September October LD topic.

Okay, first, some rules. This will be done like LD. You must have a value and a criterion. If you don't knw LD rules, learn them first, please. Aff R1 cannot have more than 7000 characters. Then, in the comment section we will have a CX, where Neg can ask up to 10 questions. After that, Neg R1 will go, and (s)he can use all 8000 characters. Then, aff does a CX in the comment section, where they can ask up to ten questions. Then in R2, aff only gets 4500 characters for rebuttal, neg gets 6000. In R3 aff gets 3500 characters, and neg doesn't go. We can check eachother's character limits with Microsoft word, just to be sure. For CX, we will have it occur asap after Aff R1 and Neg R1. I will be checking the site on the hour every hour until 12:00 AM EDT. Except maybe in between 7:00 and 8:00 while I'm eating dinner. So try to post your first neg question on the hour. If you miss it today, I will do the same thing tomorrow, starting at 1:00 PM EDT. Here's my case. Aff speech numero uno Resolved: That it is morally permissible to kill one innocent person in order to save the lives of more innocent people. I affirm. To clarify the debate, I offer the following definitions: Morally Permissible: conforming to a standard of right behavior (Merriam-Webster) Innocent: harmless in effect or intention (Merriam-Webster) Therefore, the affirmative burden in this debate is to show that killing one innocent person in order to save more innocent people conforms to a standard of right behavior. Value: Life Justification: Life is the appropriate value for this debate for two reasons. One, because the resolution refers to a moral calculus involving life, in that either you kill one person, and save more people, or you don't kill one person, and you don't save more people, and two, because life is necessary in order to pursue happiness, which is the only desirable end. We know this because as J.S. Mill writes "pleasure, and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends; and that all desirable things are desirable either for the pleasure inherent in themselves, or as means to the promotion of pleasure and the prevention of pain." Pleasure whether for ourselves or those around us, is always desired in our actions. But, without life, you cannot have pleasure, so life has an explicit extrinsic value in that manner. Criterion: Maximization of Life Justification: Since life is necessary for the pursuit of happiness, and more general happiness is even better than less general happiness, as shown by J.S. Mill when he writes "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure." Basically he's saying that moral actions promote the general happiness of society, and reduce the pain if society. Since you need to be alive to be happy, more life equals more happiness, more happiness is better than less happiness, so more life is better than less life. Therefore, you want to maximize life, because by doing so, you maximize happiness, and maximizing happiness is the standard of right behavior that must be conformed to in order for killing one innocent person to save more innocent people to be morally permissible. Obviously, this standard has to be conformed to. Contention 1: Affirming the resolution is the only way to maximize life in this situation. It's simple, if we negate the resolution, more than one person dies. If we affirm the resolution one person dies. It goes without saying that more than one person dying is more than one person dying. (Pause) Exactly… Obviously, life is maximized when we affirm the resolution, so in order to uphold my criterion and conform to a standard of right behavior, we must affirm the resolution. Conclusion: In conclusion, since affirming the resolution is the only way to uphold my criterion and value, you must vote affirmative, because otherwise, life, which I have shown to have extreme extrinsic value, is not maximized, and the standard of right behavior in the definition of morally permissible is not upheld. I now stand ready for cross-examination. 5244 characters used.