The Rich Have a Moral Obligation to Donate to the Poor - *Fall Tier Tournament - Round 1*

My thanks to Wylted for his arguments. Lamentably he has failed to actually address my counter arguments that pleasure/pain is a sufficient basis for morality as well as the arguments dealing with empathy. He has been arguing one round behind where he should be and this ultimately stifles the debate and permits less actual development of the ideas. Even though Con had over 4500 characters still available to him in Round 2, he failed to make any rebuttals and even now he has failed to address any substantive arguments from Round 3. I do not know how the Judges will receive this style, but I personally find it a distasteful means of taking advantage of last say. I’m sure Con will disagree and plead innocence.RebuttalsCon's argument essentially requires that you leave your intellect (and that of all humanity) at the door. He states that "the earliest indicators of right and wrong for a human is in our feelings of pain and pleasure." Thus Con's argument is that our morality is nothing but some form of Pavlovian stimulus response. Thus whatever makes you feel pleasure is morally good, whether it be eating a Big Mac, rescuing a bum of the street or raping your neighbour's handicapped daughter. If it feels good do it.While I have fully agreed that pleasure and pain form an elementary underpinning of natural law and thus morality, our intellect and empathy are greater aspects of our humanity. Using MRIs to scan children's brains (from between 7-12), University of Chicago researchers found that:"children, like adults, show responses to seeing someone in pain in the same areas of their brains. The research also found additional areas of the brain, those connected with moral reasoning, were activated when youngsters saw another person intentionally hurt by another individual." [9]and "The programming for empathy is something that is "hard-wired" into the brains of normal children, and not entirely the product of parental guidance or other nurturing" [9]These results come from seeing images of strangers suffering. Whereas Con attempts to limit empathy and compassion to "people that we love".The readers should note that I have equivocated morality with our true nature. Is our true nature selfish or is it compassionate. Given that I have shown that when we see others suffering we have areas of our brain dedicated to responding with empathy, I believe it is quite apparent to note that it is our true nature to respond in compassion - we are "hard wired" to respond in this manner.However, unlike animals we can override our natural inclinations. We are creatures of intellect. We can use our intellect to work in concert with our natural moral responses or we can use our intellect to suppress them. This is why we don't refer to animals as moral or immoral; they behave on instinct.Con continued by discussing compassion. As previously noted Con attempts to limit compassion to those you already love. And yet I've already shown that we are "hard wired" to feel empathy even to to total strangers.Now, Con quotes me from Round 2 noting that I said that we tend to feel less compassion and are less charitable to strangers than we do to those who we already care about. This is because there is a strong natural obligation to family and friends. As an example:I see a car lose control on my street and is about to plough into my daughter and her friend playing outside. I know that I only have time to save one. I will instinctually move to save my daughter, because, as her father, that is a greater moral obligation upon me than saving her friend. However, if there is only her friend out there I don't sit back pop a beer and laugh as she gets ploughed into - I save her.Additionally, we learn and are formed by our parents from a young age. None of them are perfect, thus the forming that we receive from them will be imperfect as well. However, returning to my original premise, we can devise which actions are ultimately most in keeping with our true human nature by observing the outcomes of those actions. I will return to this thought later.Additionally, research has shown that wealth actually reduces compassion [10]. According to the study wealth appears insulates people from naturally developing empathy and compassion. The researchers for the study surmised that the reason for this was that "wealth and abundance give us a sense of freedom and independence from others. The less we have to rely on others, the less we may care about their feelings. This leads us towards being more self-focused."Humans and primates are by nature social creatures. [11] "Biologists have found a correlation between the size of the animals' frontal cortex and their social nature."So is human nature to be social creatures and we find that those who have the least give the largest percentage of their income to charity. [12]Money itself is an artificial construct and not in and of itself natural. So we can see that those who are least separated from one another by the artificial construct of money are more inclined to be empathetic - which has already been shown to be hard wired into our brain. And we know that as humans our large frontal cortex makes us naturally social animals.Thus electing not to be charitable and donate to the poor actually further separates us from our nature. Whereas, donating to the needy reconnects us socially to other human beings. And, not to belabor the point, we are social creatures and thus we reinforce our true nature though charity to others.HistoryCon contends that I am making an appeal to tradition in this section. However, from his own source [13]:"Traditions are often passed from generation to generation with no other explanation besides."What I did was show a progression in thought process in western civilization that has brought us to the society in which we now live. I did not say that just because the ancient Greeks did this we should. The society in which we live did not just pop out of nowhere. A civilization does not exist in a bubble separate from guiding philosophies and actions of the people. A civilization is instead formed by those very things.I do not expect a civilization who believed the Pharaoh was a God to develop into a democracy. Nor do I expect a civilization with an untouchables "caste" who are regularly discriminated against to develop a judicial system based on the premise of equality of all. This is just intuitively obvious.The point is that the Judeo-Christian moral philosophy and actions resulted in the civilization in which we (both Con in the US and myself in Canada) now live in and enjoy. Given that other civilizations did not achieve this social success, it would be farcical to assume that our underlying philosophies had nothing to do with it. Now correlation does not necessarily equal causation - this much is true. However, my contention from the beginning has been that actions that are most in line with our true nature will result in the best outcome for the species. Given that charity, which I also referred to as the perfect self-giving love agape, has been a central theme to the philosophies of western civilization, I do not believe that it can be summarily dismissed as a logical fallacy.In Round 2, I had simply noted that the concept of charity from the government (which is the wealthiest entity in the nation) became a social reality in the Judeo-Christian tradition. I do agree that this is not a central point to this debate, and am not arguing about tax policy. I mentioned it to show how deeply entrenched the concept of charity is to our civilization. This is an additional supporting fact to the centrality of charity is to our Civilization's moral character.I would like to note that only now is Con questioning my definition of donate. And I am forced to defend a 2 round old definition. Con claims that my definition is in error. If we go back to the root of the word it stems from the Latin word donare which means to "give as a gift." [14] And a gift is "something bestowed voluntarily and without compensation." [15] As this is a moral obligation from the rich to the poor and charity is defined as "Something given to help the needy; alms" [16] I believe that my original definition is substantiated.Natural LawContrary to Con's assertions I was quite clear about what natural law is (From my Round 2 Introduction):"That which is in keeping with our nature will ultimately provide the best outcome for our species"Thus, if murder was a "moral" action for our species, the civilization which murdered the most would create strong stable societies. If not then it is not a moral action.ConclusionI have shown that Con's pleasure/pain definition alone is an insufficient basis for morality. As a final example: if avoidance of pain is indicative of a moral action, then every woman should have an abortion to avoid the pain of child birth. This base level of reasoning means humanity should become extinct. This is in direct opposition to my contention that morality is that which best serves the species. However, if con admits that some pain to achieve a greater good is true he has invalidated the moral basis for his argument and supported mine.I also reaffirmed my own contentions. I have shown that:• the morality of an action is based on which actions that are in accordance with our true nature• empathy (even to strangers) is a hard-wired part of who we are. • humans are fundamentally social• wealth tends to make people less social and empathetic.Given the above facts, there is a moral obligation for the wealthy to donate to the poor - both for the good of the poor and of the wealthy.My thanks to Wylted for the debate.References[9] http://tinyurl.com...[10] http://tinyurl.com...[11] ttp://tinyurl.com...[12] http://tinyurl.com...[13] http://tinyurl.com...[14] http://tinyurl.com...[15] http://tinyurl.com...[16] http://tinyurl.com...