The topic is TBA

My opponent makes a huge mistake when overlooking my arguments. Language essentially defers to metaphors. Truth conditional semantics are a farse. Meaning evolves through the features we generally assign to words. Nietzsche writes, "...truth [is]? a movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.[...]anyone who has felt this cool breath [of logic] will hardly believe that even the concept... is nevertheless merely the residue of a metaphor." (1). This denies the PRO's ability to affirm the topic as a statement of truth independent of the kritik. It is impossible to formulate a truth independent of the value given to the mechanism by which truth was created: the importance of the meaning of "is". Second, this means that the necessary requirements of the PRO aren't binding because they only have as much truth as one gives them. ______________ 1st: Time challenge. This issue is not merely a "ploy", but rather a fair analysis utilized what "is" means and how it is applied in common usage. My opponent fails to assert the reasoning for as to why "is" prescribes a normative statement. Instead he reasons, "So when I say Pujols is better, I mean Pujols contributes more to his team than Kotchman does -- not that Pujols has always, at every stage, been better than Kotchman. I made myself pretty clear on this." This contribution has not always been more than Kotchman, he does not provide you evidence indicating that this is so. Absent this evidence, he cannot assert that the topic is a true statement. If he does offer this evidence, you still vote CON because he cannot predict the Pujols will always be a better player. _____________ 2nd: Perspective challenge Ah, but he messes things up here too. In fact all he says is that "Simply because one perceives something doesn't at all mean it's true. Opinions, in and of themselves, are meaningless and wishy-washy. It's how you support that opinion that matters and solidifies your position." However, he doesn't offer you a justification for why the competiting theory - Objectivism - is the paramount theory. Remember, relativism is the best way to frame arguments because is allows for less vague topics (because you are forced to isolate specific occurances, not general statements), and it is grounded in empirics. Recall my argument regarding when the "grass is green". At this point you are to vote CON because the topic is not "Albert Pujols is (sometimes/usually/typically/generally) a better player in major league baseball than Casey Kotchman", but rather a statement of a normative truth. _____________ 3rd: Statistics, pshh... In reality, I have proven that the usage of statistics don't even matter because A) the topic doesn't isolate when - ergo, the statistics are insufficient unless they indicate that this is "always" how things were AND B) the topic can be dismissed as merely an opinion of "who is more valuable" and thus yields to perspectivism. Yet my opponent continues to beat the dead horse, "This makes no sense..." however, it makes much sense if you read my last point. Actually, he doesn't read it carefully enough. Remember, the last point essentially states that because of the multiplicity of statistics, my opponent must prove HOW these statistics were taken and why we give them cred. Works: "On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense" published in Cazeaux, Clive, The Continental Aesthetics Reader, London: Routledge, 2000. Pg 56, 57. http://en.wikipedia.org...