Reppert on Judging the Debate
After having seen the assessments/judging for my debate with Richard Carrier, I was dumbfounded to see that the judges didn't follow Rule 7 of the debate, which explicitly said their own personal opinions of the arguments/evidence cannot play a role in their evaluation of the debate.
The judging was supposed to follow "college debate" rules. On this, judges merely determine whether or not the debaters were able to provide coherent, pertinent objections to each other's arguments and counterarguments. At the end of the day, the winner is the debater who was able to present the most unrebutted arguments and defeat more of his opponent's arguments.
If you read the judges' assessments of my debate, however, one quickly sees they didn't follow this judging methodology in the least. Rather, they merely decided to tell us which arguments they "liked" or were "persuaded by." But their own opinions on the strength of the arguments is irrelevant to college debate judging. Indeed, my whole point in requesting college debate rules was to avoid the subjectivism inherent in such judging.
If such subjectivism is allowed, all you'll get from the judges is a mere restatement of their own opinions coming into the debate. But who benefits from that? The point of the judging isn't to merely trot out your own likes/dislikes in the philosophy of religion, but to give a straightforward summing of which debater was ultimately to salvage his own arguments and rebut the others', regardless of what strength the judge would assign those arguments.
Since the judges clearly didn't follow the rules set out before the debate began, I requested that the moderator of the debate disallow them on the debate webpage. We could post them at the Secular Web, but only as sidenotes, not the official scoring, since the official scoring was to be done by college rules, not subjective ones.
Carrier has continually said I'm wrong in thinking the judges violated this rule. But they clearly did do so, as is shown throughout their assessments. Moreover, Dr. Reppert, a philosophy professor who agreed to judge the debate, has blatantly admitted taking matters into his own hands and judging it on his own terms, not those in the debate rules. He admits this at his "Dangerous Idea" blog at http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2006/05/assessment-of-carrier-wanchick-debate.html.
The proof is there for all to see.
The judging was supposed to follow "college debate" rules. On this, judges merely determine whether or not the debaters were able to provide coherent, pertinent objections to each other's arguments and counterarguments. At the end of the day, the winner is the debater who was able to present the most unrebutted arguments and defeat more of his opponent's arguments.
If you read the judges' assessments of my debate, however, one quickly sees they didn't follow this judging methodology in the least. Rather, they merely decided to tell us which arguments they "liked" or were "persuaded by." But their own opinions on the strength of the arguments is irrelevant to college debate judging. Indeed, my whole point in requesting college debate rules was to avoid the subjectivism inherent in such judging.
If such subjectivism is allowed, all you'll get from the judges is a mere restatement of their own opinions coming into the debate. But who benefits from that? The point of the judging isn't to merely trot out your own likes/dislikes in the philosophy of religion, but to give a straightforward summing of which debater was ultimately to salvage his own arguments and rebut the others', regardless of what strength the judge would assign those arguments.
Since the judges clearly didn't follow the rules set out before the debate began, I requested that the moderator of the debate disallow them on the debate webpage. We could post them at the Secular Web, but only as sidenotes, not the official scoring, since the official scoring was to be done by college rules, not subjective ones.
Carrier has continually said I'm wrong in thinking the judges violated this rule. But they clearly did do so, as is shown throughout their assessments. Moreover, Dr. Reppert, a philosophy professor who agreed to judge the debate, has blatantly admitted taking matters into his own hands and judging it on his own terms, not those in the debate rules. He admits this at his "Dangerous Idea" blog at http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2006/05/assessment-of-carrier-wanchick-debate.html.
The proof is there for all to see.
posted by Tom Wanchick at 11:32 AM
8 Comments:
Yeah, I thought the judging was extremely lousy too. Personally, I thought you had a distinct edge, (though it is possible I'm descending into the terrible subjectivism that you mentioned!)
I learnt a lot from your debate in any case, and I am very happy that you took time on it.
C
mj,
Thanks a lot for the positive feedback.
I hope you take what you learned and go with it!!
By the way, Carrier and I are scheduled to be writing responses to the judges sometime soon that will also be posted on the debate page.
I'll be able to show the shortcomings in their criticisms and their judging methodology in general.
Stay tuned.
I think Victor's marks should be deleted.
What effect would that have on who the judges thought won the debate?
Steven,
I'm not sure I understand the question.
Reppert was a judge for the debate. But, as I've said, he didn't judge according to the preset rules. He admits this in the aforementioned blog post.
I never said that influenced the other judges, although from their assessments it seems they did the same thing as Reppert.
'I'm not sure I understand the question.'
I'll repeat it then. If Reppert's judging is invalid, and his marks are removed from the debate, what would that leave as the final score?
Steven,
If you remove Reppert's judging, you should remove the others' too, since none of them followed the pre-set rules.
Moreover, if we throw out one judges scores, then the judging should be thrown out altogether, since the original purpose was to 4 judges -- 2 judges holding the same position as each debater (2 theists, 2 naturalists).
I haven't read the debate yet. But I will. However, I find it a little too convenient that all the atheist judges felt the atheist won. Either way, I agree, I thought all the assessments (both atheist and non) of the debate could have been way more objective. Speaking from experience though, I know that Lowder and Reppert are brutally honest with their opinions. I can appreciate that but they could have followed the rules at least, and kept their subjective biases out the door.
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