To Fiat or ¬ to Fiat

One of the most enshrined capacities in debate is the capability for the negative to present opportunity costs to the affirmative plan, suspending concerns over whether or not those opportunity costs may actually exist in practice, in a phenomenon known as negative fiat. This community consensus is derived from decades of debate tradition, with some judges equating it to a “divine right of the negative.” I am of the opinion that this practice is unsubstantiated, motivated by group think, and retrofitted to an unintuitive model of viewing propositions.

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The Origins of Negative Fiat

To begin, fiat simply describes the following phenomenon: if I say one “ought” to do something, merely saying one “would”¹ not do that thing is not a convincing response. Assuming act utilitarianism (which is what the rest of this article assumes), when affirmatives imagine the consequences of the plan as justifications for its passage, saying the plan “would not” be enacted is not a sufficient answer to the question of whether it is desirable.

Counterplans, then, are based on the economic theory of opportunity cost², or the idea that the potential outcomes a given action forecloses are a necessary cost to consider in decision-making.

Competition represents how the negative argues the “forecloses” part of this idea, where an action, either by being mutually exclusive with or net beneficial in absence of the plan, is optimal to consider alone. Formally, this is denoted by the ought operator $O(x)$, where it is supposed³ that $O(c)⟹\neg O(a)$. Here, the desirability of the counterplan is taken to disprove the desirability of the plan.

As an example, take the resolution

$$a:\text{Flora ought to eat dinner at home between 6:00 to 7:00PM.}$$

and the counterplan

$$c:\text{Flora ought to go to the movies from 6:00 to 7:00PM.}$$

one would correctly assume that doing $c$ would be mutually exclusive with the plan. If the negative wins that doing so is optimific, then they ought to win, as $O(c)⟹\neg O(a)$.

The problem arises, however, with assuming this relationship is direct. Instead, I posit the following relationship between the negative and affirmative:

$$O(b)⟹\neg O(a)\text{, where }b\equiv \neg a.$$

Now, the negative may still argue that their counterplan $c$ is $b$, and exemplifies this relationship with the plan’s negation. As the rest of this article will argue, fiat does not take them there.

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A Tale of Three Professors

Whether or not possible alternatives can demonstrate opportunity cost to a given action is dependent on if you take the existence of possibilia as true. This is a clash between ethical actualism and possibilism, in which actualism is quite ahead.

Take the example⁴ of our good friend Professor Procrastinate (PR). PR gets to make 1 or 2 decisions:

1. He can decide to review a paper. $(a)$
2. If he reviews the paper, then he can decide to give good comments with productive advice. $(c)$

Now, PR knows that he is a lazy man. If he reviews the paper, the chances that he will give good comments is low---his comments will likely be vapid, shallow, and counterproductive, as he really wants to get out of the office and grab lunch. Additionally, if he chooses not to review the paper, the students will ask another, less qualified professor, who will give mediocre advice that may help them advance their studies only a little.

There are three potential outcomes here:

1. If PR reviews the paper, but does not give good advice, the students will not improve at all. (The pessimistic outcome.)
2. If another, less qualified professor reviews it, the students will improve only a little. (The slightly good outcome.)
3. If PR reviews it and gives good advice, then the students will improve a lot. (The optimific outcome.)

To figure out what he should do, PR texts the faculty group chat⁵ for advice on his dilemma. Note that the only question he’s been directly asked is “will you review this paper?” Accordingly, this is the question he asks the group chat---"$O(a)?$".

The first to reply is Professor Possibilist (PB). PB says that since PR could reach the optimific state by making a series of best decisions (review the paper $\wedge$ leave good comments), he ought to say yes to the students, irrespective of if he actually would reach the optimific state.

A thumbs down reaction appears over PB’s message---PR’s other (perhaps more cynical) friend Professor Actualist (PA) interjects. He’s focused on what PR would actually do, and is thus analyzing the first question. PA believes that when faced with the second, PR’s lazy nature lends himself to writing bad comments. PA thus says no---doing a bad job, to PA, is worse than doing no job at all.

Interestingly, PA can still say things like “if the question you asked was whether you should (review the paper $\wedge$ leave good comments), then I would say you should tell the students yes,” or “if you would leave good comments, then you should review the paper” However, if the question remains whether PR should review the paper alone, PA stays firmly in his camp.

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Implications of Actualism

When it comes to debate, many counterplans represent such propositions as $c$ above---if they were to be taken, they would indeed be optimific, yet negative fiat can’t artificially take them there. Let’s take a look at a real world example.

Take the plan

$$a:\text{The United States ought to disarm its nuclear arsenal.}$$

its negation (remember, this is a⁶ negative win condition)

$$b:\text{The United States ought not to disarm its nuclear arsenal.}$$

and counterplan

$$c:\text{The United States ought to adopt a policy of no first use.}$$

The negative team has assumed $b+c$ would be optimific---if the US did not disarm its arsenal and instead opted to adopt an NFU, then it would be the best option. Thus, $O(b+c)$.

The problem is that winning that we $O(c)$ in a vacuum does not prove that we $O(b)$, as it is not likely that we would adopt an NFU. Since this is the case, the actualist would argue that since we won’t adopt an NFU, we should disarm. The actualist can concede things like $O(b+c)$, but would deny $O(b+c)⟹O(b)$.

The actualist interpretation of the nature of moral propositions is by far the most intuitive. If this is the case, negative fiat stands on two incredibly arbitrary legs.

Footnotes

1. To be clear, this is distinct from “can not” objections. If ought implies can, then these are surely direct negations of the affirmative. ↩

2. Robert J Branham, “Roads Not Taken: Counterplans and Opportunity Costs,” Argumentation and Advocacy 25, no. 4 (March 1, 1989): 246–55, https://doi.org/10.1080/00028533.1989.11951406. ↩

3. Evan Alexis, “Agent Counterplans Do Not Compete,” Substack.com (Victory Briefs, February 2, 2025), https://victorybriefs.substack.com/p/agent-counterplans-do-not-compete. ↩

4. A very special thank you to Adam Humphrey for the brilliant explanation of this example, as well as a lot of the underlying concepts in this article. ↩

5. I have no clue if these are actually a thing in higher academia. Pretend they are. ↩

6. Stephen Mumford, “Negation and Denial,” Cambridge University Press EBooks, November 12, 2021, 590–605, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108698283.033. Proving the negation of a statement true is simply a stronger version of denying its truth. ↩