Resolution: Ulilitarianism is a superior moral theory to Kantianism.

Thanks pro!If there's one thing that is certain in this debate, it's that morality is not a science, it's a faith. You can't test morality. The scientific method is pretty much the opposite of all the assumptions of ethics. Like maths, ethics cannot be proven, it's just a reasonable assumption that actions have good or bad consequences. If pro wishes to draw an analogy with science to disprove universality, he had better show how science is analogous. Ethics doesn't operate in a system. Ethics describe the moral value of conditions, not the other way round. Pro earlier contradicts himself by describing his own model as not scientific but "strictly mathematical."Why Utilitarianism FailsMy opponent begins by agreeing that most of the time utilitarianism gives the wrong moral answers, and should therefore not be used in most situations. This makes my job a lot easier in the debate, since I later went on to demonstrate how Kant solved this problem to make it generally applicable. However, pro's claim that utilitarianism is still sometimes applicable is entirely without warrent, and I am forced to ask - when is utilitarianism applicable? If pro can't tell us that, the only answer I can assume is never. Not only that, but pro needs to also demonstrate why it's applicable in those situations and not in others, a precondition for which is disproving moral universality.This would be true - and pro implicitly concedes it - whether utilitarianism was mathematical or not. Still I want to address the objection. Utilitarianism is hedonism applied to a society - act to increase everyone's net pleasure, reduce their net pain. A utilitarian would, for example, kill one person to save the lives of two, while a Kantian would not. If Hitler thought the whole of the rest of the world would benefit if that one religion were wiped out, then that would be a utilitarian calculation. If Osama thought that America's chances of eternal salvation would be massively increased with a couple thousand killed here and there, that would also be a utilitarian calculation. You wouldn't even need to make an error in the calculation to arrive at what we both would consider an obviously morally wrong solution. It's the formula itself that is flawed.Pro called this "cognitive bias" and rather than pre-emptively argue it, he pre-emptively conceded it (which was a bit weird). Pro spoke as if maths solves this. Maths might derive an answer, but it won't magically put your perceptions of what is right and wrong into an objective sense. You've got to remember that it's not a science - maybe Hitler was right and the world would be better without Jews. We don't know because we don't have any comparison, nor did Hitler know. They are both but reasonable assumptions about how to make the world better off.Pro's substantive case for utilitarianism was "you want to help others, right?" While I didn't directly answer this, I thought it was pretty clear in my analysis of why utilitarianism fails that this isn't actually what utilitarianism entails (so it wasn't a "drop"). In fact I began by saying that if that assumption were true, society would be perfect. My little story right at the start was to illustrate the danger in using your own subjective moral assumptions to judge this debate, which is relevant because pro's case relied on such assumptions (like what YOU want from the world). This should absolutely count against the theory (anyone else notice pro's subtle maths puns? no?) because it proves utilitarianism relies on untenable assumptions. The fact that it might sometimes lead to inferior moral decisions is just a side effect of this.Why Kant RocksThe same is not true of Kantianism. I want to clear something up though. Kant had several maxims. The deal wasn't "you pick one and apply that", the deal was "morally good actions must apply all of these maxims". Most of my opponent's arguments are like saying stealing is good in Christianity because 9 of the commandments say it's OK.If everyone was to kill minority groups for percieved majority benefit then there'd be nobody left alive, so that clearly doesn't meet that universal law test. The point of a universal law is that it's not specific, so "kill Fanboy" is not a universal law. To universalise that would be "kill your opponents". Similarly, the universal version of "destroy Islam-haters" would be "destroy your enemies", again leaving nobody left alive.While the categorical imperatives cannot be truly judged, it can be judged more than hypothetical imperatives because it is based on precedent. It is as close to a science as morality is ever going to get. Hypothetical imperatives are based only on what seems like a good idea to you at the time, which cannot be judged nearly as easily.My opponent notes that Kantianism is inflexible because of "emergencies". He fails to prove why morality should be flexible or what these emergencies are. I might add that the idea of a morality being universally applicable and only applicable in some cases is inherently contradictory. It's true that Kantianism isn't flexible, but flexible morality isn't a good thing. Like I said last round, if you did the same thing as Jack the Ripper, it doesn't matter how much you had grounds to kill somebody, you should still be judged the same because of how you acted (letting others be judged for their actions on their own moral merits, but not compromising your own morality along the way).RebuttalsIf normative ethics are about what one should do, then utilitarianism must always fail because pro admits it can't be used to make any decisions. However, Kantianism is ethically normative - it establishes ethical norms (distinguishing it from the other class of an ethical theory, meta-ethics, which questions the nature and language of ethics itself). What you should do and what is permissable to do is one and the same in Kantianism. Kantianism explicitly tells you to be ethically good, and then says what actions are ethically good. It doesn't reduce the value of the theory to be allowed to choose which ethically good action to take. The miser example was about whether the action of the man was justified - of course, it was not. Nor should the miser have to give the money charitably to the man - any good charitable cause would be equally justified in Kantianism (and that doesn't count against it either). Pro says this doesn't tell us what the man should do, but that wasn't the problem. The man should do other good deeds, not go around making false promises. Specific deeds the man could do might include cleaning up the neighbourhood, helping old ladies cross the street, baking hot cross buns etc, but my opponent is shifting the goalposts here.Any Kantian-approved action has moral value because it has a moral motivation (doing good), but even if this were not the case there is moral value in doing good even for the wrong reasons. If I killed somebody for no reason at all, the lack of my reasoning does not imply a lack of moral value for the action of murder. Similarly helping kids for no reason does not negate that I did good. Like I said last round, I don't see why this counts against Kantianism. Remember it's an ethical theory about what one should do, not why one does it, although it so happens to answer that too.In real life, you can only control your own actions. The choice isn't "lie or let die", the choice is "lie and you think they won't die". There's a bunch of confounding variables, most of which you probably don't even know about. You can't control the moral outcomes of the actions, but you can control the moral value of your own actions. Lying is bad. It has a negative moral value. And you can prevent that, even if the outcome of a morally good action taken instead is uncertain as well.The maxims don't contradict, it's just that an action satisfies one and not the other. See also my first paragraph of "Why Kant Rocks" this round.I look forward to the final round.