Conditionality? Please explain

I have heard conditionality used in several different ways, and I wanted to hear some feedback about what the appropriate definition of condo is:

(1) Conditionality as special cases and smaller ground

In this definition, people call foul when a position (usually an AC) only covers on topic of the resolution or affirms on the basis of some condition. Rather than evaluating the resolution as a categorical truth, the AC (or another position) only proves that affirming/negating are good in a certain circumstance.

(2) Conditionality as in-round choices

This is basically used with multiple conditional counterplans. Rather than saying that the position is conditional because it ignores a portion of the topic, a debater says the position is conditional because the opponent can choose to kick it or go for it. This conditionality seems to be on the meta-level debate rather than the conditionality of the content of the argument.

Which one is conditionality? Are they both condo?

I guess more importantly, is there a difference in theoretical legitimacy between the two cases of conditionality?

I would say #2 is how it is more commonly used. The term "parametrics" seems to act as a surrogate term for the first definition.

JohnnyFontane wrote:
I guess more importantly, is there a difference in theoretical legitimacy between the two cases of conditionality?

People will run theory against cases that parametricize and conditional K's/counterplans. Both are defensible. The former is easy to defend and can give you a win if you're a good theory debater because you can generate a lot of offense. The latter is harder to defend and I don't think that many answers to "conditional counterplans bad" are offensive.

Old wrote:

JohnnyFontane wrote:
I guess more importantly, is there a difference in theoretical legitimacy between the two cases of conditionality?

People will run theory against cases that parametricize and conditional K's/counterplans. Both are defensible. The former is easy to defend and can give you a win if you're a good theory debater because you can generate a lot of offense. The latter is harder to defend and I don't think that many answers to "conditional counterplans bad" are offensive.

There are offensive reasons why condo cps are good, the best one being neg flex, which is usually coupled with the counterinterp that the neg gets one condo CP and one condo K. The reason for this is that the negative has the right to test the aff on both a theoretical level (ie is your methodology right) and on a more pragmatic level (given your methodology for determining x, is it actually the best option). But this is more of a policy issue and gets into negation theory stuff that i'm not interested in talking about right now and is kinda boring anyways and isn't relevant to the actual topic at hand.

However, in Ld, where one doesn't ever really face this type of scenario, Dispo is a better option for one advocacy. Dispo (or dispositionality) says that the CP is basically an Opportunity Cost Disad (think economics), and that the real way to measure the cost of your plan or advocacy is to see what it trades off with. In this world, the negative can kick the CP if they test the disad's link or competitiveness (ie a permutation), or if the aff puts defense on the net benefits such that any offense they have is mitigated by the defense (the net benefits are impact scenarios for the op cost da). Some people explain this wrong because they say if you put any defense on it they can kick it, which is silly (for instance, if the CP solves for a DA that leads to nuke war with a terminal impact of extinction, the aff could say "nuke war d/n lead to extinction" and "nuke war good" and the defense doesn't actually mitigate the offense).

Parametrics, on the other hand, especially the parametricized advocacy is fairly germane to the topic (ie not some affs on the sept/oct topic but stuff like ICC on the jan/feb topic, which is really just parametrics more in a policy sense, whereby the aff plan justifies the resolution but isn't encompassing of all of it - Sean Janda, if you still read this forum, I think this is where J comes from), is fairly easy to justify. Expecting someone to debate some sort of national security/terrorism scenario on sept/oct, or the ICC/IEC on jan/feb isn't that unreasonable, imo.

And 2 is more common than 1. 1 is technically "conditional" but calling it parametrics is much clearer (no one says "parametrics" to mean the CP status because it's nonsensical - parametrics means meauring parameters).

I don't know if Sean reads this anymore (probably does), but you're right about J (or at least the way we ran it).

Re: Phelan/Will

I actually disagree in terms of where J comes from. Like, if you run an ICC aff on Jan/Feb (I did), I wouldn't run J, because I think that ICC justifies "an international criminal court." J happens in a totally different sense. J comes in when there is no reason that the resolution is uniquely key to achieving the affirmative advantages. For example, if you run an ICC Heg aff, but you don't have a reason why joining the ICC is uniquely key to US Heg, that doesn't justify the resolution, since there are 170000 other ways to increase heg. Thus, there's no unique reason to affirm, if that makes sense.

I took that as what Phelan meant. I.e., the plan in some way justifies the rez, through the advantages. If the plan isn't key to the advantages, it doesn't justify the rez, you don't affirm.

Does justification really work like that? I don't understand how an advantage can only result from doing the resolution. Really, I'm pretty sure it's possible to counterplan out of every advantage. You would have to have really good "international pressure key" cards to generate a unique advantage, but I'm pretty sure those could be beaten back. More importantly, what sort of standards do you have, and why would that position be abusive? It seems to me the aff still proves the resolution desirable, so you'd affirm.

To be honest, this probably doesn't matter, since I'm aware of exactly 2 LDers running justification ever. The argument, however, is that the aff must show that the resolution is uniquely justified--that is, that it provides some benefit that can't be achieved otherwise (so, generally it would be run on a soft power AC or a heg AC or something like that, if there was no X is key cards). There can be two different voters on it (at least, that's the way that we run it). One is a fairness voter with a predictability type standard, which basically says that, if the aff can just pick these things like soft power or heg, it destroys neg prep since it's impossible to predict all of the tangentially germane things to the resolution. The stronger voter, in my opinion, is a prima facie burden voter, which says that it's the aff's prima facie burden to justify the resolution and, as such, if they haven't done that, then they should lose.

Also, in terms of the ability to CP out of advantages, it isn't really true. Like, j wouldn't really apply if there was a good warrant as to why res is uniquely key, and, in my opinion, if the aff can prove a substantial solvency deficit to the CP, it means that, functionally, the AC is uniquely key. For example, in my ICC AC, there were arguments about how it was really good to bring people who committed crimes against humanity to justice for a variety of reasons. I would say that j doesn't fit here, even though it's possible to try to CP out of the advantages with an ad-hoc tribunals CP, since I could show that there was a large solvency deficit on the CP.

You would need to show that the CP had like 0 solvency for J to work there.

I'm also surprised so many people know what J is when it is such a terrible argument (then again, many know what "irony" is too)

As a judge, I'd vote on conditionality pretty much anytime someone argued it well enough. For me, I don't understand how debaters find it fair to limit a normative resolution to one instance. While it is hard to prove a universal norm, debate wouldn't be fun without the challenge.

On the (1)st view of conditionality you brought up, I think that when any debater does this they have set themself in a trap. Of course anyone can prove some part of a normative rule, principle, or action good; however, debates aren't meant to be set on subjective ground. I wrote this in another post somewhere on this site...at NFL Nats this year I hit a guy who limited his justification for conscription to just democracies. I ran this particular argument on him; I lost on a 2-1 split. One judge claimed to not "buy" his conditionality; I'm not sure how; I thought I made it pretty clear.

My view is basically the same for the (2)nd view of conditionality. Great, one has proven that maybe one view or stance is correct, but having kicked out of other views, the debater has conceded the fact that this particular view rests on conditionality; thus, it can't really be proven.

Volk23 wrote:
On the (1)st view of conditionality you brought up, I think that when any debater does this they have set themself in a trap. Of course anyone can prove some part of a normative rule, principle, or action good; however, debates aren't meant to be set on subjective ground. I wrote this in another post somewhere on this site...at NFL Nats this year I hit a guy who limited his justification for conscription to just democracies. I ran this particular argument on him; I lost on a 2-1 split. One judge claimed to not "buy" his conditionality; I'm not sure how; I thought I made it pretty clear.

At the point where ground isn't limited to a small set of issues, I see no reason why an affirmative can't isolate a specific scenario (i.e. a plan). If the AC were to try to limit the debate solely to one issue, I think that is probably harmful to both fairness and education. However, when the AC can be weighed against the advantages/disadvantages of the NC and thus neg doesn't get completely screwed, it doesn't really make sense to force the affirmative to defend 100% of the resolutional cases. In many ways, I think this stance promotes a deeper debate that better engages the substantive issues raised by the resolution rather than forcing the AC to defend an absolute burden of truth.

Alex Bennett wrote:You would need to show that the CP had like 0 solvency for J to work there.

I'm also surprised so many people know what J is when it is such a terrible argument (then again, many know what "irony" is too)

J made sense at one point in policy as part of the transition from hypotesting to plan focus debate. It really doesn't make sense any more. However, sean is right. A massive solvency deficit is sufficient for J to work because the idea is that there has to be some substantially unique advantage to doing the plan/aff. A large scale solvency deficit or a big disad (at least i think this would work - if there is a substantial cost in order to get the same effects another way it seems like a reason why that action is key to me). Although I feel that counterplans are prolly a better test of the uniqueness of the aff solvency than J if only because the way i view the issue, the uniqueness would only come into play in the world where the negative is contesting it via a cp. Just like policymakers would never be like "well we might be able to get at this problem another way but i don't know what that other way would be so lets just reject the proposal," on resolutions where this comes into play i'm not sure why the fact that there could be a different way to get to the aff advantages matters in a world where in terms of the proposals in the round the aff is the only one who can solve them sufficiently.

Irony/Satire can actually be cool if it's done well. If there's actually some shock element to it I think it might work, but most of the time this doesn't happen (mainly bc it's hard to be original but that's besides the point).

To Poneill -

How can irony be done well? Anyone who has ever tried this (i.e. CK in Blake finals) ends up getting face crushed.

Aside from not being very strategic against a mildly competent debater, I think there is probably a point to be made that positions like this are terrible for debate. Do you really have an argument for why irony cases are educational? This is just a stupid byproduct of the competition of debate.