Individuals have a moral obligation to assist people in need.

For clarity I offer the following definitions: A moral obligation is defined as a particular duty which one is morally bound to do (Oxford English Dictionary) Assisting is defined as increasing the net amount of happiness from an objective point of view. You should prefer this definition for the following reasons: 1. There are an infinite number of ways to assist people in need. Allowing me to defend only one specific form of assistance would give the Neg an impossible research burden because I can focus all my time researching one specific way of assisting while he has to spend his time researching the specific nuances of the almost limitless ways of assisting. 2. The text of the resolution doesn’t specify an actor, so we can’t determine aid from a subjective standpoint of one specific individual. 3. Pragmatism is the only way to determine whether something is really aid. If I sent a package of food to a society in Africa and it caused the massacre of a million innocent people, objectively we wouldn’t consider it aid because the harms outweighed the benefits. Needs can be defined as the amount of food, clean water, adequate shelter, and access to health services to which every person is entitled (1). All moral obligations ultimately arise from morality, which allows us to determine the extent to which an action is right or wrong. Thus, I value morality in this debate. Only the consequences of one's conduct can be the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness of that conduct for the following reasons: 1. We establish general moral principles through our observations of specific real world events. Thus, we can only determine if any particular act is good or bad by evaluating the end states the action produces. For instance, we acknowledge that murdering others is wrong because of the consequences of death. Given that the idea of harm is determined by end states, it logically follows that we are obligated to positively influence those end states, justifying consequentialism. 2. Deontological theories cannot serve as a guide for action since they require us to act on certain principles regardless of how morally desirable the end states may be. Given that our observations advise courses of actions based on unique contexts, and given that we humans are instinctively inclined to follow the course of action that offers the highest probability of producing a desirable end, only consequential theories are consistent with morality’s ultimate purpose of serving as a guide for action. Thus, to evaluate the morality of an action, we must look to its consequences. The amount of happiness that an action produces is one of its most morally significant consequences. For the following reasons, we should judge our actions as morally right if and only if they maxamize the net amount of happiness: 1. Based on our own desires, we are rationally committed to believing that the general happiness is good. As Sayre-McCord states,“Ultimately, the grounds we have for holding the beliefs we do must be traced back to our experiences, to our senses and desires. When what we are looking at appears red to us, we believe that the thing is red. Similarly, when we are desiring things, we believe that the thing is good, otherwise we wouldn’t be wanting it for ourselves. Desiring a thing and thinking of it as desirable are one and the same, just as seeing a thing as red and thinking of it as red are one and the same. Desiring somethingis a matter of seeing it as valuable” (2). Therefore, when an individual desires his own happiness, there clearly must be something he sees as good about it. Whatever that feature is, it cannot be merely the fact that it’s his own happiness, since there are at least some things of his which are not valuable. However, any other feature which might give this individual’s happiness value will not be originally proprietary. That is, it will not be a feature which is specific to his happiness but rather a feature of happiness in general. Thus, as Sayre-McCord concludes,“In desiring happiness, people are thinking “happiness [in general] is valuable” and, on that basis, wanting it for themselves [E]ach of us is, in desiring happiness for ourselves cannot deny that when someone else gets happiness they get something good. Of course we are not committed to thinking that their getting it would be benificial to us. Nevertheless, the grounds we each have for thinking it would be a good to us appear to commit us to thinking that in getting it, someone else would be getting something of value” (2). Clearly, as this argument shows, everyone must see the general happiness as valuable. Since morality is essentially a code of values to guide an individual’s actions, all individuals are morally obliged to increase the general happiness. 2. Since all humans are morally equal, we must act to increase the total amount of happiness in society. According to Rakowski, "Individuals’ status as moral equals requires that the number of people [who are happy] be maximized. Only in this way, can we give due weight to the equality of persons; to allow [a small number of people to be happy and a large number of people to suffer] is to treat some people as less valuable than others. It is because they are no less ends than others that an impartial decision-maker must favor the more numerous group" (3). 3. The very concept of morality depends on the existence of communities. Therefore, to uphold morality, individuals must take some actions which better the community as a whole. As Wren states, “Being moral involves creating formulations which, upon being communicated to other agents, would be recognized and accepted by them. When a formulation is perceived as unacceptable, the agent who proposed it can only presume that it is wrong. In other words, moral valuation presupposes the existence of other agents because a totally isolated agent could not know his choices as good or his moral judgements as true. He could simply react to his environment, but [h]e wold not be able to evaluate what he was doing” (4). Etzioni agrees. As he notes, "The libertarian perspective that individual agents are fully formed and their value preferences are in place prior to and outside of any society ignores robust social scientific evidence about the deep-seated human need for communal attachments, the social anchoring of reasoning itself, and the consistent interactive influence of society members on one another. There are no wellformed individuals bereft of social bonds or culture...Individuals' actions often reflect [social] values" (5). Clearly, the very concept of morality can only exist within a society. This means that, if we wish to uphold morality, we must promote the well-being of our society. This includes increasing the general amount happiness. As these three separate points imply, we are obligated to increase the amount of happiness from an objective point of view. Thus, my criterion is maximizing societal happiness. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, humans cannot be happy without our basic survival needs being met. For example, I could never feel happy about a good grade I earned in a class if I wasn’t able to feed myself. Thus, people in need are generally unhappy. By definition, assistance increases the net amount of happiness. Therefore, affirming the resolution is the best way to uphold the criterion of maximizing societal happiness. Sources:1. "Meeting Basic Human Needs" by John McHale2. "Mill's "Proof" of the Principle of Utility: A More than Half-Hearted Defense" by Geoffrey Sayre-McCord3. "Taking and Saving Lives” by Rakowski4. "Action, Intention, and Valuation" By Thomas E. Wren5. "The Responsive Community: A Communitarian Perspective" by Amitai Etzioni