The principle of Utility is true

First off I'd like to return the compliments to my opponent as well. I'm certain this debate will prove to be both challenging and thought provoking.C1. Morality and Meaning.Observation. Even if conceded, my opponent's C1 wouldn't actually appear to justify the PoU, just the existence of a possible natural mode of thinking. But even in my opponent's C2 he argued that the existence of natural traits or conditions does not satisfy the conditions necessary for that trait or condition being justified or ethical.More substantially, the main problem with this argument makes the unjustified assumption that whatever our intuitions point to is justified. But there are several problems with ethical intuitionism, chief among them being that it provides no meaningful method of resolving incompatible or mutually incompatible intuitive claims. For instance, say you intuit that lying is wrong in all instances while I intuit that lying is right in some instances. The specific fact that these were merely intuited and not actually reasoned out using sound logical analysis means that there is no justifiable way to resolve such disputes. And since we certainly do not all agree on the principle of utility (by the mere fact there is disagreement here in this debate), the point fails to adequately justify its validity.C2. Coherent Explanations.While an interesting critique of deontology and natural law, I'm afraid my opponent's C2 doesn't actually support the soundness of the PoU in that he has presupposed the existence of an actual objective morality. Now if we were to take the existence of objective morality as a starting point than my opponent's argument would be perfectly valid since the PoU could be justified by simply refuting all other options. But since this is not the case, my opponent is tasked with showing the existence of objective morality to start with. Otherwise the argument wouldn't stand on its own even if every other ethical theory were refuted (my opponent only attempted to refute two, ignoring virtue ethics, egoism, altruism, discourse ethics, Rawlsian ethics, rights theory, etc.) since there still wouldn't be any reason to suppose that any ethical theory at all is true. In short, disproving other ethical theories is a necessary though not sufficient condition for justifying the PoE[2].C3. Moral Behavior.My opponent's contention employs my favorite method of ethical analysis, consistency and performative contradiction. He argues that one would be inconsistent to argue that it is morally permissible to harm another being but that it would be wrong to inflict it upon themselves. Now while I wholly agree with this point, it is open to two primary criticisms, the fact that one would necessarily be intellectually against such treatment of themselves and the fact that my opponent has placed the scenario in a vacuum thus ignoring any other possible ethical approaches.(A) My opponent's criticism makes the presupposition that the person who claims that inflicting pain is morally acceptable would be against such pain being inflicted on themselves. But this presupposition is in no way logically necessary. We can easily conceive of a person who believes that pain is a moral good in itself, regardless of the possible physical implications on themselves. Not only is this not a logically contradictory thought experiment, but people like this actually exist (though in a consensual manner, the principle of taking and inflicting pain still remains)[3]. So in order for my opponent's theory to work, masochists and sado-masochists would necessarily be immune to the implications of the PoU since they don't fit the conditions necessary for my opponent extrapolating his conclusion from.===Sources===[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk...[2] http://plato.stanford.edu...[3] http://psycnet.apa.org...