Resolved: This house prefers utilitarianism.

There is a reason that I organized this debate as I have. The parliamentary debate style is refreshing in its snark and its adaptability to all kinds of argumentation. The idea here is to have both tight argumentation and soaring rhetoric: something my opponent has already attempted to emulate and something I hope to best him at. But that is the name of the game and it is all in good fun. It is important to remind those who are going to cast their ballots in this debate, that there is generally no hard evidence in a parliamentary debate round. I wanted to let the Government provide the standard for this in their first speech, but seeing as he has provided no sourcing. Please refrain from RFDs that include criticism of our lack of sourcing--that is completely intended. Now, it is interesting that the Government rings up the idea of drunk drives. Allow me to use this example to explain exactly why we must reject Utilitarianism. The government says that because of the results of Sally’s actions and the results he causes that we hate her more. However, this is exactly the problem. We shouldn’t despise the person who causes death more than the other. Because they both performed the same action. In the eyes of the Utilitarian, Jake has done nothing wrong. Even though he endangers his own life and the lives of others, because he was lucky enough to not hurt anyone, or himself, he is not morally condemnable. But do we not intuitively think that he has done something wrong. Don’t we condemn those who drive drunk even if there is a different result of the choice to drink and drive? This is among the many reasons that we must reject Utilitarianism for a new alternative theory of ethics and deciding what is and is not ethical. Let us examine, again, this idea of Utilitarianism ignoring some of the bad things in the world—as is the case with Jake and Sally that the Government provides us with. According to the Utilitarian point of view, the consequences provide us with the moral rightness or wrongness of an action. However, we can see that, intuitively, this is not the case. When we look to the drunk driving example, we should find that it is both the action of drinking and driving and the result that follows are the moral actions that we must evaluate. Surely we can say that we find Sally more morally condemnable because of her actions, but that does not mean that it is solely the consequences of her action that lead us to the notion that her actions were immoral. Intuitively, we want to find Jake as morally bad, too. His actions could have led to death just easily as Sally’s did and therein lies the problem with Utilitarianism. Additionally, we can look to one of the oldest critiques of the utilitarian point of view—it takes the form of a thought experiment. What if you were in the emergency with a cold? It is not a big deal, but you are going to get some antibiotics to help you out. But your doctor is a good utilitarian. He also happens to be an amazing transplant surgeon. He notices that you have a hopping heart, 2 lively lungs, a lovely liver, and 2 kicking kidneys. You could save six people upstairs right now with the organs you have just sitting in your meat preserver of a body. It would provide six people a lifetime worth of happiness for the doctor to end your life right now and transplant all of those organs. Utilitarianism would have us total that pleasure vs that pain and tell us to go ahead for the good of the many. The consequences of the transplants, though drastically bad for you, are drastically good for those who receive the transplants. For the utilitarian. What is not to like? But for the rest of us, we are left wondering…is there not some other standard here that is being violated? IN the end, the utilitarian takes into account only the pleasure and the pain of the mater. It is clear that there is less suffering if you kill the one many to have six others live. But is that all that is in play in the game of ethics? Intuitively we find the conclusion that we are all merely organ mines ready to be picked at repulsive. And our intuitions are correct. Finally, we can look to Robert Nozick’s famous critique of Utilitarianism in the form of what he calls the Experience Machine. The experience machine posits the idea of a machine that would provide all the nutrients for life. The human body could step into the machine and be sustained and the conscience would be “hacked” to experience the perfect life. The experience machine creates the perfect life for the individual and let’s tem experience the maximally pleasureful life. Who wants to get in? No one, right? The idea here is that the utilitarian sees the idea of a person living the maximally pleasured life. So, to the utilitarian, there is no negative to this machine. Wouldn’t it be a perfect world morally to have everyone get in the experience machine? Maximal pleasure for everyone. No pain. That is the utilitarian’s dream world. But that seems fake to us. Despite the fact that our brain may secrete serotonin and norepinephrine until the day our brains shut down and we die, it does not follow that we have lived the most morally correct life. In fact, it seems, that there are other things that we could do with our lives. We could help people *for real*. We could change the world *for real*. Even though we may not be able to achieve the maximally pleasureful life for ourselves, does that not mean that we have achieved something of a real moral profundity? These are the reasons that we must, on face reject Utilitarianism. However, it seems that in order to for this house to not prefer Utilitarianism, there needs to be some work done to defend an alternative point of view. Thus, I present the notion of Deontology. Kant provided one of the first profound examples of Deontology in his conception of morality through the Categorical Imperative. For Kant, the notion of what is ethical is defined by two principles of the Categorical Imperative. These can be stated simply as this 1) That maxim, or principle of action, which can be consistently willed to be universal is moral as long as it does not 2) use man as merely a means to an end. This conception of the good and what is moral is, in particular, a stark comparison to what Utilitarianism would have us believe. The Government side wants you to think of consequences on a scale of -10 to 10. And while it is universally recognized that murder is a morally reprehensible thing to do, the highest that action could rank on a scale is -10. What if 2 people gained quite a deal of good from that death? What if the one man who died a terrible death—rendering a score of -10—leads to 2 people getting a massive fortune—thus a score of +6. Does that total of +12 not outweigh even the most horrible of deaths that the man could possibly experience? It seems that Utilitarianism can be used to justify a whole host of morally reprehensible actions, and that is something that we cannot have in the world of ethics. Thus, let us look at the situations we have described and examine how Kantian Deontology provides us with the answers that we are looking for. In the case of the drunk drivers, what do we conclude? While Sally is much more ethically condemnable for causing the deaths of humans and creating an irreparable harm, we must also think of Jake’s actions as equally bad—at least from the onset. We find that, despite the fact that Jake’s actions do not create any bad consequences and provide for no negative utility, the action of drinking and driving, regardless of the results, is condemnable and ethically bad. How do we reach this conclusion? In more ways than one, Jake’s actions use many lives, including his own, as a means to an end. Despite the fact that he has options to safely get home, he takes it upon himself to drive while drunk. Thus, he uses the many people who could be injured by his actions as a means to get himself home. He also uses his own life and puts it up has fodder simply because he is too impatient to attempt to get home. Additionally, we find it impossible to consistently will that even one person take matters into their own hands and drive home drunk. We have reasonable conclusions here. Second, where Utilitarianism would advocate for this form of organ robin-hoodery where we take from those who are rich in organs and give them to the poor, Kantian Deontology recognizes the moral dilemmas. What if we did that for everyone? Can we consistently will that maxim of killing someone for their organs to be used to cure more people? What if it was your mother who was drafted to save the lives of six drug dealers? The maxim of forced organ transplant is recognized as ethically incorrect by Kantian Deontology and thus, we must not prefer Utilitarianism. Finally, whereas Utilitarianism would have us all jumping to get into the next experience machine, we must once again evaluate this intuitive moral atrocity from a universal standpoint. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone were in an experience machine? No. How could the human race survive? What if one of the machines broke. Who would be there to diagnose any of the problems? Who would be there to reproduce? In short, the problem here is one of the matrix. Can we consistently will that were are all subject to the induced pleasure of a machine? No. And thus, where Utilitarianism fails us again, Kantian Deontology succeeds. I have illustrated three examples where Utilitarianism fails us in ethical dilemmas. These are not isolated example. These are three very basic examples that only illustrate the root problems with Utilitarianism. I will address the further problems with Utilitarianism in my next speech, but I will leave you with this. If we can’t prefer Utilitarianism in these three basic examples, where can we prefer it? And does life really break down into only one chief good—pleasure? It seems to me like there is much more in life to evaluate.