It is morally permissible to kill one innocent person to save the lives of more innocent people.

Pro implicitly concedes that I need not present an alternative moral theory. My opponent attempts to attack my fallacy of composition objection by appealing to an alternative interpretation of Mill's proof. Pro never argued this interpretation in R3 and furthermore, why should we accept this interpretation? There are varieties of interpretations of Mill’s argument [1] so why should we believe this one? It’s very ad hoc to reinterpret Mill’s proof for the sole purposes of bypassing my objection. I don’t see how this refutes my objection even if I accepted this interpretation anyway. If I’m trying to prove that people cannot see me and I use the argument “I am made up of cells, people cannot see cells, therefore people cannot see me.” Does my argument have weight if I claim my argument “consists only of some considerations which, I think, might induce an honest and reasonable man to accept my invisibility.”? Of course not. This is the same with Mill’s argument, it is still based on a fundamental flaw in reasoning. Pro says that Util accepts virtues, because virtue comes down to desire for happiness. Pro doesn’t deal with my main point about this. My point is that acceptance of certain virtues contradicts maximization of utility. If Util accepts them, then Util is contradictory. Pro is now accepting moral rights (contrary to his previous round), but only insofar as the contribute to happiness. Pro drops my argument that moral rights contradict maximization of utility. Rights necessarily contradict utility, as rights are entitlements [2]. The child who suffers in Omelas is entitled not to suffer. Ignoring his entitlements are ignoring his rights. Since Pro never objected to the fact that rights should be maximized (according to his own argument), then he must reject Utilitarianism. Pro says that my epistemic argument deals with the decision making procedure rather than what is actually correct. First, assuming Pro is correct, what good is a moral theory if you can’t act on it? Second, as I stated in my previous round, what is good depends on net amount of utility it produces. Since the future is always around the corner, you cannot accept any action as morally correct because the future may change the morality of an action. The rebuttal deals with both the decision making process as well as what is morally correct. Pro quotes Russel Hardin, although this is an appeal to authority. Pro ignored my point on slavery and argued that Util accepts equality. Like I said before, Util only accepts equality in the sense that one person’s happiness is on the same level as another’s. Pro acknowledges that we are discussing two different concepts of equality. The one I’m advocating for is the one we ought to have. We should allow women to vote not because the majority wants it, but because it is the equal thing to do. If 70% of the population would be outraged at freeing slaves, this should not factor into our decision. With Util monsters, Pro ignores the important part of my argument. It is a thought experiment used to express the fact that Util’s concept of equality is skewed. Pro never objects to this and instead states that humans aren’t Util monsters. Human psychology is totally irrelevant to the claim. Although, Pro has still not demonstrated his point about the impossibility of humans being Util monsters. Even if you gave all of Bill Gates’ money to me, I still might appreciate it more than him because I have the background experience of being in a bad financial situation. Lastly, Pro has given no justification for accepting higher pleasures exist nor has he attempted to argue that real existence is a higher pleasure. He drops the experience machine objection. If nothing else, we are justified in rejecting Util because it has not been demonstrated that reality is of a higher pleasure, yet we still believe that real existence is better than bliss in the experience machine. Pro never attempts to justify Utilitarianism until round 3 and even then it suffers from a fallacy of composition. He attempted to get around it by arguing for a different ad hoc interpretation without a reason for it. However, it still suffers from the composition fallacy. It also suffers from a contradiction, Pro agrees rights are good and therefore by his argument, they should be maximized. This would contradict utility. I have provided sufficient reason to doubt Utilitarianism, we value things other than the maximization of utility. We are justified in denying the claim that lives have finite qualitative value and therefore we cannot accept that it’s morally permissible to kill the lives of the few in order to save the many. A Final Remark I have to say, Seagull did better than most people for their first debate. I trust we will see many other quality debates from him in the future. [1] http://plato.stanford.edu... [2] http://plato.stanford.edu...