Resolution: Ulilitarianism is a superior moral theory to Kantianism.

Is There A Substantive Case For Utilitarianism? Most of this debate has focused on Kantianism as pro very early assumed that I dropped it. All of pro's "intuitively right things" involved helping others. Asking the question of "whether or not we should adopt a policy that leads to a better situation or a worse one" is not what this debate is about, loaded as the question is. This debate is about whether utilitarianism is superior to Kantianism. At no point in this debate did I claim that utilitarianism cannot lead to good moral decisions, or that we should ignore it if it does. I simply claimed that Kantianism is more likely to correctly identify good moral decisions. I'm glad my opponent does drop however, quite explicitly, that utilitarianism can EVER practically work. The whole point about something working "in theory" however is that you create a bunch of assumptions. His assumption seems to be "omniscience" - universally perfect judgement. If we had universally perfect judgement, though, there would once again be no need for ethics because we'd never make bad decisions anyway (the whole point being that we'd know exactly what to do). Pro never answered this despite it being one of the first arguments I made. I'm afraid I fail to understand how that is supposed to be misleading. Con's explanation of my round two and three cases, which is supposed to show this, are the same sentance with several words replaced by synonyms. My opponent fails to explain how utilitarianism can be adapted to overcome this objection. Moreover he does not address the criticism that utilitarianism will gladly do a little evil for greater good (which of course results in evil being committed) even without the practical objection. Pro's whole claim for why my hedonism analogy fails rests on happiness and pleasure not being the same thing. That's funny, because back in round one pro defined hapiness as pleasure minus pain. It's worth noting that hedonism attempts to maximise not pleasure but NET pleasure, which Wikipedia aptly summarises as "pleasure minus pain". When making a moral decision, ALL consequences are expected. That's because ethics deals with future consequences, and science is yet to invent the crystal ball to tell us what the "actual" consequences will be at the point of making a decision. It's all what we expect. The eternal Islamic salvation point stands. I explained why the same thing cannot be said of Kantianism in the very next section. I've noticed a pattern that wherever I move an argument to a new heading pro seems to think it's a drop - it isn't, it's just me sorting arguments to where they correctly belong. I even gave you the example of "kill your enemies" to illustrate the point. Is There A Substantive Case For Kantianism? Pro says Kant and I disagree about what Kant thinks, claiming Kant thought "If you can justify the categorical imperative via one of the maxims then the action is hence permissible". What Kant actually said was that acting on the maxim was permissable (. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org...). There are several hypothetical and categorical maxims that Kant believed applied to actions. I explained this right at the outset and pro raised no objection then. Just because it's permissable on that specific maxim doesn't mean it's also permissable on all the hypothetical and categorical maxims that may apply. The reason why "destroy Islam haters" is not universal (although I would have thought it obvious) is that it uses language exclusive to those who hate those who hate islam (usually those who like Islam). Islam haters refers to something specific, not something universal. Pro called it a "certain" type of person, and that word certain is perhaps the single most important word pro wrote. Certain implies a limitation. Anyone can have an enemy, but a certain class hating on another certain class's hatred of the former certain class is certainly not universal. Pro dropped his points about emergencies and true judgements in this round. Is there a case against Kantianism? There are two kinds of ethics. Normative ethics seeks to create rules, or what philosophers call norms, or what Kantians call imperatives. Kantianism seeks to create these rules. The other one is metaethics. These are the only two branches of ethics known to mankind, although there are subcategories of course. There is no requirement in normative ethics to distinguish between what is permissable and good - that Kant would require you to be good only means that bad things can never be intended to happen. Getting an icecream conveys the moral worth of us wanting to do good. We could have chosen to, say, buy pressure cookers to make bombs out of instead, but we did not. An action has moral worth, after all, if it fulfils a moral law. Sure, there were probably other good things we could have done with the money, but the point is that we did good, and that's morally what counts. The man in the miser example cannot help the starving children. To do that would be morally bad. It would also be morally bad of the miser not to help the children despite being able to, and so the claim Kant disregards the children is absolutely laughable. But to cheat the miser out of his life savings is wrong too. What should the man do? Some other good deed. I've given lots of good examples. Perhaps helping the children is up to the miser, but the man can always do other good things. The lottery example has been confused by pro. I've said all along that there's a reasonable reason for moral motivation in Kantianism, but pro's reading that as though Kant is saying all other motivations must be morally wrong. Kant himself emphatically denied this. "Doing good" or "doing wrong" is always the motivation in Kantianism, and happiness, or even a lack of an apparent intention, is a consequence thereof. Kant was absolutely a consequentialist in that he believed in intended consequences to judge actions. Happiness does have value. What do you think hypothetical imperatives are there for? I explained this ages ago. Moreover, happiness helps people and gives them worth, so adding happiness increases the moral value of an action in Kantianism where this is not excluded by another categorical imperative. The resolution is negated.