Ethical Modesty Part 1 by Bob Overing and Adam Bistagne
In increasing numbers, LD debaters are arguing for ethical modesty or “maximizing expected value” as an alternative method of framework evaluation. This article series will explain the argument, discuss its strategic value, and answer some common objections.
Ed Note: We’ve changed the terminology used in the article to be more accurate. Originally, the terms “epistemic confidence” and “epistemic modesty” were used following Ryan Davis’s (2010) unpublished “Some Thoughts on Standards Debate.” However, those terms have a specific meaning in the context of epistemology of disagreement, and we’d like to avoid confusion. Sepielli (2009) calls the modest view “maximizing expect value.” Others have called it “hedging.” We like “ethical modesty.”
Confidence vs. Modesty
Consider the following scenario:
Close Debate: In a debate on the 2014 Sept/Oct topic, the aff defends a consequentialist framework and contends that presumed consent policies will increase organ supplies and thereby reduce preventable deaths from disease and organ failure. The neg defends a rights-based framework and contends that presumed consent policies violate the right to individual autonomy. At the end of the debate, the judges believe:
- The neg has marginally won the framework debate that the rights-based framework is preferable to the consequentialist framework
- The aff has decisively won that the plan reduces preventable deaths
- The aff has decisively won that the plan does not violate rights
Judge 1 votes neg. The RFD is that the neg is ahead on the framework debate and according to the rights-based framework, the only relevant impacts are rights-violations. Though the aff won the claim that the plan does not violate rights, there is some risk that rights might be violated. The aff only has a defensive press against the neg contention.
Judge 2 votes aff. The RFD is that the neg is only marginally ahead on the framework debate, so rights-based impacts matter more but not that much more. There is only some slight chance of a rights-violation while there is an overwhelming chance that presumed consent will save lives.
Which way would you vote? It depends on your method. Judge 1’s method was to first determine the outcome of the framework debate and then apply one ethical theory to the exclusion of all other moral reasons. This is ethical confidence. Judge 2’s method was to compare the aff and neg’s moral claims taking into account both the strength of the framework argument and the strength of the contention argument. This is ethical modesty. The outcome of Close Debate and many actual debates turn on which method is employed, so it is certainly worth discussing.
In Favor of Modesty
There is substantial philosophical debate about normative uncertainty. Let’s sketch some arguments for why some philosophers have found the modest view persuasive.
First, ethical modesty seems consistent with everyday decision-making. The following example is taken from the dissertation of Andrew Sepielli, now a professor at the University of Toronto:
Suppose that I am deciding whether to drink a cup of coffee. I have a degree of belief of .2 that the coffee is mixed with a deadly poison, and a degree of belief of .8 that it’s perfectly safe. If I act on the hypothesis in which I have the highest credence, I’ll drink the coffee. But this seems like a bad call. A good chance of coffee isn’t worth such a significant risk of death – at least, not if I assign commonsensical values to coffee and death, respectively.[1]
It’s hard to argue that confidence gets it right here. We should think similarly when deliberating about normative theories. Employing some social-contract theory, we might think that the United States government should take only Constitutional action; however, some Constitutional violation might be permissible to protect a large city from a terrorist attack even if we care less about utilitarian reasons.
Or what if we have equal credence in two different ethical theories? Ethical confidence would be of no help since neither has priority. Ethical modesty, on the other hand, can deal with these cases in a compelling way. Suppose we are choosing between (1) saving one person and letting two die and (2) saving two persons and letting one die and our credence is divided equally between theory A and theory B. Theory A is aggregative (in this case, saving more is better) and recommends option (2) and Theory B is non-aggregative and indifferent between options (1) and (2). In short, Theory A says save more lives and Theory B doesn’t care. If we don’t know which theory is right, we should err on the side of saving more lives, since Theory A says that’s valuable. Ethical confidence comes to the bizarre conclusion that (1) and (2) are equally rational even though we are 50% sure (2) is better than (1). Ethical confidence thus prevents common sense applications of rational choice.
That’s all well and good but why should we adopt it in debate? Ethical modesty might remedy a lot of the fairness concerns with frameworks. Necessary/insufficient burdens, skepticism, and unturnable cases lose their force when the criterion is no longer all-or-nothing. Those arguments create reciprocity problems precisely because they exclude the opponent’s offense. Under a frame of ethical modesty, they would not be exclusive; the aff can weigh its offense. Status quo LD framework debate incentivizes finding frameworks that heavily favor one side such that winning the criterion is sufficient to vote. More reasonable, inclusive frameworks are crowded out in favor of more unfair ones.
For instance, a deontological framework is a predictable, reasonable framework, but ethical confidence makes it much more likely to create structural unfairness. If the neg defends a narrow conception of deontology, a strong act/omission distinction, that perfect duties strictly precede imperfect duties, and that any risk of a violation of the standard is sufficient to negate, aff offense under the neg framework is effectively impossible. These arguments alone are not problematic, however. If the aff can weigh the advantages of the plan even when the framework debate favors the neg, then the aff still has options. Modesty makes the strength of the aff impacts matter at the end of the day. Perhaps such a method of evaluation will help the time-pressured 1AR beat back neg layering strategies without resorting to theory arguments.
Ethical modesty might also encourage LDers to make multiple kinds of moral arguments in a given round. For instance, instead of defending utilitarianism to the death, a debater might also forward rights-based or contract-based reasons. This model would be a less dogmatic form of framework debating that largely reflects how applied philosophy is done. When thinking about abortion, drone strikes, or physician-assisted suicide, a comprehensive analysis would include justification from a variety of moral perspectives. Additionally, with more frameworks in any given debate, the cost to introducing an ethical principle would be much lower since a debater would have others to fall back on. If a framework can be ‘kicked’ at little strategic loss, debaters might be more willing to ditch their tired framework backfiles in favor of more innovative strategies. Ethical modesty might inject some life into deont vs. util debates that have largely characterized even the best framework debates in LD for some time.
Finally, ethical modesty might “get it right” in more debates in the sense that it more often leads the judge to vote for the better debater. In the Close Debate scenario above, the aff has decisively won two-thirds of the arguments in the debate, and the neg has only marginally won one-third of the arguments. An observer unfamiliar with the norms for framework evaluation in LD (ethical confidence) would be inclined to vote aff[2]. Certainly, the fact that the neg adapted to these judging norms better than the aff is relevant, but we should privilege a form of evaluation that encourages more, high-quality refutation, embedded clash, and round vision. The aff might be the better debater all-in-all but lose on a framework trick or a one-line weighing argument. Modesty lessens the impact that any one argument can have by considering all moral reasons forwarded. This means the best moral reasoning and the best debaters win out.
[1] Andrew Sepielli, “’Along an Imperfectly-Lighted Path’: Practical Rationality and Normative Uncertainty” (dissertation, Rutgers University, 2010), 54
[2] In fact, this is one of the main frustrations we’ve heard our students voice when dealing with non-LD judges.
Bob Overing and Adam Bistagne are coaches for Loyola High School in Los Angeles.
23 Comments
My question is wether epistemic modesty actually justifies util? Or a variation of that. In the beggining of this article you said “LD debaters are arguing for epistemic modesty or maximizing expected value” as if winning modesty is true means util is true. If this is what the article is trying to say then I think that it is wrong. The epistemic modest view would simply seem to say that we would weigh the strength of the link between the offence of each case to their respective standard so under a case of 50/50 credence to either framework, we would know which one we should put are bets on. If I am correct so far then I think that the arguments for means based frameworks might be in favor because one could make the claim that a violation of someone’s “outer freedom” is the highest possible violation under deont while under util a nuc war scenerio might not be because people might still survive or what not. Under this view, it’s clear that within the epistemically modest lens we should take the deontological option because there’s a “bigger” impact in respect to the type of offence it allows and has been demonstrated.
Epistemic modesty does not take a stance on which ethical theory is correct. It is a solution about what to do when you are normatively uncertain. Therefore, epistemic modesty does not justify util. While the terminology may be slightly misleading in this regard, “expected value” refers to multiplying the credence that an ethical theory is true by the normative value of the action you take, and “maximizing expected value” refers to choosing whichever option is higher in expected value.
The problem with your second point, “a violation of someone’s ‘outer freedom’ is the highest possible violation”, is that most modern deontological theories do not rank all violations of outer freedom as having equal and infinite normative value. The easiest way to see this is by the fact that a deontologist will assign greater blame to a murderer than a liar, thus indicating that the normative value of murder is “higher” than the normative value of lying. This is just another way of saying that murder is worse than lying, even for a deontologist.
It seems as if epistemic modesty would just encourage me to have a normative framework where it’s impossible for my opponent to have any ground and then just use that as leverage for an access to the ballot which I previously would not have had if I were losing the framework debate. For example, if I’m running a polls framework and all the polls in the topic literature favor my position, I no longer am obligated to even win my framework to gain offense off of the purposely narrow position. If I were to marginally lose the polls framework under the epistemically modesty view, I could still extend the polls as the largest impact due to a strength of link claim into the framework which my opponent wouldn’t actually be able to substantively refute because there wouldn’t be good topic literature for him or her to generate turn ground.
I think epistemic modesty it makes sense in a lot of ways, but I feel like it would logically create a bigger burden to defeat long, narrow, complicated frameworks with bad ground allocation, and thus encourage their usage.
Hi Emilio. I don’t necessarily think it’s bad to have moral reasons that decisively favor one side. Isn’t the point of a lot of these topics to create a tension between two conflicting values, e.g. community good vs. individual rights? That indicates that it really is the core of the topic to see those “hard to turn” moral arguments on both sides.
With the polls example, the frameworks are generally so poor and the counter-examples are generally so strong that the credence in that framework should be extremely low, which diminishes how much the contention matters. In fact, the situation described would probably be worse under the confident paradigm because the polls debater could invest all her time on framework and win. Additionally, any framework trick is sufficient to vote on the polls offense because no other moral reasons matter. That means that just one drop might mean the end of the debate if we’re confident about frameworks.
At the very least under the modest view, the opponent can leverage offense. Frameworks that create “bad ground allocation” aren’t a problem because they aren’t 100% exclusive. It’s a framework’s exclusivity, not its content, that make it abusive.
Yo this is just truth testing vs desirable worlds. Why would someone who wants to establish the truthfulness of the resolution care for offense under another framework that was already debunked in round?
That doesn’t follow- epistemic modesty would certainly affect which normative statements we believe (i.e. hold to be true). As the argument goes, taking the fact that a framework was won in round to mean that no impacts to other frameworks matter is a poor way to evaluate the truth or falsity of the resolution.
Interestingly, this is an issue that Ryan Lawrence has been talking about (and I think writing about, though I can’t now find the article) since the early 2000s. I think Bob and Adam’s article contributes a philosophical frame of reference that is enormously helpful.
If I recall Ryan’s argument has been something like the following: If framework is just a way of evaluating the relative importance of impacts, it is simply a form of weighing that should happen on the impact-level rather than as some mysterious prior consideration to every topical debate. The very structure of an LD case causes us to overestimate the significance of framework arguments. A marginal advantage on the framework is counted as terminal defense against your opponent’s entire position. If you are skeptical of the possibility of terminal defense in the first place then the conclusions of an epistemically modest perspective seem to flow pretty naturally. In the case of an unresolved framework debate, the judge should discount the impacts according to the degree of epistemic uncertainty left by the framework debate (in the same way she would discount an impact to the extent that it is shown to be improbable).
Of course, in the real world it’s hard to assign a numerical value to epistemic uncertainty for the purpose of easy comparison. I continue to believe that at some level evaluating the relative merit of arguments will require the judge to fall back on her own intuitions. (*Ominous organ music and cries of ‘intervention!’*).
Bob and Adam – I’m curious as to whether you believe that an epistemically modest approach to judging has anything to say about the role of a judge’s intuitions in debate adjudication?
I haven’t seen anything from Ryan on this, but it’s unsurprising that he would forward a similar view. There’s a lot more to be said on the philosophical side, but this is certainly the most digestible argument. I actually think that the (debate) theoretical justification is much stronger than the philosophical justification.
I like the terminal defense argument. I don’t think that believing terminal defense is impossible necessarily entails epistemic modesty but it reveals that we already have beliefs that are similar on other layers of debate. Maybe one way to put it is “we already agree there can be a risk of a disad with a high impact, so why not a risk of a moral reason with a high impact?”
The disad analogy helps deal with your second point too. I think we’ll answer this question in an upcoming post, but briefly, we have to evaluate our credence in various propositions for lots of debates. Does the Smith card turn the contention? How does the high probability low magnitude advantage compare to the high magnitude low probability disadvantage? We don’t need an exact number – why should we when doing this “framework weighing?”
Adam and I would agree that intuition has a role in judging debates but I don’t think it is invoked in any special way by epistemic modesty arguments.
In case anyone’s interested in the background on this epistemic modesty (EM) stuff, Loyola ran this position at the Battle for LA RR and the TOC. It was either read a theory shell or just as a framework argument to leverage util scenarios. The position seemed pretty successful, but like a lot of late-year tactics, I don’t think it’s here to stay.
The overarching issue I see with EM is that it just plainly makes too many meta-ethical assumptions to properly guide us during normative uncertainty. Frameworks opposed to intuitions clash with the main route of justification for EM. Frameworks that distinguish between supererogatory and required acts don’t fit neatly into the formula outlined in Sepielli. Frameworks that suggest there are infinitely bad impacts (Levinas? Extinction? Pascal’s wager?) explode the calculus entirely. If EM attempts to operate under normative uncertainty, it has no business making assumptions about value theory and meta-ethics.
How does one possibly resolve a 40% overall link to a perfect duty being violated versus a 20% overall link that extinction will be triggered? Kantians and Utilitarians simply disagree on the metric to evaluate actions with, so a formula encompassing both seems inappropriate.
The Sepielli card seems to sweep this issue under the rug. Both drinking coffee and avoiding poison are minimally instrumental goods under any framework. In other words, no theory thinks coffee is more important than avoiding poison. So the example doesn’t speak to the issue of normative uncertainty. It’s hard to say more about this card since it simply says nothing about intertheoretical value comparisons.
Similarly, the next example also dodges the heart of the matter. It illustrates a single instance where EM aligns with intuitions, namely the instance where EM is the only game in town. I can’t think of any instance where both frameworks recieve 50% confidence other than conceded terminal defense on both framework. And if that were the case, you’d vote on presumption, absent in-round risk of offense arguments. Also, if risk of offense applies to substance, why doesn’t it apply to frameworks? (In real life, precisely 50% credence in two frameworks is even more bizzarre. I don’t know what beliefs could possibly justify that.)
One last thing on the substantive issues. I think EM is ultimately circular. Why do we have an obligation to do what’s moral? To say we should simply because it’s the moral thing to do is circular. Normally we have ethical frameworks that provide us with the groundwork to explain the bindingness of morality. And those ethical frameworks settle the question of “why should I do what is moral?” But EM isn’t meant to take a stance on these issues. So what binds us to EM?
I’ll mention a few things briefly about the theoretical stuff.
First, if my substantive concerns are legit, then the inability to use EM is a side-constraint on whether it’d be good theoretically to use it.
Second, forwarding multiple frameworks and contention in 13 minutes of speech time just destroys in-depth philosophical education. It seems awfully superficial. I know the squo of framework debate isn’t great, but I think people trying to evade the framework debate through epistemic modesty or parameters aren’t helping either.
Third, it might “encourage more, high-quality refutation, embedded clash, and round vision” to vote for the kid who won every layer definitively, but dropped theory. Yet our intuitions are definitive here: they might be the better debater, but merely winning positions isn’t enough to earn the ballot. Rather, the better debating was done by the framework debater. If we didn’t admit of a distinction between better debaters and better debating, upsets would never happen.
Fourth, I get more worried when this becomes a paradigmatic decision. Determining whether the offense on a certain NC has a low strength of link and weighing that against AC offense seems to be intervention plain and simple.
Hey Salim. Thanks for the in-depth comment. I’m gonna divide up the phil stuff and the theory stuff for ease of discussion. And because I think Adam will add more below. Oh and as to your comment, you’d be surprised what TOC strategies stick. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Anyway, I think you frame the question incorrectly. It’s not just “modesty good” vs. “modesty bad”; it’s a comparison between the modest and the confident approaches, and your responses don’t always reflect that. For instance, both sides make meta-ethical assumptions, both rely on some intuitive justification, and both have problems with comparing wildly different accounts of value (one just chooses to ignore most of them). Remember that whatever is asked of one side can be asked of the other.
You cite two broad potential problems, one that deals with ethical justification and one that deals with “frameworks…that don’t fit neatly into the formula.” So say you read a framework that says intuitions don’t matter for moral evaluation. It does not follow that EC is better positioned than EM. There are also justifications for EM that don’t rely on intuition, so it’s not a big problem. Your second point is that the calculation gets difficult. That doesn’t mean the formula’s wrong. It just means it’s hard to apply. E.g. conducting a rigorous and reproducible scientific experiment might be tough but that doesn’t mean the scientific method is flawed. I don’t know why a framework that categorizes actions would be a problem. Your other example is about frameworks that suggest there’s infinite normative value, but even those frameworks make comparisons between actions that are better and worse, which is enough to make some evaluation under EM. I’m also skeptical as to whether there is such a thing as an “infinitely” strong moral reason. One possible response is that we should discount theories in which we have sufficiently low credence (although that approach runs into other problems).
Your next point is called the Problem of Intertheoretic Value Comparison. When we have varying levels of credence in more than one normative theory, how do we decide? You seem to think that EC would solve this problem because it excludes all normative beliefs but one. Yet what justification do we have for such a view? How do we know what amount of risk is appropriate? When should we gamble? What if we are just barely more sure in one theory? Kantianism and utilitarianism don’t answer these questions. We need some decision theory that addresses uncertainty.
As for the coffee case, no, it’s not the trickiest case, but that’s the point. It’s straightforward, so any adequate theory should get it right. EC says to act on the belief in which you have the highest credence (applied to moral philosophy as we’re doing here would mean “act on the moral belief in which you have the highest credence”). Thus, because we are 80% confident that the coffee is fine, we should act on that belief. If you think that “any framework” would agree with this reasoning, then it seems EM is in a pretty good spot.
You say we cherry-pick examples, but what’s the great example for when EC gets it right? There are instances when a judge is unsure which framework is preferable – they’re both about 50-50. I think most judges would agree this happens actually quite often. Presumption is the coin-flipping answer which most people find extremely unintuitive.
The question of “why do we have an obligation to do what’s moral” is a big one and I don’t think our stance on EM/EC matters much in answering that question. You say a moral theory explains the “bindingness” of morality but that makes huge assumptions about how that debate should occur – there’s no reason we couldn’t have such an explanation outside of a first-order normative theory. I’m not sure why that poses a problem for EM.
– Bob and Adam
Would EM answer Bostrom since it accounts for moral uncertainty?
I think the EM probably answers Bostrom, since Bostrom’s argument is supposed to be a practical guide about what we should do when we are normatively uncertain, and EM is also a practical guide for what we should do when we are normatively uncertain. I think some people may be able to twist Bostrum as a reason to think utilitarianism is true, but I think there are problems with that argument in itself. As far as uncertainty goes, EM seems to be the best game in town, so Bostrom’s argument would not impact the judge’s normative calculi for the debate, if you “win” that the judge should use EM.
You have the theory argument backwards – theory is always a side-constraint on substantive practices. Even if there are philosophical reasons for a practice (e.g. an a priori argument, skepticism), it may be unjustified or illegitimate for the debate context.
EM doesn’t evade framework; it stops debaters from evading contention-level debate by just debating framework. Both matter at the end of the day. I like the multiple frameworks arguments, and it’s purely speculative. I don’t know that it’s really a result of EM, but it might be. You say in-depth framework debates, but reading the Velleman card about reasons over and over again isn’t exactly an interesting in-depth framework debate. It might be better to change it up, get some applied philosophy education, and multiply the kinds of framework arguments debaters are comfortable going for. Why not try new things? There’s no reason under EM you couldn’t defend a deep Kantian framework. It just allows the possibility for more innovation.
We preempted your third point by saying that yes, conformity to communal judging is important: if theory or framework or whatever is the most important thing, then of course, the debater who better adapts deserves to win. It’s probably better, however, that we as judges encourage more clash on more layers to determine the better debater. That way a framework trick is less likely to win the day, which we can agree isn’t as good a determinant of skill as a more engaging in-depth framework and contention debate.
Why is EM interventionist any more than EC is? I’ve had it the other way around where a coach complained at me for being irrationally interventionist in deciding according to EC. I think an explanation of what a judge does under normative uncertainty should be in every paradigm.
Would epistemic modesty allow someone to run contradicting moral principles? Could I say that not presuming consent is good because it maximizes happiness and that presuming consent is bad since it uses people as a means to an end if the aff doesn’t argue for either framework?
The answer to your second question is yes. The problem with your first question is that it is loaded. While deontology and utilitarianism may have conflicting answers about what to do in some cases, e.g. the trolley dilemma, that does not mean they are “contradicting” moral principles. Yes, deontology and utilitarianism “contradict” in the sense they have different metrics for evaluating the normative value of action, but that is not a reason that a debater can only justify his or her side of the resolution with one or the other. If it were true that a debater could not argue that his or her side of the resolution was justified by “contradicting” moral principles, then a debater who ran a deontology NC could not turn a utilitarian aff. This seems wrong. Therefore, it is fine if debaters can run “contradicting” moral principles.
Thanks for your reply. My question was more about whether or not debaters can say that both util and deont are true at the same time.
Ah. This makes a bit more sense, but I still think I’d give a similar answer. I think that debaters can provide evidence that both utilitarianism and deontology are true, but cannot claim that a judge should have 100% credence in both of them. I think the confusion rests in the fact that most debaters think they are providing perfect epistemic reasons to believe in the truth of an ethical theory when they are really just providing reasons of varying strength for the judge to have some level of credence in a certain ethical theory.
Hey guys,
One of my students told me about this article, so I thought I would check it out. I’m still thinking about how I feel about this, and find myself sympathetic to Salim’s substantive concerns with EM (particularly the third and fifth paragraph of his comment). However, my concerns could simply be a result of my own lack of understanding of EM’s nuance — I simply can’t picture how some of its calculation operations would work.
So I thought I would ask a couple of specific Q’s for y’all :
First, Referencing the problem addressed in Salim’s 5th paragraph: how does the EM judge calculate the level of credence she should give a particular framework? In the introductory hypothetical, you guys characterize the EM judge voting aff after deciding that the deont fw was “only marginally ahead” such that the “slight chance” of deont violation was o/w by the “overwhelming chance” of saved lives.
My Q here is: what is going on ‘under the hood’ in that calculation — how do arguments on the flow factor in to deciding whether or not things are “marginally” or “decisively” won?
Second: if EM is to be more nuanced than “muddled framework debate — vote on clearest contention arg,” how can the marginally / decisively judgement be deployed in a nuanced way?
Let us imagine a slightly more complex version of the introductory hypothetical: The Neg wins that aggregation of pain/pleasure fails thus util calculation is impossible. Aff wins that phenomenal introspection is the only reliable epistemic lens, and further that pain/pleasure are the only morally relevant experiences. Neg wins a dropped arg that there is a violation of outer freedom (someone is murdered and there is an ‘infinite’ violation of autonomy) and Aff wins a dropped arg that nuclear war happens (lots of people will experience pain + extinction happens).
What is the EM judge to do here? Are they to claim that both frameworks are “marginally” won, and thus both pieces of offense relevant? If so, and both pieces of offense are dropped, how does the judge decide which to vote on? Put simply — how does the judge decide which “marginally” won framework to vote off of?
Thanks for the article and discussion,
pg
What up Patrick. I kind of answered this above when responding to Adam Torson, I think that an exact number is kind of difficult to deduce, but I think we can generally decide when someone is “decisively” ahead on an issue vs. “slightly” ahead. We do it in so many other circumstances, e.g. an RFD that says “Well both fairness and education are important. The neg is slightly ahead on fairness but the aff is decisively ahead on education, so I vote aff.” There are lots of other potential examples. I think we’re selling ourselves short as judges if we take the easy way out with the confident approach.
Your example is a tricky one, and I understand debates like that are not all that uncommon (though nearly identical drops on both sides are kind of weird). However, I think this case is a problem for any theory about normative uncertainty. What does the confident judge do given those two framework drops? Which one lowers your credence in the opposing ethical theory more? EC makes the decision easier by just eliminating half the debate, but why is that right and not just convenient? In any event, one way to evaluate such a scenario is to look at how each theory ranks the action relative to other actions. Does util say action A is the worst possible harm or are there much worse harms? And we’d ask the same for deont. Once we have an intra-theoretical ranking, we can argue for some way to compare them, e.g. prefer the option that maximizes the minimum (that would lead to the best worst-case scenario). There could be other metrics but that’s one. This approach is advocated by Ross, early Sepielli, and Bykvist (probably others too). It certainly isn’t perfect, but maybe it gives you a better idea of what EM might look like.
[…] quo NCs, but also has a means-based defense of opting out to hedge against conscription (*cough* epistemic modesty *cough*). If that’s too much framework debate for you, though, there’s a second option. The […]
Hey, where can I cut some lit on EM (other than the article series)
If you haven’t done any reading, this paper by Jake Ross from about ten years ago is easy enough to get through and will introduce you thinking in the right way: http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~jacobmro/ppr/deflation-ross.pdf
Chapter 2 of Andrew Sepielli’s dissertation is also a good start, although it can get a little math-y: https://rucore.libraries.rutgers.edu/rutgers-lib/26567/pdf/1/
I have a collection of articles on the subject but those two kind of initiate and situate the most recent debates.
“any risk” logic is silly regardless of which framework you use, if the aff truly won terminal defense that it does not violate any rights the framework debate should be irrelevant. 100% risk of a no link means the aff should win on “any risk” of solvency. similarly “any risk” the aff violates deontology justifies the claim that in the status quo there’s “some risk” that lives being lost also violate deontology.