Zaradi's Prized Tournament Final: Food Security

Thanks, Beginner, for a great debate! PRO's CASEP1. The Purpose of Government(a) I asked, "Would not a 'just' government then have a duty to help every person, regardless of the status of their citizenship? " Pro says that a government doesn't have obligations to non-citizens because they are not expected to follow the government's rule, and so cannot expect benefits. But, this doesn't answer the question I posed regarding why the happenstance of birth should allow some people to get benefits while others don't. If I had been born in Brunei instead of the U. S. , I would've gotten a much smaller array of benefits just because I was unlucky enough to be born there. If a just society is truly concerned about fairness and moral uprightness, then why would it not reject the very justification Pro gives for partiality towards its own citizens and instead set out to help all people so that they don't suffer arbitrarily? Pro really doesn't give much analysis here. Pro never actually disagrees that it is unfair to have a system where some people benefit based totally on the luck of birth. Pro DROPS that "because the resolution uses the term 'citizens' Pro is locked into affirming an obligation only towards citizens;" therefore, if you buy my argument that just governments have moral obligations towards everyone and not just citizens, than the resolution is negated. (b)(1) Pro asserts that purpose does not always indicate moral obligation, it only does so for conscious entities. I have two objections. First, Pro does very little to warrant why a conscious entity's purpose connotes moral obligation. He says that "[a] conscious entity's objective purpose is not to be distinguished from its moral obligations," but he never explains why. If a person does what he or she is made to do, sure, they are acting in accordance with their purpose, but why is that moral? Why not simply practical or desirable? Secondly, let's take an unconscious entity: a saw. The purpose of a saw is to cut things. Now, let's suppose a human, a conscious entity, is asked to use a saw. Would the human be immoral if they used the saw as a musical instrument? Pro says that this wouldn't be immoral, since it is only immoral when a conscious entity violates their own purpose. He writes: "Such an entity is acting in the right way when it does what it is made to do. " Suppose, however, we applied this logic to the saw example. The human is acting in the "right" way when he uses a saw for what is what made to do (to cut), and in the "wrong" way when he uses it as a musical instrument. It seems that the same reason Pro applies holds up in this example. The point being that Pro's logic would make clearly moral actions, actions that Pro even suggests are okay, immoral. So, Pro's argument here is just absurd. (b)(2) Pro writes: "Government's should be considered conscious entities because it is created and run by conscious entities with an active purpose attached to it. .. A government is synonymous to the people who run the government. " I have several responses. First: Pro's argument seems to treat government as only the people that make decisions, but, based on the agreed definition in round 1, it is also: "the organization, machinery, or agency through which a political unit exercises authority and performs functions. " The rules, regulations, departments, and agencies themselves cannot have awareness, even if the people that use them can. For instance, one would never say that the hammer is aware, but the human that uses it is. Since "government" is both machinery and people, it cannot be fully conscious because a large chunk of it lacks any awareness. In the sense that we wouldn't hold an animal morally responsible for biting someone, we cannot hold only a partially conscious entity to moral standards. The distinction here is that the awareness is vested in the people that run the government, not in the government itself. Second: Pro's arguments are NON-RESPONSIVE to the following: "Unless you can put purpose and self-awareness of purpose in the identical subject, you cannot have a moral agent. And in the case of group action, you can never have the identical subject that both has the purpose and is self-aware of having it. " So, the government is also made up of bureaucrats. They may be self-aware, but they do not act. So, even if we were able to say, "the legislature" or "the leaders of government" are moral actors, the government as a whole is not, because only a small subset of it has both purpose and self-awareness. Thirdly, even if the government is defined as a body of persons who make decisions, that body of persons is going to disagree about many, if not most, decisions, and even if there is agreement that agreement is going to be reached for reasons unique to each group member. Since the decision is that of the groups, but not everyone is aware of all the thought processes each member took to get to that conclusion, the group is not self-aware in the same sense than an individual, moral agent is. (c) My question here was whether "purpose" was necessarily synonymous with "obligation," rather than something like "practical" or "desirable. " Pro still hasn't really answered this question. Even if an agent acts in the "right" way by acting in harmony with its purpose, why is this "rightness" obligatory instead of simply desirable? Pro never gives a clear answer. P2. JusticeSP1. Meaning of JusticePro gives two definitions of justice in round one: "One definition pertains in particular to fairness while the other pertains to moral uprightness. " My definition, which was DROPPED by Pro, reads: "[t]he quality of being just. .. or fair. " The key here is that in both cases, the idea of justice is framed as moral uprightness and/OR fairness, and that there are two distinct ways to perceive it. Moreover, the fact that we are considering moral obligations doesn't seem to rule out the fairness side of the definition, since it's not incoherent to ask what a "fair government's" moral duties are. But, regardless, this point isn't that important in the debate. SP2. Government's Moral Duties(a) Pro's ONLY justification for the values he describes is the Declaration and his unwarranted claim that: "it provides a set of generally accepted values. " Pro may talk about how is case is founded on utilitarian (or "western") values, but he NEVER lays the groundwork to justify those values at any point during the debate. This is an ipse dixit/begging the question fallacy and an appeal to authority fallacy. As I said last round: "this is an issue because there are myriad different governmental systems that reflect diverse cultural, political, and social situations. Some of these systems are going to be more prohibitive of government action. Since this resolution is broad, and doesn't refer to any specific country (we could even be talking about a hypothetical just government vice some actual government), Pro needs to give us a reason to narrow the scope of the debate to a more 'western' or American outlook. " Pro NEVER gives us a reason to believe tin his concept of a just government or his utilitarian values. (b) Pro says that the Declaration "clearly states that Man should be guaranteed a set of purposes and that government is made for that purpose. " It does say that man is guaranteed a set of right, but there is certainly ambiguity as to whether these rights are positive or negative. The Declaration read: "they are endowed. .. with certain unalienable Rights. .. Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. " These rights could easily be negative rights, i. e. , a right to not be killed, a right to not have one's liberty violated, and a right to have have one's pursuit of happiness violated. Food security is a positive right, in that it requires rather than prohibits action. If the document justifies only negative rights, then there is no obligation to ensure food security, as government's only job would be to stop people actively harming others (e. g. murder), and not to ensure that people were not being harmed by their own actions and situations. Since Pro has failed to explain why the Declaration's rights are necessarily positive rights (he gives zero analysis here), then the negative interpretation is equally plausible. This forces us to make the Declaration a moot point, which leaves Pro with absolutely no justification at all for his utilitarian values, not even an appeal to authority fallacy. Re: the Post-hoc musings, cross-apply my early OIC-related stuff here. VOTING ISSUESI only need to win one of these points to successfully negate.1. OIC (1) Pro uses an is/ought fallacy (he uses definitional truths/facts to draw normative conclusions, and his examples, e. g. the bald man, make no sense--e. g. "the bald man has a moral obligation to be hairless"). (2) Unfair moral obligations are necessarily invalid, as the unfairness negates the morality of the obligation. (3) Moral obligations must be fairly attainable to have meaning. (4) A just government wouldn't recognize unfair obligations. (5) Food security is impossible. (6) Food security is an unfair obligation, so even if it's possible, my impacts stand. 2. Invalid Values Pro never explains why his utilitarian/western values are justified, except to appeal to the authority of the Declaration and to beg the question. 3. Securitization Extend resource conflict and centralization, which validate my off-case. 4. Altruism A just government wouldn't just help it's own citizens, it has obligations to all people. 5. Purpose =/= Moral Obligation (1) Pro never explains why acting for a purpose is obligatory, and not just desirable. (2) using his reasoning we can arrive at absurd conclusions (the saw example). 6. An Amoral Government Government is not (fully) conscious, so it is amoral. Ergo, it cannot have moral obligations. Thanks again to Beginner, Zaradi, and anyone who read the debate.