JOKE LD - Moral Obligation and the "Tickle Cream of Death"

Starting off, please note that I have accepted, as part of my burden, to restrict all sassy comments to obscure Star Wars references. With this in mind, I will establish my rebel base and then aim for the Aff’s thermal exhaust port. Definitions (Oxford English Dictionary) 1. Moral - Concerned with the principles of right and wrong behaviour. 2. Obligation - An act or course of action to which a person is morally or legally bound; a duty or commitment. Observations 1. It’s important to keep in mind for this debate that moral obligation is different from justification. Simply justifying Tricia’s act of Sith-like revenge isn’t enough to show a moral obligation exists. 2. All moral obligations require an origin. Much like all life connected to the Force, some kind of source (generally a context or reasoned principle) that mandates a particular moral outcome must exist. 3. Contextual/cultural origins promote inconsistencies (i.e. what is moral for Wookies might not be moral for Gungans). Therefore, a reasoned principle is required. A framework for assessing moral obligations and their origins is also required. Otherwise, we leave our morals as cloudy as C3PO’s rear end after a trip to Tatooine. V/C FrameworkValue: Moral Consistency - The value of morality free from contradiction. As Velasquez et. al explains, “Ethics requires consistency in the sense that our moral standards, actions, and values should not be contradictory.” Contradictions make our moral beliefs questionable. Here, the value of consistent morals is necessary to achieve any other moral outcome or value. Criterion: Categorical Imperative (CI) -Immanuel Kant’s formulations of commands to exercise our rational wills in particular ways. The CI operates on the motivation of “good will” (the only good thing without qualification), which Kant sees as making moral choices based on reasoned moral laws. The CI offers a framework to assess moral actions and the ethical reasoning behind said actions. In this debate, I’ll use the CI to assess the morality of Tracia’s action, and the plausibility of this action being a moral obligation through Kant’s first and second formulations. C1: TCD is an immoral act A. Step one is to determine whether Tricia’s action is morally permissible. Kant’s second formulation reasons that all moral actions treat autonomous beings as an ends unto themselves. Since all beings are autonomous (yes, even Gungans), treating others as a means to an end takes away this autonomy. B. In and of itself, TCD is an immoral act that infringes on the free will of others. As an act of revenge, TCD takes away the victim’s free will, and uses them as a means to an end (revenge). We can see that when this act is scrutinized by the second formulation, it fails as a morally permissible action. William Stephens explains, “Kantian objection to revenge is that using the suffering of a person to satisfy oneself is morally objectionable because it treats the person as a means only and fails to respect the person’s human dignity.” C2: TCD is a retributive act based on emotion, not reason A. It’s important to see that any form of “an eye for an eye” type of retributive justice is only morally acceptable when the punishment is rationally equal to the crime (thus bring balance to the Force). Stuart Hopkins explains that, “Kant's concept of the law of retribution' emphasizes that, like is to be exchanged for like in matters of offence and penalty' and, it is important to note, that the actual punishment is not determined by the victim… 'neither the victim of crime, nor any angry neighbor, nor any diffuse 'society, has the authority to punish.” The absence of “extraneous considerations” is the only way that retributive actions can best achieve balance. B. Tricia’s act is hardly free from “extraneous considerations”. As the victim, this retributive act is being justified/committed without any impartiality. Emotion (desire for revenge) is the most likely explanation for Tricia’s act, and even if she were acting out of pure reason, she must face the immoral pitfalls of TCD I address in C1. Since the justification for this act relies on emotive justification, and she has no Anakin Skywalker-like prophecy to bring balance to the Force, we can’t accept Tricia’s act as a moral one. C3: The universal application of a TCD-based obligation leads to a negative world A. Kant’s Death Star for moral obligations is the universal application of such obligations. Kant argues that any moral obligation ought to be tested in a hypothetical world as a natural law. Is such a world even conceivable, or has it been erased from the Jedi archives? Can people rationally will to act on this natural law, or will they need a restraining bolt? Will Yoda or Palpatine feel more at home in the ultimate outcome? B. Any moral obligation involving TCD universally fails. First, as C1 demonstrates, TCD is immoral which logically concludes that no rational being can, in good will, act on a moral duty that utilizes such an act. Second, since this doesn’t bring balance (to the Force or otherwise), the universal application of this duty would lead to more darkness. Any sort of emotional wrongdoing would warrant TCD. This leads to a dark spiral that Yoda probably drones on and on about to younglings: Tricia’s friends emotionally wrong her; she must emotionally wrong them; they must respond in kind; etc, etc, etc. Therefore, TCD as a moral duty fails all accounts of Kant’s first formulation. Moving forward, I will demonstrate why the Aff case is as wrong as Mace Windu in a toupee.V/C Framework Clash: The Aff offers a value of “knowledge” and demonstrates the necessity of this value by citing Max Reebo’s uglier cousin, Kelly Clarkson, and her song “Stronger”. First, consider that Clarkson’s diverse musical philosophy would teach Tricia to accept her friend’s dark side. She refines this value to focus on “knowing how” through a criterion of “socialization of proper behavior”. The following arguments will demonstrate why the Aff’s V/C pair is like bring a vibroblade to a lightsaber duel: it just isn’t adequate. 1. The Aff’s value isn’t necessarily concerned with morality. Knowing how to “socialize to proper behavior” isn’t the same as knowing how to ethically reason between right and wrong. Moral obligations require consistency (O2 & O3), and even if the Aff wants to argue that knowledge must exist in order to obtain moral consistency, the type of epistemic Bantha poodoo the Aff is pushing won’t do. Critiquing CJ1: knowledge on how to morally reason, which the CI provides, is necessary over knowledge on turning negatives into positives. 2. The Aff argues that Tricia’s moral obligation is derived from socialization being the best way to learn cultural norms, but you can apply my O3 to this. It’s like fueling a hyperdrive with Jawa juice - the results will be inconsistent and probably smelly. Furthermore, my definition of “obligation” doesn’t allow for societal norms, unless expressed through legal dictation. If this is case, then perhaps the Aff would like to cite legal precedence or go back to herding nerfs. 3. Critiquing CJ2 & CJ3: these justifications can’t escape the relative, inconsistent nature of societal norms. Socializing to “proper behavior” would only fuel a moral obligation if the society finds it acceptable. This is completely separate from any ethical reasoning for the moral foundation. My criterion provides this ethical reasoning; Aff’s criterion just offers societal Bantha poodoo. C1: The Aff is attempting to explain hyperspace travel with the Jedi Code. 1. Newton’s Three Laws regard the physics of motion, whereas philosophical matters are often concerned with metaphysics of moral properties. Unless the Aff is attempting to explain the actual physics of the TCD, we can’t use the third law or the conservation of energy to support this moral obligation. 2. As an analogy, these theories also fall short. As we see from all three of my contentions, any “negative energy” that’s created from a Royal Shampooing is only met with a dark spiral of continued negative energy created from immoral acts like TCD. Actions are met with the same negative actions. Nothing is conserved, but negatively propagated like a potato shoved down the Death Star’s tailpipe. 3. Jedi Clarkson’s philosophy also offers an alternative scientific analogy in the form of Einstein's theory of relativity. Here we can see that, like an individual’s perception of speed & motion, societal norms are relative. However, morality, like the speed of light, is a consistent force that must be accepted and understood through the capacity to reason. C2: This contention demonstrates the differences between what is socially and morally acceptable. 1. Subpoint A shows that while something may be societally acceptable, it isn’t necessarily morally permissible. C1 and C2 on Neg demonstrate the inherent moral inconsistencies with TCD. Furthermore, the benefits that Aff cites don’t contribute to any sort of obligation, but mere justification. It’s a good try, but as Yoda says, “Oh snap! Did you did not!” (“Oh no you didn’t!”). Apply my O1 and see that “raising your status” because it’s socially proper doesn’t equate to a moral obligation. 2. The parable of My Little Pony in Subpoint B only demonstrates the allure of the dark side. The “lesson” that the Aff asserts is that if Gilda merely accepted the negative prank, a friendship would have been saved. With this logic, it’s okay when someone exclaims, “I have a bad feeling about this” as long as they turn their frown upside down. In other words, chopping off your son’s hand is okay if everyone has a good laugh. The Aff’s “moral obligation” fits the mantra, “That’s no moon, that’s a [fake] space station.” Moral obligation is only societal justification for the Aff. With all this in mind, I urge a Neg vote with the words of a preeminent philosopher: R2D2… “Beep beep beep”.