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Topic: "It is right to protect the environment because _________" December 13, 2002 A very fine display of team colors by red. Goldenrod had a tougher time of it - it's hard, for example, to find a goldenrod bra in the drawer, so I was appreciative of the effort they made. But the result just wasn't up to the standard that red set. The red twizzlers were an obvious but effective attempt at bribery. I'll have to say overall that red got the class prize for colors, with purple and then black following closely. Red started off with a strong proposal - it is right because the survival of the human species depends on it. This is strong, but still the attack could come from either direction. Thinking about sufficiency, if the survival of the species really depends on our efforts, it's a little hard to see why we should do nothing unless our efforts are pointless, so I suppose sufficiency could be attacked along those lines. But red could respond, with some grounds, that 'depends' requires that our efforts could succeed, and charge irrelevance. All this is going through my head and I'm wondering whether I uphold such a charge when Goldenrod (henceforth GR) saves me the anguish by wisely going after centrality. I was thinking that this would be an argument from the intrinsic value of the environment - we have a responsibility to preserve it not for instrumental reasons (because of its usefulness to us) but because it is valuable in itself. But GR gets it wrong right out of the gate, as having decided to attack centrality, they are now trying to give a c.e. instead of a counter-argument for the same conclusion. They're imagining moving to another planet so our survival does not depend on the environment. Are they really giving a c.e., or attacking the premise? Hard to tell, but either way, it's the wrong form. Fortunately Red picks up on this and charges irrelevance, which I easily uphold. I wonder whether GR will be discouraged now from pursuing centrality, but no, they come back to it, arguing that we should protect the environment even if survival did not depend on it, because we have a moral responsibility. Well this is better, but there are two problems here. First, GR tried (unnecessarily) to argue that survival does NOT depend on our protecting the environment. This was just an attack on the premise. More importantly, their reason is circular, since their claim now is that we should protect the environment because we have a moral responsibility to do so. Well, to say that we have a moral responsibility to do so is just to say that we should do it. I sure hope that Red sees this. But no, Red, after a moment (from which they quickly recover) in which they try to argue for their premise (such an argument would be irrelevant to both sufficiency and centrality) accepts GR's charge and compounds the problem by incorporating GR's reason into it's proposal: we should protect the environment because our survival depends on it AND we have a moral responsibility to do so. Now Red's proposal is circular too. If GR allows it to stand, they will not be able to attack sufficiency (we have a moral responsibility obviously entails that we should do it) or centrality (they would have to argue that we should preserve it even if we didn't have a moral responsibility to do so). But GR misses this and tries to go after sufficiency, with a c.e. in which the global economy can't afford environmental responsibility. Well this would have been a good c.e. for some other proposal, but does it work here? Let's see. It would have to be (I'm setting it up, here) a situation in which it is obvious that (a) human survival depends on protection, (b) we have a moral responsibility to protect, but (c) we shouldn't protect. It is hard to see how the fact that the economy can't afford protection is going to help here. Red can now charge irrelevance with some justification (the example doesn't purport to be one in which (b) is true) or better, that it is not compelling, with a clear win. But instead they do what would have been appropriate if the c.e. had been appropriate in the first place - the block by adding the condition that the benefits of protection outweigh it's disadvantages. (I would have thought that the premise, still there, that human survival depends on protection would have been enough to secure this evidently weaker addition, so I don’t see that this helps at all.) What will GR do now? They should have charged circularity long ago, and can still do so now. That might get us started back in the right direction and give me a chance to clear all this up. This is what I am hoping for, so I am ready to go when I hear them say, "We charge circularity…" But before I can uphold the charge, they continue by attacking the new premise! They try to claim that the long term benefits do not outweigh the disadvantages. So their charge was right, but the defense they gave of it was misguided. This is getting more and more off track. I'll give Red a chance to respond and then flip the sides. Hopefully a fresh start with everybody's nerves settled down will help. I was hoping for help here from Red, but instead they charge that GR was not compelling - a charge that was misplaced, since GR had not given a c.e. So GR says it will charge circularity but instead attacks the premise. And then Red responds as if they had given a c.e. I should have taken time at this point to try to straighten it all out, but in retrospect I must have lacked the courage and instead just flipped the topic hoping for clarity with a new start. GR starts off with an interesting proposal - we should do it because in the long run it will be less costly. Red could go after centrality here, arguing a higher responsibility that would hold even if it were more costly, but sufficiency is wide open - should we do everything that is less costly!? - and I expect them to start there. Once more I am surprised, as Red attacks centrality. Actually what they say is that they will attack centrality with a direct c.e. , and my heart sinks. An attack on centrality requires a counter-argument, not a c.e. But what they actually say is again a little different from what was advertised. They say that protecting the environment is less costly NOW but not in the long run. And then they add that we should protect it because the economy depends on environmental resources. So they have attacked the premise, and then given an alternate reason. This is not going as well as I had hoped. The alternate reason was the right sort of thing, but I wonder whether GR's original reason - that protection would be less costly in the long run - is really different from the reason Red now proposes (without real argument) that the economy depends on environmental resources. In any event, I am hoping that GR will charge irrelevance, since Red was attacking the premise. And again my hopes are lifted - GR charges irrelevance - only to be dashed - they claim that Red was attacking sufficiency! Well, that's OK - it was good that GR saw that Red's claim was off the mark, even if they had a hard time seeing exactly why. I was having a hard time seeing exactly why too. So I denied GR's claim with broad hints that they might reformulate it; and so they did, charging that it was the wrong form. I upheld this and spelled out for everybody the way that Red's actual comments had constituted an attack on the premise that protection of the environment would be less costly in the long run. I'm surprised that Red is having so much trouble getting on track here, since sufficiency is still wide open. Generally it is easier pickings to go after sufficiency (as opposed to centrality) unless the proposal has gotten so strong that there is not much to quibble about over sufficiency, but you think that the reason given doesn't really get to the important justification. But Red is determined, and continues after centrality. Red claims (appropriately) that we should protect the environment even if it costs more in the long run, because humans don't have any other place to live. I would like to see their reason (because humans don't have anywhere else to live) spelled out more, but it does give a foothold. However I'm worried about the same thing that GR is worried about. If we don't have any other place to live, then it appears that the long-term costs of protecting the environment would be less, and the cost of letting the environment go to the dogs (actually, go to the cockroaches is probably more apt) would be greater. So it's far from clear that they have given a reason that holds even if the cost of protecting the environment were greater than letting it go. Red's counterargument is not very compelling. But GR charges circularity. Their worries were well-placed, but they were having trouble identifying their source. In retrospect, I wasn't as helpful for GR as I should have been, and when Red objected to the charge, claiming that GR's charge of circularity was of the wrong form, I upheld their charge (as I should have), but didn't encourage GR when they tried to claim instead that Red had not been compelling. I insisted instead that Red was OK, but that their reason needed to be elaborated in more detail. (Remember that Red's reason was simply that we don't have another place to live.) I was thinking that if Red spelled out its reason, things would get more clear. After some back and forth GR finally blocked by spelling out that "less costly in the long run" meant less costly in terms of lives, money, resources, etc., not just money. This was clearly what they had in mind originally, so the block did not require any real concessions, a sign of the relative weakness of Red's concern. Now finally Red decided to go after sufficiency. I am expecting - hoping for - some sort of c.e. involving something that would cost less but that we clearly shouldn't do. For example it would cost less to execute all criminals, or to execute the handicapped and the mentally ill. Or perhaps even (a little closer to home) to execute everybody over 55 (gasp!). But instead Red imagines a scenario in which a meteor is about to hit the earth killing everything. In such a world, they say, it might cost less to save the environment but we would have no obligation to do so. Well it's hard to know what to say here. This does not look like a case in which it is obviously less costly in the long run to do X, but we should not do X. GR is obviously confused by this too, and charges that it attacks the premise, since there is no long run in Red's c.e. Well, I have a certain sympathy for GR, but an attack on the premise is an explicit argument against it, so their charge isn't quite right and I deny it with hints again to reformulate. Now they charge that it is not compelling, and an overwhelming majority of the class agrees - in the imagined world it is not clear that protecting the environment would be the less costly thing to do in the long run. And at this point, time expired. This one is a hard one to score. Both teams had a lot of trouble. As usual, when you can keep clear about the structure, the actual dialogue goes much more smoothly and productively. But structural problems snowball, and it gets harder and harder to get back on track. Again, I stress the importance of setting up the c.e., both in denying a proposal, and in making a proposal (in which case you would set up a c.e. in anticipation of your denier's response). But despite the fact that both teams had a lot of trouble, I give a slight edge to Goldenrod, whose troubles were less of their own making than Red's. Overall, here is a translation of dialogue scores to homework scores. (And remember, that homework scores themselves are scores, not grades. I will simply put everything together according to the weights I announced at the beginning, and use that total score as a basis for assigning course grades.) 5- : 78
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