Agent Counterplans Do Not Compete by Evan Alexis
It has been the consensus for some time now that agent counterplans, which advocate for action similar to the affirmative plan but performed by a different actor, are competitive. I am of the opinion that this debate should have been decided against agent counterplans by Korcok’s 1999 article “The Decision-maker.”[1] His core argument is well-summarized by Perkins: “[o]pportunity cost provides the only satisfactory logical foundation for counterplans [and negative fiat], and this same opportunity cost theory only makes sense if the plan and the counterplan are choices … put to a single actor.”[2] In this article I present the case against agent counterplans and defend it against objections. I intend for this to apply to both Policy and Lincoln-Douglas debate and distinguish between the two when relevant.
I. Negative Fiat as Opportunity Cost
Originally, the argument against agent counterplans was justified by asserting that the judge takes the stance of the resolutional actor when evaluating the debate.[3] It would then be outside of the judge’s jurisdiction to consider proposals outside of the scope of that actor. This approach was rightfully rebutted by critics who pointed out that the judge adopts no such role when they decide debate rounds, nor are questions of the appropriate level of implementation irrelevant even for policymakers.[4] Rather, the judge is an argument critic who determines the winner of the debate.
However, Korcok’s argument against agent counterplans does not rely on any dubious assumptions about the judge. Rather, it is based on the idea of opportunity cost: because the resolution is structured as an assessment of what some other actor (usually the government) should/ought to do, the judge as argument critic has to decide between options that actor could choose between.[5] To understand why opportunity cost is the correct frame for understanding counterplan competition, we need to look at the justification for negative fiat.
Fiat for the affirmative team comes from evaluating the resolution/plan: inevitably, these propositions include the world “should” or “ought” (I call this the “normative operator”). To understand if an agent should/ought to do something, we need an account of that word which is usually provided by a moral theory. For example, act utilitarianism (which is presupposed in most policy debates) argues that we “ought” to do an action if and only if it maximizes utility compared to our other options.[6] If we are act utilitarians, we would assess the resolution by thinking about the potential consequences if it came to pass—in other words, by “fiating” it. So—contrary to popular belief—fiat is not an artificial agreement to suspend questions of likelihood to enhance the quality of debate.[7] Instead, it is based on the structure of the resolutional statement.
So where does fiat for the negative team come from? To echo a tired line, there is no negative resolution: there is no “ought not” from which to derive an advocacy. However, thinking about what it means to say a certain agent should/ought to do something raises the possibility of alternative options they could pursue instead. Competitive counterplans represent options available to a decision-maker that the plan precludes, be they mutually exclusive or net beneficial. In this way, negative fiat is just a way of demonstrating opportunity costs to the plan.[8] In formal terms, competition expresses that O(B) → ¬O(A). The desirability of the counterplan O(B), where O is the “ought” operator, disproves the desirability of the plan O(A) (because it is an opportunity cost).
The opportunity cost framework explains why negative advocacies are inherently conditional. By advancing a counterplan, the negative has merely tried to point out a decision that could have been made. Opportunity cost does not refer to the sum of value of options not taken, but the value of the best choice that the plan gives up.[9] If the affirmative proves the undesirability of a counterplan or wins a permutation, that advocacy is no longer the best choice that the plan precludes—that changes to either another counterplan or the status quo.
II. The Deliberative Ought
A strong objection to the focus on opportunity cost is that the agent of the plan could be a relevant consideration that the affirmative has the burden to defend. If the resolution is “Resolved: The USfg should do X,” how do we know if the emphasis is on the agent —“The USfg should do x”—as opposed the action: “The USfg should do X.” As Solt argues, “there is no reason to think that the resolution is focused more on the what than on the who. Nothing in the structure or logic of the resolution draws that distinction, and it is a premise which seems essential to this standard.”[10]
The general logic undergirding this thinking is that the resolutional proposition is a complex statement whose elements must be individually justified, a holdover from hypothesis testing.[11] However, what we should care about is whether or not the resolution/plan is true as a whole—“the resolutional agent should [plan]” and “another agent should [plan]” could both hold. [12] At a deeper level, the argument assumes that the normative operator of the proposition is outcome-oriented rather than obligation-oriented. If it would be better if a different agent did X, a resolution of the form “it should be the case that the USfg does X” might be proven false. However, in the resolutions we debate, the normative operator attaches to the agent who is to perform the resolutional action.
In the case of “ought,” most LD resolutions use a “deliberative ought” that relates to the options available to a given agent rather than an “evaluative ought” that specifies what the best thing to be done is (regardless of agent).[13] Schroeder outlines five indicators to identify the deliberative ought that I believe are clearly met in debate:
(i) Deliberation: as we’ve already observed, an agent deliberates to identify the best out of courses of action within her power. (ii) Advice: similarly, a cooperative advisor aims to inform an agent about which is best out of courses of action within her power. (iii) Implies ‘Can’: it is trivially true that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ if relativized to a deliberative set, since we have defined this as a set of options within the agent’s power. (iv) Accountability: plausibly, agents are accountable for choosing the best course of action within their power, and not accountable for what is not within their power. (v) Obligation: plausibly, an agent has an obligation-like relationship to an action (e.g. having most reason to perform it) if and only if it is the best action in her power.[14]
As debaters concerned with the truth of the proposition, we are concerned with the best course of action available to an agent (if the status quo is superior to the plan, the judge ought to vote negative). As debaters who are (usually) not the resolutional actor, we can only hope to simulate offering advice about resolutional action (and not to take it ourselves). If an option is impossible (ought implies can), it is not an opportunity cost to the plan—hence, utopian counterplans are widely held to be uncompetitive. The ideas of accountability and obligation to pursue the best option explain the logic of opportunity cost and negative fiat. A similar reasoning can be applied to policy resolutions, since “should” is usually understood to be synonymous with “ought to.”[15]
The upshot of the deliberative ought is that we can only understand an obligation in relation to the options a given agent has. That means given A: “The USfg ought to X” and B: “The 50 states ought to X,” it could be the case that B is true, the action of B alone is preferable to A and any combination of B, and A is still true (in which case, the affirmative would win). Consider the following example:
Suppose you’re at the pool and you see a kid drowning. You could jump in and try to save them—however, there’s a lifeguard at the pool. If the lifeguard dives in, they have a higher chance of a successful rescue. Additionally, if you both jump in, the rescue is more likely to fail amid the chaos than even the probability that the drowning child saves themselves.
But the lifeguard is distracted. Doubtless, they have an obligation to jump in (“the lifeguard should jump in” is true). And, as shown above, their action “competes” with yours and is preferable to yours. Absent their action, however, “you should jump in” is true. (Role-based obligations aside, and assuming the “get their attention” counterplan is off the table—perhaps they have Airpods in).[16]
Granted, your confidence in your obligation might depend on the probability of the lifeguarding acting. But this is not the logic of negative fiat, where we assume action is certain (reciprocally to affirmative fiat). Rather, it is the logic of the “status quo counterplan”: a framing argument, not an advocacy.[17] This is the argument of Lichtman and Rohrer’s famous footnote 13:
It is assumed, of course, that decisionmakers being addressed have the power to put a counterplan into effect. An individual or governmental unit can reasonably be asked to reject a particular policy if an alternative promises greater net benefits. If, however, a counterplan must be adopted by another individual or unit of government, the initial decisionmaker must consider the probability that the counterplan will be accepted. Debate propositions often affirm that a particular policy should be adopted by the federal government. Even if adoption of this policy by the individual state governments would be more beneficial, a reasonable critic would still affirm the resolution if state adoption were highly unlikely. The federal government should refrain from acting only when the net benefits of state and local action, discounted by the probability that such action will occur, are greater than the net benefits of federal action.[18]
This is the justification for restricting negative fiat to legitimate opportunity costs: not because counterplans that do not fall into this bucket should be “disallowed” pace Korcok, but rather that they do not perform the function the negative wants them to.[19]
What is going on here logically? Recall that to be competitive under the opportunity cost framework, O(B) → ¬O(A). Clearly, this does not obtain with an agent counterplan here since O(B) and O(A). The reason is that the normative operator O(X) is based to a specific agent. To paraphrase Finlay and Snedegar, no agent is able to choose between the set of actions {X should do A, Y should do A, Z should do A …}.[20] That means competition describes whether a given agent ought to do A or B. Thus, in the case of the lifeguard, we have something like O(A) and O*(B), where O is what I ought do and O* is what the lifeguard should do. Since these actions are being considered by different decision-makers, we have no way to establish O*(B) → ¬O(A). In other words, the counterplan is not competitive.
It might be objected that the example depends on only being able to decide on a course of action for myself. However, the judge in a debate appears to have no such limitation: they can choose between endorsing action by the federal government or the states, for example (perhaps ironically, Finlay and Snedegar postulate that “God” could choose between actions by different agents).[21] Similarly, Katsulas argues Korcok’s proposal has “no theoretical grounding,” instead forwarding that “the judge’s role is to evaluate policy arguments presented by competing advocates.”[22] Similarly, Mitchell argues that it is more “real world” for an argument critic to consider possible action at multiple levels.[23] Put simply, why is the judge not the decision-maker which opportunity cost logic applies to? Indeed, it seems that the judge is the only decision-maker that actually acts in a debate round.[24]
These arguments misunderstand the function of the judge as argument critic, who needs to determine which side won the debate.[25] That they evaluate the consequences of plans or counterplans at all is merely a byproduct of this process: they do not choose to enact any policies.[26] Instead, fiat is based on the normative operator in the resolution: this was the discussion above. What this means is that if the normative operator requires considering the actor as a decision-maker and not in the evaluative sense, the judge must logically disregard agent counterplans.[27] Without a more substantive, unrealistic role of the judge, these advocacies have little to no bearing on the truth of a proposition like “The USfg ought to X.” Merely advocating a counterplan does not change the probability that it will happen from the perspective of a decision-maker.
III. Where “The Decision-Maker” Fell Short
Even granting the premise that the scope of negative fiat is limited by the decision-maker, that leaves open the question of who that decision-maker is. I believe a key reason Korcok’s argument did not get the uptake it deserved was its presentation, especially given a lack of clarification of how it would work in practice. Consider his example:
Resolution: the U. S. Department of Defense should increase its security assistance to Southeast Asia.
Affirmative plan: the U. S. Army gives Laos forty-seven Blackhawk helicopters.
Now, let us begin by considering several potential decision-makers that might have authority to decide whether to adopt the affirmative plan:
Decision-maker 1: The United States Federal Government.
Decision-maker 2: The United States Department of Defense (the resolutional agent).
Decision-maker 3: The U.S. Army (the affirmative actor).
Initially, the decision whether to adopt the affirmative plan may well hinge upon the identity of the decision-maker. In particular, each of the three candidate decision-makers has a different scope of authority over possible competitive alternative actions. … [T]he appropriate scope of negative fiat is unresolvable unless we specify the decision-maker.[28]
This exposition immediately prompts two questions. The first, and more trivial, is “where did the United States federal government come from?” I believe Korcok simply erred by asserting that the USfg could be a potential decision-maker under this resolution, opening up concerns about the negative redefining the topic to access more powerful agents.[29] In fact, determining the appropriate decision-maker is relatively straightforward once the proposition the affirmative must defend is established.
More difficult is: does the affirmative retain the right to specify the decision-maker (and thus the scope of negative fiat) when they propose a topical plan? If this is the case, what stops them from specifying small agents with very limited capabilities to deter advantage counterplans?[30] If this is not the case, how do we identify the appropriate decision-maker for any given plan? Does the negative get to open up space for high-level agents by arguing that there is a decision-maker with authority over both the plan and potential counterplan, as with the introduction of the USfg in the example above?
Korcok’s solution, that the proper decision-maker on which to base competition is up to debate, was fundamentally incomplete—something he himself acknowledged.[31] The idea, I believe, was to make the argument more ecumenical: regardless of one’s position on plan or resolution primacy, you could accept his conception of opportunity cost and its implications for agent counterplans. However, his lack of explanation regarding how we are to determine the “appropriate” decision-maker even within the context of a debate left critics wanting. He offered three options for determining the decision-maker.
The first is to debate who the appropriate decision-maker for the affirmative plan ought to be.[32] The problem is that it is unclear what debaters would derive such a claim from. Korcok offered that there might be debates “about who ought to be the appropriate decision-maker for the particular affirmative plan,” with many of the issues identified above about the negative redefining the plan agent, something traditionally reserved to the affirmative.[33] The states can make federal policy directly (through constitutional amendments) or indirectly, so why are they not an appropriate decision-maker for the affirmative plan?[34] Even more confusing is his suggestion that teams should marshal defenses of limits on negative fiat like Solt’s domestic public actor standard in support of a specific conception of the decision-maker, since the two arguments seem logical distinct.[35]
The second was to simply assume the decision-maker is the resolutional agent. As others noted, this is preferable to his other standards given its clear bright-line for negative fiat.[36] Korcok was hesitant to advocate for this, given the lack of community agreement on who should serve as the decision-maker.
The third option was to specify the appropriate decision-maker alongside the resolution each year.[37] Clearly, this is a separate solution from the other two given the meta-game nature. It also seems unclear how a topic committee would do this beyond just specifying the resolution actor.
I think we can do better.
IV. Who is the Decision-Maker?
The decision-maker depends on the agent of the proposition that the affirmative defends. In Lincoln-Douglas, following the truth-testing (TT) paradigm, this will be the resolutional actor.[38] In Policy, since the affirmative selects the proposition it defends from the resolution as a field, this will be the plan actor.[39]
Consider the affirmative topicality burden for plans under truth-testing: it must offer an example of the resolution that upwardly entails it.[40] Turning back to Korcok’s example, the resolution is a proposition concerning the desirability of action by the Department of Defense. When the affirmative proposes a plan with different wording from the resolution, we should be able to rewrite it as an example of the resolution without losing functionality. The trivial example here would be that “gives Laos forty-seven Blackhawk helicopters” does not match the resolutional wording, but constitutes resolutional action (assuming this is, in fact, security assistance). Thus, we could rewrite the plan as: “the U. S. Army should increase its security assistance to Southeast Asia by giving Laos forty-seven Blackhawk helicopters.” (The same process of rewriting goes for counterplans: no one thinks a counterplan that swapped out “ought” for the plan’s “should” is competitive, indicating issues with textual standards of competition.)
The more radical implication is that the same logic must apply to the affirmative agent (vis a vis the resolution) for the plan to be topical. That is, to be topical, the plan must be able to be rewritten as “The Department of Defense, through the U. S. Army, should increase its security assistance to Southeast Asia by giving Laos forty-seven Blackhawk helicopters.” If the plan’s agent is not an available “means” of the resolutional actor, the plan is simply not topical. For example, if (hypothetically) the Federal Reserve is distinct from the federal government, an affirmative plan could not specify it as their actor since the authority is different. This is not Korcok’s second solution which emphasized that the resolutional decision-maker has authority over sub-resolutional agents, which merely justified shifting the “decision-maker” from the plan agent to the federal government.[41]
What this discussion reveals is that under truth-testing, there is only one decision-maker: the resolutional agent. Plans cannot specify “different agents” than the resolution and hope to be topical; that one actor should do something does not deductively entail that another actor should do that thing—this is Korcok’s point. Rather, the plan agent is merely part of a means available to the resolutional actor of carrying out the plan mandate. So, if the affirmative offered the above plan (“the U. S. Army should Laos forty-seven Blackhawk helicopters,” the negative could permissibly counterplan for the U. S. Air Force to take some action (assuming it would not be security assistance to Southeast Asia, lest it be topical) since both would actually be fiating the same agent, the U. S. DoD.
It should be noted that this solution was notably rejected by nearly everyone involved in the theoretical debate at the time—including Korcok himself.[42]
One reason is that some topics do not specify actors. It is important to distinguish between two versions of this objection. The first is that some resolutions, seen primarily in Lincoln-Douglas, truly lack an agent: for example, “Resolved: Justice requires open borders for human migration” from January-February 2023. In this case, however, the problem of the relevant decision-maker is irrelevant because these sorts of resolutions do not operate under the opportunity-cost framework that agent-based topics do.
The second version of this objection that is more relevant to policy debate is the idea that “the United States federal government” or “the United States” are not actors themselves but serve to draw the limits of the affirmative plan’s ultimate choice of actor.[43] This does not seem to square with a plain reading of a policy resolution, which routinely describes that some entity should do something. Clearly, these concepts refer to an entity we can make coherent claims about. Additionally, this issue seems to be moot in practice: when is the last time you saw an affirmative plan specify which branch of government implemented their plan? How many experienced judges have sat through this interaction in 1AC CX:
Neg: “Who is the agent of the plan?”
Aff: “The USfg.”
If the negative was lucky enough to get anything out of the above exchange, it might be something like “normal means is Congress.” Practically, teams understand that there is a resolutional agent and that sub-resolutional “actors” operate as means within it.
Another version of this objection is that even if referring to the federal government as a unified entity is coherent, that entity is not an agent. Brovero argues that “[t]he federal government does not enact policies, agents or agencies within the federal government enact policies” and so “[a]gent specificity is … necessary to prove the resolution is a good idea” because “the affirmative team has to provide an example of [the resolution].”[44] The idea that the appropriate decision-maker is the federal government does not make sense if the federal government does not make decisions. However, understanding subsets of the federal government like agencies as means of the federal government addresses this concern: even if the affirmative must specify what parts of the federal government carry out the plan in order to prove that an example of the resolution exists, we can still think of the collective entity as making decisions.
For the policy debaters who have been lost in the discussion of truth testing, we can apply a similar logic in the case of plan focused debate depending on topicality. If the plan must be an example of the resolution, then the same restriction of truth-testing applies insofar as the resolutional actor is the correct decision-maker. Otherwise, plans with sub-resolutional actors would not be topical (i.e. if the resolution says USfg and the plan says US Patent and Trademark Office, we should be able to rewrite the plan as “The USfg, through the US PTO, …”). However, if the affirmative plan constitutes a proposition that stands on its own and the resolution is merely a field that determines the bounds of possible plans—as plan focus advocates argue—then it seems difficult to avoid the conclusion that the affirmative can technically choose their own actor.[45] As a result, affirmatives could also effectively specify the negative counterplan actor.
This could be a good thing. The affirmative would face a tradeoff: if they advocated a broader actor closer to the resolution, they could potentially avoid committing to specific means of implementation to be better off against disadvantages. However, affirmatives that chose to specify their actor would be rewarded by avoiding most counterplans.[46] Our current theory paradigm that uncritically embraces agent counterplans punishes such specification, leading to ever vaguer plans. When was the last round won on ASPEC that wasn’t dropped in the 2AC?
Wouldn’t this control over the decision-maker for potential counterplans by the affirmative be irreciprocal? Setting aside the issues of using reciprocity as a justification for theory,[47] this would be perfectly reciprocal insofar as it restricts fiat by both sides to the same agent.[48]
V. Answering Practical Justifications
Even if they are totally illogical, perhaps there are practical reasons to preserve agent counterplans. These can be separated into ground and education-based justifications.
Katsulas argues that taking away “germane counterplan ground” from the negative puts them at a disadvantage, but hopefully this lengthy argument has shown why agent counterplans are not germane insofar as they are not genuine opportunity costs.[49] He also posits that without agent counterplans, negatives will instead argue same-actor PICs which are bad for clash.[50] While this is clearly the status quo, such a shift is more importantly completely unwarranted. If these PICs were strategic to begin with, why wasn’t the negative reading them? Additionally, there is a good argument to be made that PICs do not negate under truth-testing given that most of them are topical (policy debaters have more of an uphill battle given community norms).[51]
Katsulas also claims that on any given topic, there is literature that debates the proper actor for resolutional action (and presumably, it is educational to engage with it).[52] This is unlikely to be the case, because authors do not assume an all-powerful decisionmaker that can decide between institutions when advocating for a policy.[53] Even if we grant this unwarranted assertion, just because some literature exists does not mean we should engage with it if it requires making unjustified arguments. Additionally, the permissibility of agent counterplans excludes far more topic literature through the functional requirement it imposes on affirmatives to have “federal key” warrants, as Solt’s advice for beating the states counterplan shows.[54]
Perhaps it is important for debaters to learn about concepts that tend to be net benefits to agent counterplans like separation of powers or judicial activism.[55] If the resolutional actor is some broad organization like the federal government, the negative could advocate for action by specific branches within the government so long as the counterplan is not topical. Additionally, agent counterplans are almost never truly mutually exclusive with the plan and instead depend on a net benefit for competition, usually one related to institutional capacity like the federalism or politics DA. This net benefit could just as easily be read alone as a disadvantage, preserving debates over different levels of government. Conversely, by bypassing the uncertainty of action by other actors, agent counterplans artificially insulate testing the agent of a plan since inaction by others is often a central reason that a given decision-maker should act.[56]
A last argument relies on Solt’s domestic agent standard, which argues that debate is part of the democratic process in the United States and therefore has a duty to educate its participants on their country’s various government institutions.[57] Solt admits that this approach is dependent on fiat as an act of intellectual endorsement, which ought to lead logically to excluding agent counterplans merely from what it means to evaluate a resolutional or plan proposition.[58] The standard has no grounding—it is as if a circle was drawn to preserve the states counterplans from its “unsavory” brethren and justifications were found ex post facto. Additionally, there is no reason that the states counterplan educates in a meaningful way—if anything, it is a gross bastardization of the system of federalism in this country to assume that states operate as a unified whole.
To summarize: agent counterplans are not competitive. Negative fiat is justified in its demonstration of legitimate opportunity costs to affirmative plans. Opportunity cost only applies when the same agent is considering different options, so they cannot choose to have another take action in their stead. The agent in question is the decision-maker for the proposition the affirmative must defend—either the resolution for truth-testing or the plan for plan focus. There are no legitimate theoretical reasons for preserving agent counterplans. What are you waiting for? Send the “sacred cow” out to pasture.[59]
Thank you to Jacob Nails for helpful comments on this article!
Evan was an Instructor at Victory Briefs Institute. He debated policy at Washington University in St. Louis and Gunn High School. He has coached multiple debaters to outrounds at the TOC in Lincoln-Douglas. In his free time, he enjoys reading and playing bridge.
[1] Michael M. Korcok, “The Decision-Maker,” Contemporary Argumentation & Debate 20 (1999): 49–68, https://web.archive.org/web/20140423145002/http://www.cedadebate.org/CAD/index.php/CAD/article/view/238/222.
[2] Dallas Perkins, “‘The Decision-Maker’ and Limits on Negative Fiat: An Unfinished Journey,” Contemporary Argumentation & Debate 20 (1999): 94-5, https://web.archive.org/web/20140423145601/http://www.cedadebate.org/CAD/index.php/CAD/article/download/242/226.
[3] E.g. Walter Ulrich, “The Judge as an Agent of Action: Limitations on Fiat Power,” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Speech Communication Association, November 1981. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED210739.
[4] See e.g. Roger Solt, “Negative Fiat: Resolving the Ambiguities of ‘Should,’” Argumentation and Advocacy 25, no. 3 (January 1989): 132-3, https://doi.org/10.1080/00028533.1989.11951390; Korcok, “The Decision-Maker,” 54-5.
[5] Korcok, “The Decision-Maker,” 66-8.
[6] E.g. J. J. C. Smart, “Outline of a System of Utilitarian Ethics,” in Utilitarianism: For and Against, by Bernard Williams, 1st ed. (Cambridge University Press, 1973), https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511840852, 13-4.
[7] Allan J. Lichtman and Daniel M. Rohrer, “The Logic of Policy Dispute,” Argumentation and Advocacy 16, no. 4 (March 1980): 241-2, https://doi.org/10.1080/00028533.1980.11951178. See also Jacob Nails, “Two Dogmas of Fiat,” VBriefly (blog), December 28, 2019, http://web.archive.org/web/20220630182846/https://www.vbriefly.com/2019/12/28/two-dogmas-of-fiat-by-jacob-nails/.
[8] Robert J. Branham, “Roads Not Taken: Counterplans and Opportunity Costs,” Argumentation and Advocacy 25, no. 4 (March 1989): 250-4, https://doi.org/10.1080/00028533.1989.11951406.
[9] James M. Buchanan, “Opportunity Cost,” in The World of Economics, ed. John Eatwell, Murray Milgate, and Peter Newman (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 1991), 520, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21315-3_69.
[10] Roger Solt, “The State Counterplan,” in Multiple Choices: Testing Educational Policy, Wake Forest University Debater’s Research Guide, 1999, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SJ5_rt8b81lTh2IM7vP5NaXtD7cAveT6/view. Emphasis mine.
[11] David Zarefsky, “Argument as Hypothesis-Testing,” Paper presented at the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Speech Communication Association, 1976,
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED136324
, 7. See Dallas Perkins, “Counterplans and Paradigms,” Argumentation and Advocacy 25, no. 3 (January 1989): 146-7, https://doi.org/10.1080/00028533.1989.11951391.
[12] See Lichtman and Rohrer, “The Logic of Policy Dispute,” 246: “affirmation of a topical plan, even if it fails to ‘justify’ all features of the resolution, still entails affirmation of the debate resolution.”
[13] Mark Schroeder, “Ought, Agents, and Actions,” The Philosophical Review 120, no. 1 (January 1, 2011): 1–41, https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-2010-017.
[14] Stephen Finlay and Justin Snedegar, “One Ought Too Many,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89, no. 1 (2014): 114, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2012.00646.x. This article has an excellent discussion of focus in “ought” sentences that is worth reading if you are not convinced by the arguments against the evaluative sense I presented here.
[15] See e.g. Oxford English Dictionary, “Shall, v., Sense II.Iii.18.a.i” (Oxford University Press, September 2024), Oxford English Dictionary, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/1145988275; Dictionary.com, “Should,” in Dictionary.Com, 2023, https://www.dictionary.com/browse/should.
[16] Thank you to Jacob Nails for the original version of this example and Lukas Krause for a reconstruction.
[17] E.g. Robert Branham, “The Counterplan as Disadvantage,” Speaker and Gavel 16, no. 4 (1979): 61–66, https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1220&context=speaker-gavel.
[18] Allan J. Lichtman and Daniel M. Rohrer, “A General Theory of the Counterplan,” Argumentation and Advocacy 12, no. 2 (September 1975): 74, https://doi.org/10.1080/00028533.1975.11951070. Emphasis mine.
[19] Korcok, “The Decision-Maker,” 65.
[20] Finlay and Snedegar, “One Ought Too Many,” 113.
[21] Ibid., 113.
[22] John Katsulas, “Locating Negative Fiat: A Response to Korcok,” Contemporary Argumentation & Debate 20 (1999): 74, https://web.archive.org/web/20140423145002/http://www.cedadebate.org/CAD/index.php/CAD/article/view/239/223.
[23] Frank Mitchell, “The Boundaries of Governmental Fiat,” in Alternatives to Education: Stagnation or Renewal, Wake Forest University Debater’s Research Guide, 1981, https://drive.google.com/file/d/13jaPSEZZrFBMaA_X9QOi5zoMIg9HEDQX/view. Katsulas, “Locating Negative Fiat,” 72.
[24] Gina Lane, “Buchanan’s Opportunity Cost Theory as It Applies to Academic Debate Practices: A Response to Korcok,” Contemporary Argumentation & Debate 20 (1999): 87. https://web.archive.org/web/20140423145601/http:/www.cedadebate.org/CAD/index.php/CAD/article/download/242/224.
[25] Korcok, “The Decision-Maker,” 52-3. See also L. Paul Strait and Brett Wallace, “The Scope of Negative Fiat and the Logic of Decision Making,” Policy Cures, 2007, A 3, http://web.archive.org/web/20080812153756/http://groups.wfu.edu/debate/MiscSites/DRGArticles/2007/The%20Scope%20of%20Negative%20Fiat%20and%20the%20Logic%20of%20Decision%20Making.pdf.
[26] Michael M. Korcok, “Rebuttal,” Contemporary Argumentation & Debate 20 (1999): 105, https://web.archive.org/web/20140423145005/http://www.cedadebate.org/CAD/index.php/CAD/article/view/243/227.
[27] Strait and Wallace, “The Scope of Negative Fiat,” A 6.
[28] Korcok, “The Decision-Maker,” 61-2.
[29] E.g. Katsulas, “Locating Negative Fiat,” 72-3.
[30] Dallas Perkins, “’The Decision-Maker’ and Limits on Negative Fiat: An Unfinished Journey,” Contemporary Argumentation & Debate 20 (1999): 99-100, https://web.archive.org/web/20140423145601/http://www.cedadebate.org/CAD/index.php/CAD/article/download/242/226.
[31] Korcok, “Rebuttal,” 107-9; “The Decision-Maker,” 59-60.
[32] Korcok, “The Decision-Maker,” 59-60.
[33] Ibid., 60.
[34] Perkins, “An Unfinished Journey,” 98.
[35] Korcok, “The Decision-Maker,” 60.
[36] Katsulas, “Locating Negative Fiat,” 73.
[37] Korcok, “The Decision-Maker,” 60-1.
[38] See e.g. Jason Baldwin, “Truth or Consequences: A Response to Nelson’s World Comparison LD Paradigm,” Rostrum, December 2009, https://www.speechanddebate.org/wp-content/uploads/December-2009-Complete-Rostrum.pdf; Jacob Nails, “Truth-Testing and Its Discontents,” Substack newsletter, Victory Briefs (blog), December 28, 2023, https://victorybriefs.substack.com/p/1220-1227-truth-testing-and-its-discontents.
[39] E.g. Dale A. Herbeck, John P. Katsulas, and Karia K. Leeper, “The Locus of Debate Controversy Re-Examined: Implications for Counterplan Theory,” Argumentation and Advocacy 25, no. 3 (January 1989): 150–64, https://doi.org/10.1080/00028533.1989.11951392. See my forthcoming article for an in-depth critique of this understanding of topicality.
[40] Jacob M. Nebel, “Should T Be a Voting Issue?,” VBriefly (blog), November 30, 2014, http://web.archive.org/web/20220527061646/https://www.vbriefly.com/2014/11/30/should-t-be-a-voting-issue/; “The Priority of Resolutional Semantics,” VBriefly (blog), February 20, 2015, http://web.archive.org/web/20150323012105/http://vbriefly.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/thepriorityofresolutionalsemantics1.pdf.
[41] Korcok, “The Decision-Maker,” 60.
[42] Perkins, “‘An Unfinished Journey,” 97.
[43] Ibid., 97.
[44] Adrienne Brovero, “SOP, There It Is,” in Immigration Regulation: Borderline Politics, Wake Forest University Debater’s Research Guide, 1994. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1bZHpglHLetLf6hVAjDPoKbUUF3JuIl9U.
[45] See e.g. James P. Dimock and Aaron M. Dimock, “Debating about Policies and Policy Debating: Issues and Non-Issues in Policy Debate,” Journal of the Communication, Speech & Theatre Association of North Dakota 22 (2010 2009): 9–18, https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=a4f6668bff1d47bb3a9010e86ddcc9c322f1e03c#page=17. I also discuss this more in my forthcoming article.
[46] Perkins, “An Unfinished Journey,” 99.
[47] Perkins, “Counterplans and Paradigms,” 144.
[48] Ross Smith, “The International Counterplan: A Survey of the Issues,” in (De)Baiting the Bear: Policy Options Towards Russia, Wake Forest University Debater’s Research Guide, 1998. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1XPN3Y5y7n8IZWJiG16DrpcR6yxRzTKyR.
[49] Katsulas, “Locating Negative Fiat,” 71.
[50] Ibid., 71-2.
[51] E.g. Fabrizio Cariani, “‘Ought’ and Resolution Semantics,” Noûs 47, no. 3 (2013): 534, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0068.2011.00839.x. I also defend this position in a forthcoming article.
[52] Katsulas, “Locating Negative Fiat,” 71.
[53] Strait and Wallace, “The Scope of Negative Fiat,” A 4.
[54] Solt, “The State Counterplan.”
[55] Katsulas, “Locating Negative Fiat,” 71.
[56] Strait and Wallace, “The Scope of Negative Fiat,” A 6.
[57] Katsulas, “Locating Negative Fiat,” 72.
[58] Solt, “Negative Fiat,” 134.
[59] Ryan Galloway, “Go Vegetarian: Send the Sacred Cow of the States Counterplan Out to Pasture,” Wyoming Debate Roundup (blog), March 27, 2020, http://wyodebateroundup.weebly.com/1/post/2020/03/go-vegetarian-send-the-sacred-cow-of-the-states-counterplan-out-to-pasture.html.