In this first post for the new season, I want to start with the basics. The first part of this article should be fully relevant to anyone curious about philosophy, and the second part focuses on the impact of those ideas on our first resolution (“The acquisition of knowledge is an intrinsic good.”) and will apply primarily to debaters. It’s a shorter post, but I think it’s a good jumping-off-point to case research and writing.
What is Intrinsic Good?
Throughout human history, philosophers have been seeking that which is truly good. The question, then, is what is truly good. According to Richard Kraut,
It is eminently sensible to suppose that there must be some things that are good for us quite apart from their instrumental value. No respectable philosopher, to my knowledge, has ever denied this.
He also makes a distinction—there exist things that are intrinsically good for us, but nothing intrinsically good in itself (Not sure I fully agree, but it is worth considering). That which is intrinsically valuable is valuable in itself, without having to appeal to something else. Take virtue, for example. One should be virtuous not because it makes one happy, content, or well liked, but because being virtuous is good in itself. A list of basic goods I heard recently from Dr. RJ Snell includes these: Life, Play, Knowledge, Marriage, Aesthetic Harmony, Religion, and Practical Reason. He explained that exactly what should make it on the list is debated—Justice, for instance, is not on RJ’s list. He contests that Justice is a method by which we better achieve these other goods. I believe that giving each their due is a basic good, and that, even though it begs the question of what exactly is due, the action of carrying out justice is itself good, so I disagree with him.
You may be wondering how exactly one decides on a list of basic goods. A major hindrance to the process is that it is impossible to derive what we ought to be seeking from what exists. This is known as the is-ought problem. Because of this, Snell (among others) suggests that we must take these basic goods like we do the law of non-contradiction (LNC). You ask, “well why can’t something be x and -x at the same time in the same regard?” and I cannot give you a logical reason without using the LNC to prove my point. We simply have to accept it. The same is true of the basic goods. When someone says they want to stay alive, we don’t ask them why, we accept that living is good in itself. Life is easy to accept as a basic good, but the others can be more contentious.
To clarify, it is entirely possible that a basic good will lead to other goods. However, this does not make it an instrumental good. Look at marriage—It is intrinsically good, but valuing marriage highly leads to all sorts of benefits for individuals, families, and societies.
How Can It Be Debated?
You may have noticed something above that has the potential to make this resolution incredibly difficult to debate. That is, if one has to take the basic goods as fundamental, like the LNC, it is logically impossible to prove some good is intrinsically valuable. It is possible to show that something is instrumentally valuable, but to show it is intrinsically valuable requires proving that, even if something has instrumental value, it is worth seeking without those side benefits.
This also means that the value debate will be different. It will not be possible to argue that knowledge is good because it reaches the value (congrats, you’ve just shown instrumental value). The value will have to be some measure of what it means to be valuable. Human flourishing could be a good value, but even then it seems that you would be valuing knowledge because it produces human flourishing, and you as the affirmative therefore fail your burden. A value of wisdom might work, because acquiring knowledge and being wise are distinct but tightly linked. The wording of the resolution is a bit frustrating, but it is a very philosophical rez with the potential to be a rich debate.
On negative, a straight neg might be interesting, particularly because of the weaknesses of the affirmative pointed out above. However, a regular neg case could also work, as all one has to do to win the round is show how acquiring knowledge can be worthless and show that the benefit of valuable knowledge is instrumental.
That’s all for this post. Thanks for reading; I’ll leave you with some words from Socrates:
True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.
Acta et Verba