Controversy Workshop

Joseph Reagle

Cecil the Lion

Based on a true story.

Consider

Walter Palmer was a dentist who, while on a $50,000 hunting trip in Zimbabwe, shot and killed a lion named Cecil. The lion had left its protected park for a nearby hunting reserve because of the hunter’s use of a lure (an elephant carcass). Palmer shot Cecil with a bow, tracked him for 40 hours, and killed him with a gun.

Staff at a photo-safari camp within the protected park noticed another lion had been calling for Cecil for two nights without response.

Cecil’s carcass was found with the help of GPS data from its radio collar, attached by wildlife researchers from Oxford University.

As news of the event spread around the world, Palmer insisted he was engaged in a legal trophy hunt. Palmer was never charged and the charges against his hunting guide were soon dropped.

Palmer faced significant backlash back at home. His name and address were leaked online. People protested at his house, his children’s school, and his dental practice. His home and workplace were vandalized. Palmer had to temporarily shut down his dental practice.

Was the backlash against Palmer a just outcome?

Spectrum Street Epistemology

Cecil mindmap

  • I will divide class into three groups; within each a volunteer will facilitate a mind-map discussion, attending to:
    • moral principles (rights and duties),
    • pragmatics (circumstances and consequences),
    • and types of arguments (e.g., by analogy).

Cecil spectrum

  1. Everyone starts at neutral; I count down move to your position.
  2. I’ll interview someone on a position.
  3. I’ll ask others to repeat their understanding of the last position, their own position, and what would it take to change their mind.
  4. Move as you wish, as we iterate.

Afterward: The Cecil effect

some harm to Zimbabwe’s economy and discussion of a cull (Roxborough 2016)

Your speech

The scenarios

You will be assigned one of ten 10 fictional scenarios.

They are fictional because our focus for this assignment is on reasoning and rhetoric rather than research and facts.

That is, you need to use persuasive speech to appeal to your audience’s principled and pragmatic reasoning.

(You can look to similar real-world cases to what kind principles and pragmatics people worried about.)

Content of speech

  1. A “biased re-narration” of the story with a perspective that supports your position.
    • Do not change the case or introduce new information, but you can suggest circumstances and consequences.
      • “Palmer knew the Cecil was protected.”
      • “How could Palmer not know given the radio collar?”
  2. Argument based on:
    • morally, what principles ought we abide (e.g., never kill sentient beings)
    • pragmatically, what will probably happen? (e.g., banning licensed hunting hurts conservation)

Principles

  • Principles include: values, rights, and duties (including fairness, proportionality) and ethics (including rules-following, utility, ends-justify-means, …)
  • Why is one principle more important than others?
  • How does the principle apply in your case?
  • What are analogous cases that can show us the operation of this principle?

Arguments from analogy

(beware of false equivalence)

Pragmatic probabilities

Pragmatics include (missed) context and (unintended) consequences.

  • How likely is it Palmer know Cecil was tracked and studied?
  • Would the backlash against Palmer hurt game hunting and, ultimately, conservation?

Exemplar

You can see exemplar pro and con arguments from Dr. Tim Barr on YouTube.

Select three candidates

Volunteer to dramatically read a sample controversy.

  • Does this sound like a case recently in the news?
  • What principles and pragmatics are implicated in each (briefly)?

By end of day, email me your top three choices.

I will allocate you a scenario based on: even coverage, expressed preferences, and first-come-first-served order.

You decide which position in the controversy to take.

Credits