Utilitarianism can properly uphold the value of justice

Thanks Cameron. Let's begin with some definitions. Utilitarianism is an ethical system that judges an action's morality by its consequences; namely, it seeks to enact policies that provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, utilitarianism has become synonymous with the term "consequentialism." Uphold means "support" (Random House) Value means "the abstract concept of what is right, worthwhile, or desirable; principles or standards" (Random House) Justice means "rightfulness or lawfulness," "the moral principle determining just conduct," "the administering of deserved punishment or reward." Essentially, justice is upheld in a society whose moral or legal code is generally considered to be fair. In any society, setting up a fair system of laws is difficult because the rights of different people often come into conflict. For example, my neighbor may have the right to use his property as he sees fit. However, I have the right to use my own property as I see fit. My neighbor's right to throw an extremely loud party on his property interferes with my right to study for a test on my own property. As another example: a company has a right to use its own property as it sees fit. However, if it dumps chemicals in the river on its property, those chemicals travel to other people's properties downriver and damage those people's properties. Society needs some *weighing mechanism* or moral system that, when crafting laws, helps it determine how to weigh one person's rights against another's. The *only* possible weighing mechanism is utilitarianism, asking which policy provides the greatest good for the greatest number. Without utilitarianism, it becomes impossible to evaluate competing rights claims and thus impossible to uphold the value of justice. Not only do alternative systems to utilitarianism fail to properly evaluate competing rights claims, but they also have additional flaws of their own. Kant's categorical imperative (CI) is the most commonly proposed alternative to utilitarianism (util). The CI states that any action is morally permissible as long as it does not treat humans as a means to an end, only as ends in themselves. Killing your father so you can inherit his estate is wrong because you treated his death as a means to an end, the end being inheriting his estate. However, the CI is an extremely rigid ethical system that does not comport with most people's views on justice. Because it does not allow humans to be used as a means to an end, the CI would not allow you to torture one terrorist to find the location of a bomb in a major city because torture uses a human as a means to an end, even if the "end" is saving 1 million lives by preventing the bomb from exploding. Joseph Nye of Harvard University cites the following hypothetical to show the ridiculousness of the categorical imperative: you pass through a conflict area and a rebel captain has captured 30 innocent villagers. The captain is going to execute the innocent villagers for being from a rival tribe. You pass by and the captain, for his amusement, hands you a gun and says: shoot one villager and I will let the rest go free. If you refuse, the captain will order his men to shoot all of the villagers. Nye asks, "Will you shoot one person with the consequences of saving [the rest], or will you allow [all] to die but preserve your moral integrity by refusing to play his dirty game?" [1] Judging the morality of an action a priori, without looking at consequences, leads to rigid ethical systems that prefer 30 people to die rather than one. Utilitarianism, in contrast, would allow you to shoot one person to save 30, given that you have no other choice in the matter – if you don't act, they all die. Utilitarianism is a far less rigid ethical system than the alternative. While my opponent does not *have* to endorse an alternative ethical system, if I prove that utilitarianism is the only viable weighing mechanism in helping us craft laws, then I win that it is the *only* way to uphold justice. There are many different types of utilitarianism, but I will be endorsing *rule consequentialism,* which states that the moral rightness of an act depends on the consequences of establishing a rule that allows that act. [2] For example, under the Joseph Nye thought experiment, where you are forced to kill one person to save an entire village from being gunned down, the killing of one person*is* allowed under a legal rule called "duress." If you are *forced* to kill someone (for example in order to save someone else's life), you are not held criminally liable. The application of the duress rule ensures that murder, generally, is still illegal, while allowing important exceptions. Rule consequentialism is a type of holistic consequentialism or "world consequentialism" because it asks "is a *world* where X is allowed better than a *world* where X is not allowed." [2] This is contrasted with types of consequentialism that evaluate actions only on an individual level, as in "is Y person better off if he performs X action." Holistic consequentialism and individual consequentialism often lead to opposite conclusions. I am rather certain that all of my opponent's objections to utilitarianism will evaluate actions based on an individual, rather than holistic, consequentialism. I now turn the debate over to Cameron. Sources: [1] http://www.debate.org... [2] http://plato.stanford.edu...