Individuals have a moral obligation to assist people in need.

I affirm the resolution resolved: 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 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 or her 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 it is really aid. If I sent a package of food to a society in Africa and it caused the massacre of a million of innocent people, objectively we wouldn’t consider it aid because the harms outweighed the benefits. Needs can be defined as that amount of food, clean water, adequate shelter, and access to health services to which every person is entitled All moral obligations ultimately arise form morality, which allows us to determine the extent to which an action is right or wrong. Thus, I value morality in this debate. For the following reasons, only the consequences of one's conduct can be the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness of that conduct. 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 desirably 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. We should use this principle exclusively to evaluate actions for the following reasons: 1. Based on our most basic desires, we are rationally committed to believing that the value of happiness is unconditional. As Sayre-McCord stats, “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, 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 something is a matter of seeing it as valuable...Therefore, in desiring happiness, people are thinking “happiness is valuable” and, on that basis, wanting it for themselves. [E]ach of us, 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 benifical 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” (1). Clearly, we are logically committed to believing that the value of happiness isn’t conditional. Therefore, evaluating actions by the amount of happiness that they produce is the only way we can objectively access the morality of all actions and contrast the rightness of two different actions. 2. Evaluating the morality of our actions by the overall amount of happiness they produce allows us to uphold the worth of individuals. 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 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" (2). 3. Since our moral beliefs are almost entirely based on the values of the society we live in, we are led to believe that the general happiness is an intrinsic good. As Wren states, “Being moral involves proposing actions which, upon being communicated to other agents, would be recognized and accepted by them. When an action 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” (3). Etzioni agrees.“The libertarian perspective that individual agents are fully formed and their value preferences are in place prior to and outside of any society. Ignores robustsocialscientific 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 ofculture. Individuals' actions are often deeply affected by groups and communities of which they are members" (4). Clearly, our moral beliefs are almost entirely based on the values of the community we live in. Since all communities value happiness in general, our moral education leads us to believe that we ought to do what produces the greatest amount of happiness. As these points clearly imply, the only way we can evaluate the moral rightness of an action is to access the amount of happiness it produces. Since all moral obligations ultimately arise from morality, we can be said to have a moral obligation if and only if acting on this obligation will increase the total amount of happiness. Thus, my criterion is maximizing societal happiness. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, humans cannot be satisfied 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 necessary must have a relatively low level of happiness. For this reason, we ought to assist people in need since assistance increases the net amount of happiness from an objectively point of view, and happiness is morally desirable. Thus, you affirm. Sources:1. Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey. "Mill's "Proof" of the Principle of Utility: A More than Half-Hearted Defense." Social Philosophy & Policy, 2001. Web. 20 Oct. 2011. 2. Taking and Saving Lives” Columbia Law Review, Vol. 93, No. 5, (Jun., 1993) pp. 1063-1156 Published by: Columbia Law Review Association, Inc.3. Thomas E. Moral Obligations: Action, Intention, and Valuation. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2010. Print. 4. The Responsive Community: A Communitarian PerspectiveAuthor(s): Amitai EtzioniSource: American Sociological Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Feb., 1996), pp. 1-11Published by: American Sociological Association.