This house believes in Utilitarianism over its rivals.

Thanks Stephen. I want to briefly note that Stephen and I have agreed in the comments that this is a theoretical debate and voting should therefore not take sources into account. I have a lot of ground to cover so I'll get right to my argument. Pragmatism The pragmatist Charles Peirce held that nothing was indubitable. Each thing was open to doubt, although not all things at once. Each thing could be doubted on the basis of other propositions that were, at that particular moment, not actually in doubt. Their turn could come later. The idea is that any proposition is only justified locally, in a specific time and place or historical and social context. Otto Neurath likened this situation to that of sailors who have to rebuild a ship at sea: while standing on somewhat rotten planks, they must repair and replace the others. Every plank sooner or later gets repaired. Everything is open to transformation. Nothing stays fixed. Pragmatists thus push Kant's epistemology one step further, arguing that the "categories" through which experience is always interpreted are the creations of human subjects who cannot "step outside" their interpretive framework. In other words, epistemic access to reality is necessarily mediated by concepts and descriptions that precede that reality. Of course, this means different interpretive frames produce different beliefs and conceptions of reality. And because there is no independent or neutral mechanism for adjudicating between these different interpretive frames, pragmatists maintain that there are no absolute and certain foundations for knowledge. The pragmatist thus recognizes that, for any general principle, there will always be an exception. And this is where a pragmatic ethics differs markedly from other ethical systems: whereas most normative frameworks attempt to provide an unchanging basis for moral action (ergo, moral absolutes), pragmatism eschews moral absolutes, not because it denies their existence, but because (a) there are too many potential non-arbitrary candidates and (b) because there is no neutral device, mechanical test, algorithm, or knock-down argument for determining which candidates are right and which candidates are wrong. Wikipedia puts it quite forcefully when it says, "ethical pragmatists acknowledge that it can be appropriate to practice a variety of other normative approaches (e.g. consequentialism, deontological ethics, and virtue ethics), yet acknowledge the need for mechanisms which allow society to advance beyond such approaches." Indeed, Wikipedia says that a pragmatic ethics entails the following points: (1) a focus on society, (2) the potential to revise moral criteria, and thus (3) the potential for conflicting moral judgments across different times and places. Why should anyone prefer ethical pragmatism to utilitarianism? 1. If "the advantage of utilitarianism" lies in its "flexibility," as Stephen claims, then pragmatism is obviously superior because it is even more flexible than utilitarianism. Ethical pragmatism recognizes that the facts of a situation make all the difference, and in different circumstances, entirely different actions may be appropriate. So while utilitarianism requires moral uniformity between people and across cultures, pragmatism does not. 2. Pragmatism understands moral advance as the product of an ongoing conversation and tradition of inquiry. In other words, pragmatism preserves what John Stuart Mill calls the "marketplace of ideas." The basis for moral action thus emerges out of the competition of ideas in free public discourse. Utilitarianism, on the other hand, imposes its principles on everyone without requiring continuous scrutiny and transformation in the public realm of discourse and competition. 3. Pragmatism is more practical than utilitarianism. This much is obvious from the credo: "do what works." The whole point of a pragmatic ethics is to establish a morality based around doing what works. Utilitarianism, on the other hand, require us to evaluate moral acts according to an exceedingly complex calculus, adding up all the happiness and unhappiness that may result from every alternative action. In reality, being a true utilitarian is nearly impossible, as very few people (if any) could actually perform the complex calculations demanded by utilitarianism. Moreover, utilitarians also run into the problem of moral paralysis, especially since a utilitarian calculus often produces moral judgments that conflict with our moral intuitions. Which brings me to my next point: 4. Pragmatism does not conflict with our moral intuitions; utilitarianism does. There are many well-known objections to utilitarianism on this basis alone. According to pragmatists, on the other hand, our moral intuitions themselves shift according to circumstance: over time, through the crucible of experience, what works becomes intuition. And when what worked in one context stops working in a different context, our intuitions naturally will change to reflect that different things work in different circumstances. Hence, a pragmatic ethics is more in tune with our moral intuitions precisely because moral intuitions are the product of pragmatism to begin with. They aid us in making quick and efficient yet moral decisions. 5. The process through which pragmatism evaluates moral acts has its parallel in science: as revolutionary new discoveries are made, scientific theories are revised and often-times replaced entirely by new theories (for example, the shift from Newtonian mechanics to Relativity and Quantum Mechanics). So on that note: pragmatic ethics is more scientific than utilitarianism. The point here is that pragmatism is more responsive to change than utilitarianism. A new discovery about the nature of things should obviously be reflected in the way we evaluate moral acts. Pragmatists respond to these kinds of changes better than utilitarians because pragmatists are able to develop new types of reasons for acting a certain way whereas utilitarians must evaluate moral acts using the same mechanism regardless of the circumstance. 7. Pragmatism is, epistemologically-speaking, more correct than utilitarianism. As human subjects, the nature of our consciousness is such that our understanding is always limited by the horizons of our experience. Human agents are always situated in particular contexts, and efforts to transcend or fully understand that situation are doomed to failure. Ethical pragmatism thus recognizes our position as human subjects with a limited understanding; utilitarianism (quite arrogantly) does not. 8. Pragmatism allows for multiple values to be given their due whereas utilitarianism chooses one value to be maximized, often to the detriment of others. For example, a pragmatist can put knowledge, justice, life, and love on an equal footing with happiness, whereas utilitarians will often make actions that benefit these other values impermissible because they decrease net happiness. And because there is no knock-down argument that says happiness is more important than knowledge or justice or life or love, pragmatism is thus more likely to fulfill the particular needs of particular people. 9. Pragmatism recognizes that, in some contexts, people should not be counted as equal; utilitarianism does not. For example, take the famous organ donor case: a doctor with three dying patients, all in need of organ transplants, has the chance to kill a healthy patient and using his/her organs to save the three. Utilitarians would say the doctor has a moral imperative to kill the healthy patient. Pragmatists, on the other hand, can employ different ways of thinking to conclude that killing the healthy patient is wrong. -- The arguments I have been making all emphasize the same points: pragmatic ethics is better than utilitarianism because it does everything utilitarianism does but better, more flexible, more practical, more scientific, and more epistemologically sound.