at Texas State University

students sitting at a long desk talking and writing
Bobcat Bowlers ponder profound ethical uncertainties at the Texas Regional competition at TAMUSA: Nov. 12, 2022

Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl—or just “Ethics Bowl” for short—is an intercollegiate academic competition organized by the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics. Texas State participates in Ethics Bowl annually, and the Philosophy Department has always organized this effort. Participation is certainly not limited to philosophy majors, though, and each year the majority of Texas State’s “Bowlers” are drawn from majors across the curriculum!

The links below provide a bit more information about Ethics Bowl’s format, about whether it might be just the activity for you, and some highlights from recent seasons. If you’d like even more information, though—or to signal your interesting in participating—please contact the Ethics Bowl Faculty Advisor directly:

Vaughn B. Baltzly (baltzly@txstate.edu)

More about Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl

Expand FAQ List

  • Good question!

    Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl is an intercollegiate academic competition—similar to debate team, though both the purpose and the format differ in important respects from debate. It is conducted under the auspices of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (or “APPE”). Teams of college students work together over a period of roughly two months to formulate positions on a range of fascinating, ethically-complex cases.  Then, at regional competitions held nationwide each fall, these teams compete against those from other area universities to see who can best articulate and philosophically defend their positions. The top teams from each regional competition then advance to the national competition held in the spring.  In the fall of 2023, our regional tournament will be held at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio on Saturday, Nov. 11. And if we do well enough there (most years, this means finishing in the top four, out of 24 or so entrants), we qualify for the national competition, conducted at the APPE’s annual conference. This year’s competition will be held in Cincinnati, Ohio on February 23-25.

     

    At Texas State, preparations involve weekly meetings of two hours or less, though we often schedule a number of additional meeting sessions in the week or two immediately preceding the competition. We begin shortly after the APPE releases the year’s set of cases, which typically occurs right around Labor Day. Once the Texas Regional competition transpires in mid-November, we adjourn for the semester. In the event that we qualify for the national competition to be held the following spring, we will reconvene for regular meetings once the APPE releases the next round of cases (typically shortly after the new year). Click here to see a sampling of recent years’ cases.

     

    The organizers of the Texas Regional competition permit each participating institution to enter up to two teams. Each team can compete five students per round of competition. (There are three rounds of competition at the Regional meet.) A team can “rotate” its students into the “starting lineup” to a very limited extent, so in practice this means that space in Ethics Bowl is limited to about 12 or maybe 14 students at most: six or seven individuals per team.

     

    Contact Vaughn Baltzly if you are interested in being a Bobcat Bowler: baltzly@txstate.edu. 

  • Ethics bowling, that is!

    Do you enjoy …

    … trying to get at the deeper issues behind the headlines?  The sorts of issues that lie beneath many of our most rancorous contemporary disagreements? Do you like thinking about difficult ethical puzzles that arise in contemporary life?  (For example: the ethical quandaries that arise as we program accident-avoidance and life-preservation algorithms into self-driving cars?  The challenges and opportunities posed by the practice of (medically un-licensed) Amish midwives?  Law enforcement’s use of genealogical websites to determine the “owner” of recovered DNA in order to solve murder mysteries?)

    Are you good at …

    … seeing multiple sides of contentious issues?  Formulating charitable versions of, and sympathetic hearings to, people with whom you disagree about ethical, political, and religious issues?  Deliberating with others to think through answers to deep moral puzzles? Formulating and articulating arguments in favor of your own favored ethical and policy positions?  Offering thoughtful and fair critiques of positions with which you potentially disagree?

    Then you may enjoy participating in Texas State’s Ethics Bowl team!

    Success in Ethics Bowl is less about “winning” in some of its more traditional conceptions (even conceptions that are prevalent in other sorts of academic competitions). It’s not so much about “defeating” the competition in argument, or about “owning” your opponents, or demonstrating the other side’s immorality and/or ignorance with a devastating take-down of their ethical position. Rather, it’s about doing a good job reasoning clearly and fairly about difficult moral issues, as they manifest in contemporary policy controversies, and in articulating positions that are sensitive to the full range of (sometimes competing or conflicting) values that are at stake in such issues. The team that “wins” an Ethics Bowl match is the team that, in the estimation of a panel of three expert judges, does the better job of thusly reasoning and articulating. Often times, the “winning” and the “losing” sides of an Ethics Bowl match are not even disagreeing with each other—it’s just that one team has made their case a bit more clearly and convincingly than the other.

    If this whole approach—analyzing contemporary issues with “more light than heat”—appeals to you, then you might flourish as a Bobcat Bowler! We highly encourage you to reach out to the faculty advisor for more information:

    Email Vaughn Baltzly at baltzly@txstate.edu.