New Members Tournament: Murder is Never Morally Permissible.

Clarification1. My opponent broke off from the chain of debate established in round 1. Instead of asking you to drop him, I instead ask that the judges accept the compromise accepted in the comments section. We will let everything he said in round 3 to stand and I will use round 4 to defend my case and respond to his round 3 arguments. He will use his round 4 to defend his case and weigh arguments if he so chooses.2. My opponent states that arguments he did not bring up in round 3 should not be conceded due to character limits. I will agree that his examples should be accepted, given that the moral framework they link into is accepted in this round. However, he cannot extend moral theories next round that he did not defend in the previous, and he cannot formulate new defensive arguments to refutations I made in round 3, as he had the opportunity to do so in his own round 2. He cannot justify dropping arguments and then bringing them back up in the final speech of the debate due to character limits when it would be substantially more unreasonable to expect me to defend my case, respond to his 8000 character rebuttal, and preempt arguments he may or may not extend from round 2 that were not mentioned in round 3 with my own 8000 characters. This would also avoid clash, as he can make new defensive arguments that could be completely false, yet I cannot refute them.OverviewMy opponent collapsed his case down to utilitarianism last round. As the judge it is important to note that he has not linked any offense into Deontology, and has only provided defensive arguments against it. Thus, if I win that deontology is the only objective moral theory, not utilitarianism, I win by default as I am the only one with a risk of offense, or a chance of being resolutionally correct. I'm going to explain why metaethically deontology is superior and the debate will end right there. However, to be safe I will also refute his defensive arguments against deontology.MetaethicsAct-Omission DistinctionMy opponent's first response to this is calling the argument absurd and trying to create a sense of emotional appeal by referencing the possible loss of a family member. Remember that this is a debate and that logically correct arguments must be presented, not emotionally driven ones. I stated in round 2 that, "We cannot obligate individuals to take positive action to help others or they would have limitless obligations to help others. This undermines morality’s ability to guide action since in a situation with unlimited obligations one violates morality no matter what one does. Thus, without an act omission distinction, morality can no longer prescribe actions and becomes meaningless." My opponent never responds to this argument, so we can cleanly extend the impact that this "undermines a utilitarian impact calculus because it always demands the action which promotes the most welfare, regardless of moral constraints."Second, my opponent tries to directly indict the act-omission distinction with his second refutation. He states that a refusal to act is an action in-and-of-itself. However, he is simply creating a straw man out of my actual argument. So once again, "We cannot obligate individuals to take positive action to help others or they would have limitless obligations to help others." It is vital to realize the difference between a positive and negative obligation. Positive obligations demand proactive action, and negative obligations require inaction. My argument is not that we should never act. Rather, it states that if morality required us to take positive actions, to save lives in this scenario, then we would have unlimited positive obligations to do so, and it would be impossible to prescribe that we fulfill a specific positive obligation as it will always result in not fulfilling and unlimited amount of alternative positive obligations. We can prescribe negative actions however, such as a refusal to kill, because you are always in control of inaction. This also serves as a logical necessity. When in face of two contradictory moral choices, we will always violate morality with either decision, and thus neither action can be prescribed. Thus, for morality to logically exist, we must not be demand positive obligations. Utilitarianism does demand positive obligations as you must always proactively promote the most welfare, and thus cannot logically exist.In simple terms, what does this mean for the round?What does this mean for the round?1. For morality to exist it must use the act-omission distinction.2. Utilitarianism does not use the act-omission distinction.3. Utilitarianism cannot exist as a moral theory.Thus, you default to deontology and I win the round right here as my opponent does not have any offense linking into a deontic moral theory, only defense on my arguments.You can use this argument in combination with my 3rd indictment of utilitarianism, that it cannot prescribe action in all cases. My opponent dropped the Buridan's Mule Paradox which argues that because of the inability to choose between two rationally equal but contradictory actions, there are situations in which utilitarianism fails to prescribe action, which is a requirement of any moral theory. Do not let me opponent put defense onto this argument next round as I've already addressed his character limit justification and it would be far after I have the time to refute it.Murder is Always ImmoralThe Trolley ProblemThe summation of my opponent's arguments is two-fold:First, that if we do not flip the switch, then life is not intrinsically valuable. However, the opposite is true. This is another pitfall of utilitarianism. Value is not aggregate, it is reciprocal. When you justify killing somebody to prevent more deaths, you say that is okay to destroy life in order to save it. In effect, you devalue what you are trying to preserve, making it worthless in the end. You must unconditionally value all life in order to place an intrinsic value onto any life at all. If we fail to recognize this, then it becomes acceptable to arbitrarily assign value to life, in which case it loses all meaning.Second, he argues that if the 5 people who would die were the 5 people most important to me then I would subjectively choose to save them. This is actually an indictment of utilitarianism. My opponent justifies subjective decisions when morality must be objective in order to prescribe action to all persons equally. A subjective morality would prescribe actions arbitrarily and thus it would be impossible to determine the winner of this debate as one person's point of view may believe murder to be morally permissible, and another may believe that it is not. In order for us to decide a winner, we must find an objective terminus to base rational conclusions off of. That terminus is a deontic moral system.Third, he indicts the principle of universal law, that for an action to be moral you must rationally will it be done by others. He creates another straw man here. The broccoli analogy is flawed in many facets. The logic is you cannot take actions that you would not want to be done to you. You cannot rationally will people to coerce or murder you, thus you could not be coercive nor should you murder anyone. You can rationally will people eat broccoli, thus you can eat broccoli. That does not mean people have to eat broccoli, and deontology does not prescribe positive actions, only negatives, but it can be willed to be universal law.Ballot StoryI have unrefuted metaethical justifications for deontology, and have indicted utilitarianism. My opponent has no offense on deontology, whilst I do. He relies on sympathy and strawmans to make arguments while I've used sound logic to prove my theories. Take the arguments for what they are, not for what my opponent manipulates them to sounds like. Thank you for reading this extensive debate, and I congratulate my opponent on a great contest. Good luck in your final round.