likely a very simplistic case and a high probability of just asserting the veracity of your link and being repitious.
unfortunately i have to agree with Blaire Bayliss. Criterions just confuse the judge, and with a strong enough value are not needed. For example with a value of Sanctity of Life, you don't need a criterion because the value is strong enough on it's own. As Blaire says, my side>my value>i win. That's two links actually, because your value links to the res, and that value is highest. Also some people do debate whether the res is worth debating with Kritiks.
I couldn't AGREE with this article more. Criteria can be useful, but when debaters include them out of some arbitrary sense of obligation, they do themselves a disservice. I always recommend that my new debaters avoid them, until they feel confident enough understanding and articulating their case's basic premises to explore some wilder strategies, or until they debate in front of an East Coast judge.
Response to this article: http://traviscoaching.blogspot.com/2012/09/why-yo…
I think Blaire's article speaks more to strategy based on how debaters actually use criteria, and less to theory on criteria based on their logical soundness. We would be the last to defend running cases without logical links, as in, if you put us in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and an aff case with logical leaps, we'd shoot the aff case twice. But here's why this article is spot on.
Criteria do not help elucidate rounds. In my personal experience, I cannot say I have ever seen a round in which a criterion helped explain the case or in which a criterion caused the judge to burst forth in joyous gratitude.
The scenario in homeschool debate where criteria can potentially clarify is when the case at hand has real, in-depth analysis about why the resolution leads to the value, providing the requisite plethora of logical links needed to bridge the resolution and the value. The criterion then helps group those links into pithy concepts that are more conducive towards big picture analysis. That is actually the type of case I enjoy writing, and the type of case I hope NCFCA and Stoa can eventually embrace.
But an ideal is only an ideal. I have never seen that type of case except in the NFL and in college. And there's a reason why. Having done college debate and coached high school simultaneously, I can wholly resonate with the "just prove what you're saying" or "just explain your argument" coaching line. But also having returned to high school debate after debating on the college circuit, I can tell you that when I'm in the line of fire in front of five homeschool moms trying to explain why I really do logically win based on the nuances between Lockean and Rousseauian social contract? I want to run out of the room and find my own dear mother. We have to speak to the realities of the specific environments in which our debaters compete.
tl;dr version: If you're a normal LD debater in NCFCA or Stoa, you might not need a criterion. That's all we're saying. Know and be able to defend the smallest assumptions of your case, but not everyone needs to know that you know. Communicate to your audience.
Jon, "you might not need a criterion" is a far cry from "you should ditch it, it's a bad argument type." If you know how to create criteria as you describe, it seems you should be coaching people how to do that – definitely NOT telling them to ditch it.
You're saying:
– I hope someday homeschool debaters run criteria correctly
– You may not need a criteria every time
THEREFORE: Ditch your criteria
The original article doesn't at all say what you're saying. It says criteria are a waste of time. Your comments only further illustrate how disastrously off-base this article is! I agree with much of your analysis (but not your conclusion) and offer you a cyber high five.
Only truly complex cases need criteria, and those cases will not be run, and have not been run in our league.
I have discovered that actually you don't need a criteria if you have a strong value, like human life or something like that. You only need it if your value needs limitations or a way of achieving. Here's a question for the experts-if someone runs a value of Justice, would you advise a criterion for that value? Or would you advise a criterion for National Security. Because people i've debated often do run criterions for such values, but i think that generally i have to agree with Blaire-having a criterion increases your opponents attack capabilities.