Prospect ST (Sophia Tian)
Hi practical reasoners! I'm Sophia, and I debated for Prospect High School from 2020 to 2024. I obsessively stalked the older debater pages on here and also wrote some articles on my own (Cap K, Intro to Theory, Particularism, etc.), so I thought it'd be cool if I threw my prep here. If you've ever read any articles on phil from this library, chances are that I, Zach, or Ben wrote it, so I hope you enjoy!
As you can tell, I did (do?) a lot of phil debate. It was the easiest option available to me at the time, and being online for my first two years, I wasn't too hindered by the West Coast policy-style debate/
My freshman year, I started off wiki-stealing and reading phil articles that were far too complicated for me to understand -- in general, I was pretty confused argument-wise. I began to get things together my sophomore year after learning more about Kant, and pretty much exclusively only ran Kant, with a bit of virtue ethics, friv theory, and the Cap K. I regret not being more flexible, since it heavily stunted my pref sheet and also caused me to lose a fair share of rounds. My junior year, I became a lot more flex and ran pretty much everything except the K, and experimented with substance-heavy phil to adapt to West Coast judges. I'm probably going to troll my senior year -- I'll update this page with what happens in a year, I guess.
I get some questions asking me how I learned and got better at phil debate being on the West Coast and without a phil coach, so I figured I'd answer them here.
Phil Debate on the West Coast
Silly rabbit, trix are for kids!
- If you are substantive enough, any judge will vote for you.
- Caveat #1: If you are substantive enough, any judge, barring policy judges (judges that came from policy debate), will vote for you.
- Conclusion - If you pref wisely you should be fine
There are a good amount of judges that are surprisingly solid for straight up phil. On the West Coast, I ran phil affs with util advantages, carded pretty much everything, overexplained, etc. A lot of it is in how you do your prefs, and if you want to seriously run phil, you should probably expect that your best judges are not going to exist and that every round will probably be an uphill battle for you. Your West Coast opponents will also pref the complete opposite of you, so as you get farther into a tournament, the elim panels will get more and more unforgiving as less flex judges will be obligated in for remaining rounds. Being flexible enough to go for 2-3 other argument types will benefit you greatly.
Learning Phil Debate
Phil debate, in my eyes, is just the ultimate tech-check -- not only do you have to be technically proficient, but you also need to be able to explain things in a way that's understandable. After every round, I'd probably redo my 2NR or 2AR around 5-6 times, or however many times it took me until I finally got the speech "right." I wouldn't let myself write notes down on my flow to help myself in the speech, since at that point it'd become a doc -- going off what you had in round helps you practice extempting and memorizing certain analytics (for example, AT Tailoring Objection). I'd do this immediately after every round ended.
I also read a good amount, although I avoided reading source literature. I relied on online encyclopedias like the IEP and the SEP , and Youtube channels like PhilosophyTube. I spent most of my free time when I was bored thinking of analytics and how they interacted with each other (in my defense, when one is running the mile to assess their California Fitness Standards, there is not much to think about besides calc indicts).
I'll probably write a full length article on how to "do" phil debate soon, but it's always good to know the philosophy well enough to explain to a layperson. Using examples, numbering your arguments/signposting, and seeming knowledgeable always gives you a speaks boost. For example, if your opponent says "Freedom is not uniform, meaning Kant can't account for it under his a priori binary" a good response could be "Freedom comes in many different forms but it can still be a priori," but the best response would be something like "Freedom comes in many different forms but it can still be a priori e.g., saying a triangle has 3 sides is an a priori truth, but there are many different types of triangles -- scalene, isosceles, and equilateral even though they share the same property." While the second response is longer, it's also more detailed and explains the concept a lot better than the first. Longer responses are also not uniformly bad -- they give your judge time to flow, which can be a breath of fresh air in blippy phil debates.
2022 -- 2023
January/February
ACs
I mostly read Kant with an ASEAN advantage, but in more tricky rounds I'd just fill the aff with preempts (theory or AT: K) instead of the util advantage. I kept the Kant framework and advantage relatively short (< 3:00) since most people don't LBL the justifications anyway, so it wasted time in the aff that I could use to add other more strategic preempts.