Deontology Framework for Practice Debates Payne Griffin

MBHS Debate 1

Deontology Framework For Practice Debates

***Paperless Macros Enabled ***For Index, use document Map Deontology Framework For Practice Debates............................................................................ 1 Deont Good = Better Policy Making............................................................................................ 3 Deont Good = Better Policy Making............................................................................................ 3 Deont Good = Int Hmn Rts...........................................................................................................5 Deont Good = Int Hmn Rts........................................................................................................... 5 Deont Good = Precedes Util (1/2)................................................................................................ 6 Deont Good = Precedes Util (1/2)................................................................................................. 6 Deont Good = Precedes Util (2/2)................................................................................................ 7 Deont Good = Precedes Util (2/2)................................................................................................. 7 Deont Good = Precedes Util......................................................................................................... 8 Deont Good = Precedes Util.......................................................................................................... 8 Utilitarianism Bad.......................................................................................................................... 9 Util Bad = Destroys Hmn Dignity 1/2......................................................................................... 9 Util Bad = Destroys Hmn Dignity 1/2..........................................................................................9 Util Bad = Destroys Hmn Dignity 2/2........................................................................................ 11 Util Bad = Destroys Hmn Dignity 2/2.........................................................................................11 Util Bad = Dilutes Qual Of Life................................................................................................. 12

Deontology Framework for Practice Debates Payne Griffin

MBHS Debate 2

Util Bad = Dilutes Qual Of Life.................................................................................................. 12 Util Bad = Justifies Deaths Of Millions..................................................................................... 13 Util Bad = Justifies Deaths Of Millions...................................................................................... 13 Util Bad = Foundation For War..................................................................................................14 Util Bad = Foundation For War................................................................................................. 14 AFF Utilitarianism Bad Overview............................................................................................. 16 AFF Utilitarianism Bad Overview............................................................................................. 16

Deontology Framework for Practice Debates Payne Griffin

MBHS Debate 3

Deontology Good Deont Good = Better Policy Making

Policy makers cannot depend solely on economics, but need to apply ethics to make efficient policies Pinstrup-Andersen, Per. 2005. (Ethics and economic policy for the food system. General Sessions, 01DEC-05, American Journal of Agricultural Economics.) Economists seldom address ethical questions as they infringe on economic theory or economic behavior. They (and I) find this subject complex and elusive in comparison with the relative precision and objectivity of economic analysis. However, if ethics is influencing our analyses but ignored, is the precision and objectivity just an illusion? Are we in fact being normative when we claim to be positive or are we, as suggested by Gilbert (p. xvi), ignoring social ethics and, as a consequence, contributing to a situation in which we know "the price of everything and the value of nothing?" The economists' focus on efficiency and the Pareto Principle has made us less relevant to policy makers, whose main concerns are who gains, who loses, by how much, and can or should the losers be compensated. By focusing on the distribution of gains and losses and replacing the Pareto Principle with estimates of whether a big enough economic surplus could be generated so that gainers could compensate losers, the socalled new welfare economics (which is no longer new) was a step toward more relevancy for policy makers (Just, Hueth, and Schmitz). Another major step toward relevancy was made by the more recent emphasis on political economy and institutional economics. But are we trading off scientific validity for relevancy? Robbins (p. 9) seems to think so, when he states that "claims of welfare economics to be scientific are highly dubious." But if Aristotle saw economics as a branch of ethics and Adam Smith was a moral philosopher, when did we, as implied by Stigler, replace ethics with precision and objectivity? Or, when did we as economists move away from philosophy toward statistics and engineering and are we on our way back to a more comprehensive political economy approach, in which both quantitative and qualitative variables are taken into account? I believe we are. Does that make us less scientific, as argued by Robbins? I am not questioning whether the quantification of economic relationships is important. It is. In the case of food policy analysis, it is critically important that the causal relationship between policy options and expected impact on the population groups of interest is quantitatively estimated. But not at the expense of reality, context, and ethical considerations, much of which can be described only in qualitative terms. Economic analyses that ignore everything that

Deontology Framework for Practice Debates Payne Griffin

MBHS Debate 4

cannot be quantified and included in our models are not likely to advance our understanding of economic and policy relationships. Neither will they be relevant for solving real world problems. The predictive ability is likely to be low and, if the results are used by policy makers, the outcome may be different from what was expected.

Deontology Framework for Practice Debates Payne Griffin

MBHS Debate 5

Deont Good = Int Hmn Rts

Deontology is essential for the maintenance of international human rights because it restricts the practice of justifying the actions of the government by the ends achieved, creating what is essentially a humane international order. Thomas Donaldson, 1995 (Prof. of Business Ethics at Georgetown U, Ethics and International Affairs, International Deontology Defended: A Response to Russell Hardin, pg. 147-154) It may appear that I am defending Kantian deontology as a comprehensive moral language to use in interpreting international events. But I mean not to assert that Kantian deontology is sufficient, only that it is necessary. Such a perspective contributes fundamental, often neglected, insights. First it provides a moral grounding for any rights-based approach to international affairs. This includes not only the general interpretation of international policy through broad notions of human rights, but also the application of specific rights such as those found in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Indeed, most contemporary rights-based theories are deontological theories. Rights are principles that assign claims or entitlements to someone against someone and are usually interpreted as trumping or taking precedence over consequential claims made in the name of collective welfare.4 Hence, both in their similarity of form (as a principle universally applicable to relevantly similar situations) and in their similarity of function (as taking precedence over collective, consequential considerations), rights satisfy two key Kantian-deontological criteria. Second, Kantianism entails clear restrictions on the general behavior of states. Of greatest importance is the fact that these restrictions alert us to the danger of letting the ends justify the means. Whatever the flaws of the Kantian deontological tradition, and no matter what verdict we finally reach on the comprehensiveness of deontological moral logic, the insistence on principle over mere calculation of future consequences stands as deontologys practical raison detre. Deontology may not be sufficient, but it is necessary for a humane international order.

Deontology Framework for Practice Debates Payne Griffin

MBHS Debate 6

Deont Good = Precedes Util (1/2)

Certain premises have an intrinsic moral value that comes before consequences of actions. Evaluating consequences first puts our fate and the fate of the masses in the hands of belligerent others. Igor Primoratz in 05 (Principal Research Fellow @ Center for Applied Philosophy amd Public Ethics, The Philosophical Forum, Volume 36, No. 1, Civilian Immunity in War, Spring, p. 44-46) Consequentialist thinkers usually present their view on civilian immunity against the background of a critique of attempts of philosophers and legal thinkers to account for civilian immunity in deontological terms. Having satisfied themselves that those attempts have been unsuccessful, they put forward the claim that civilian immunity has nothing to do with civilians acts or omissions, guilt or innocence, responsibility or lack of it, but is merely a useful convention. It is useful since it rules out targeting a large group of human beings, and thus helps reduce greatly the overall killing, mayhem, and destruction in war. The consequentialist view of civilian immunity is exposed to two objections: the protection it offers to civilians is too weak, and the ground provided for it indicates a misunderstanding of the moral issue involved. The protection is too weak because civilian immunity is understood as but a useful convention. This makes it doubly weak. First, if it is merely a useful convention, if all its moral force is due to its utility, then it will have no such force in cases where it has no utility. This is a familiar flaw of consequentialism. It denies that moral rules have any intrinsic moral significance, and explains their binding force solely in terms of the good consequences of acting in accordance with them. Therefore it cannot give us any good consequentialist reason to adhere to a moral rule in cases where adhering to it will not have the good consequences it usually has, and where better consequences will be attained by going against the rule.6 This means that we should respect civilian immunity when, and only when, doing so will have the good consequences adduced as its ground: when it will indeed reduce the overall killing, maiming, and destruction. On the other hand, whenever we have good reasons to believe that, by targeting civilians, we shall make a significant contribution to our war effort, thus shortening the war and reducing the overall killing and mayhem, that is what we may and indeed ought to do. Civilian immunity is thus made hostage to the vagaries of war, instead of providing civilians with iron-clad protection against them. This is not a purely theoretical concern. As Kai Nielsen has pointed out, systematic attacks on civilians in the course of a war of national liberation can make an indispensable contribution to the successful prosecution of such a war. That was indeed the case in Algeria and South Vietnam, and may well have been the case in Angola and

Deontology Framework for Practice Debates Payne Griffin

MBHS Debate 7

Mozambique as well. Then again, if civilian immunity is merely a useful convention, that weakens it by making it hostage to the stance taken by enemy political and military leadership. They may or may not choose to respect the immunity of our civilians. If they do not, on the consequentialist view of this immunity, we are not bound to respect the immunity of their civilians. Being a convention, it binds only if, or as long as, it is accepted by both parties to the conflict. As an important statement of this view puts it, for convention-dependent obligations, what ones opponent does, what [CONTINUED]

Deont Good = Precedes Util (2/2)

[CONTINUED] everyone is doing, etc., are facts of great moral importance. Such facts help to determine within what convention, if any, one is operating, and thus they help one discover what his moral duties are.8 To be sure, even if no such convention is in place, but we have reason to believe we can help bring about its acceptance by unilaterally acting in accordance with it and thereby encouraging the enemy to do the same, we should do that. But if we have no good reason to believe that, or if we have tried that approach and it has failed, our military are free to kill and maim enemy civilians whenever they feel they need to do that. Thus our moral choice is determined, be it directly or ultimately, by the moral (or immoral) choice of enemy political and military leaders. So is the fate of enemy civilians. The fact that they are civilians, in itself, counts for nothing. This brings me to the second objection: The consequentialist misses what anyone else, and in particular any civilian in wartime, would consider the crux of the matter. Faced with the prospect of being killed or maimed by enemy fire, a civilian would not make her case in terms of disutility of killing or maiming civilians in war in general, or of killing or maiming her then and there. She would rather point out that she is a civilian, not a soldier; a bystander, not a participant; an innocent, not a guilty party. She would point out that she has done nothing to deserve, or become liable to, such a fate. She would present these personal facts as considerations whose moral significance is intrinsic and decisive, rather than instrumental and fortuitous, mediated by a useful convention (which, in different circumstances, might enjoin limiting war by targeting only civilians). And her argument, couched in personal terms, would seem to be more to the point than the impersonal calculation of good and bad consequences by means of which the consequentialist would settle the matter.

Deontology Framework for Practice Debates Payne Griffin

MBHS Debate 8

Deont Good = Precedes Util

Recognizing rights and putting them before a utilitarian calculus is the only rational and moral option. H. L. A. Hart in 79 (former principal of Oxford University, Tulane Law Review, The Shell Foundation Lectures, 1978-1979: Utilitarianism and Natural Rights, April, 53 Tul. L. Rev. 663, l/n) Accordingly, the contemporary modern philosophers of whom I have spoken, and preeminently Rawls in his Theory of Justice, have argued that any morally adequate political philosophy must recognise that there must be, in any morally tolerable form of social life, certain protections for the freedom and basic interests of individuals which constitute an essential framework of individual rights. Though the pursuit of the general welfare is indeed a legitimate and indeed necessary concern of governments, it is something to be pursued only within certain constraints imposed by recognition of such rights. The modern philosophical defence put forward for the recognition of basic human rights does not wear the same metaphysical or conceptual dress as the earlier doctrines of the seventeenth and eighteenth-century Rights of Man, which men were said to have in a state of nature or to be endowed with by their creator. Nonetheless, the most complete and articulate version of this modern critique of Utilitarianism has many affinities with the theories of social contract which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries accompanied the doctrine of natural rights. Thus Rawls has argued in A Theory of Justice that though any rational person must know that in order to live even a minimally tolerable life he must live within a political society with an ordered government, no rational person bargaining with others on a footing of [*679] equality could agree to regard himself as bound to obey the laws of any government if his freedom and basic interests, what Mill called "the groundwork of human existence," were not given protection and treated as having priority over mere increases in aggregate welfare even if the protection cannot be absolute.

Deontology Framework for Practice Debates Payne Griffin

MBHS Debate 9

Utilitarianism Bad Util Bad = Destroys Hmn Dignity 1/2

The utilitarian viewpoint is flawed. It is impossible for society to be viewed as a single entity without sacrificing the human dignity of the individual. Will Kymlicka, 1988 (Prof. of Philosophy at Queens U, Press, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 17, No. 3., pp. 172-190, Rawls on Technology and Deontology JSTOR) According to Rawls, then, the debate over distribution is essentially a debate over whether we should or should not define the right as maximizing the good. But is this an accurate characterization of the debate? Utilitarians do, of course, believe that the right act maximizes happiness, under some description of that good. And that requirement does have potentially abhorrent consequences. But do utilitarians believe that it is right because it maximizes happiness? Do they hold that the maximization of the good defines the right, as teleological theories are said to do? Let us see why Rawls believes they do. Rawls says that utilitarianism is teleological (that is, defines the right as the maximization of the good) because it generalizes from what is rational in the one-person case to what is rational in many-person cases. Since it is rational for me to sacrifice my present happiness to increase my later happiness if doing so will maximize my happiness overall, it is rational for society to sacrifice my current happiness to increase someone else's happiness if doing so maximizes social welfare overall. For utilitarians, utility-maximizing acts are right because they are maximizing. It is because they are maximizing that they are rational. Rawls objects to this generalization from the one-person to the many person case because he believes that it ignores the separateness of persons.? Although it is right and proper that I sacrifice my present happiness for my later happiness if doing so will increase my overall happiness, it is wrong to demand that I sacrifice my present happiness to increase someone else's happiness. In the first case, the trade-off occurs within one person's life, and the later happiness compensates for my current sacrifice. In the second case, the trade-off occurs across lives, and I am not compensated for my sacrifice by the fact that someone else benefits. My good has simply been sacrificed, and I have been used as a means to someone else's 2. John Rawls, A Theory ofJz~stice(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, rg71), p. 31 3. Ibid., p. 27. Philosophy G Public Affairs happiness. Trade-offs that make sense within a life are wrong and unfair across lives. Utilitarians obscure this point by ignoring the fact that separate people are involved. They treat society as though it were an individual, as a single

Deontology Framework for Practice Debates MBHS Debate Payne Griffin 10 organism, with its own interests, so that trade-offs between one person and another appear as legitimate trade-offs within the social organism.

Deontology Framework for Practice Debates Payne Griffin

MBHS Debate 11

Util Bad = Destroys Hmn Dignity 2/2

Utilitarians view society as a single entity, which devalues the rights and human dignity of the individual. Will Kymlicka, 1988 (Prof. of Philosophy at Queens U, Press, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 17, No. 3., pp. 172-190, Rawls on Technology and Deontology JSTOR) Scott Gordon echoes this interpretation of utilitarianism when he says that utilitarians adopt the view "that 'society' is an organic entity and contend that its utility is the proper objective of social policy." This view, he says, "permits flirtation with the grossest form of anti-individualistic social philosophy."4 This, then, is Rawls's major example of a "teleological" theory which gives priority to the good over the right. His rejection of the priority of the good, in this context, is just the corollary of his affirmation of the separateness of persons: promoting the well-being of the social organism cannot be the goal from which people's rightful claims are derived, since there is no socialorganism. Since individuals are distinct, they are ends in themselves, not merely agents or representatives of the well-being of the social organism. This is why Rawls believes that utilitarianism is teleological, and why he believes that we should reject it in favor of a deontological doctrine.

Deontology Framework for Practice Debates Payne Griffin

MBHS Debate 12

Util Bad = Dilutes Qual Of Life

Utilitarianism views people as locations of utilities, whose purpose is to bring good to the whole, even if that entails the lower standard or life for the individual. Will Kymlicka, 1988 (Prof. of Philosophy at Queens U, Press, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 17, No. 3., pp. 172-190, Rawls on Technology and Deontology JSTOR) There is, however, another interpretation of utilitarianism, one that seems more in line with Rawls's characterization of the debate. On this second interpretation, maximizing the good is primary, and we count individuals equally only because that maximizes value. Our primary duty is not to treat people as equals, but to bring about valuable states of affairs. Rawls on Teleology and Deontology As Bernard Williams puts it, people are viewed merely as locations of utilities, or as causal levers for the "utility network": "the basic bearer of value for Utilitarianism is the state of affairs. . . . as a Utilitarian agent, I am just the representative of the satisfaction system who happens to be near certain causal levers at a certain time."Io Utilitarianism, on this view, is primarily concerned not with persons, but with states of affairs. This second interpretation is not merely a matter of emphasizing a different facet of the same theoretical structure. Its distinctiveness becomes clear if we look at some utilitarian discussions of population policy, like those of Jonathan Glover and Derek Parfit. They ask whether we morally ought to double the population, even if it means reducing each person's welfare by almost half (since that will still increase overall utility). They think that a policy of doubling the population is a genuine, if somewhat repugnant, conclusion of utilitarianism. But it need not be if we view utilitarianism as a theory of treating people as equals. Nonexistent people have no claims-we have no moral duty to them to bring them into the world. As John Broome says, "one cannot owe anyone a duty to bring her into existence, because failing in such a duty would not be failing anyone."" So what is the duty here, on the second interpretation? The duty is to maximize value, to bring about valuable states of affairs, even if the effect is to make all existing persons worse off than they otherwise would have been. To put the difference another way, if I fail to bring about the best state of affairs, by failing to consider the interests of some group of people, for example, then I can be criticized, on both interpretations, for failing to live up to my moral duty as a utilitarian. But, on the second interpretation, those whose interests are neglected have no special grievance against me.

Deontology Framework for Practice Debates Payne Griffin

MBHS Debate 13

Util Bad = Justifies Deaths Of Millions

Adapting the consequentialist viewpoint justifies the deaths of millions of innocents in order to bring about an ends. Thomas Donaldson, 1995 (Prof. of Business Ethics at Georgetown U, Ethics and International Affairs, International Deontology Defended: A Response to Russell Hardin, pg. 147-154) The supposed unrealism of deontology also seems to lie behind Hardins concerns over nuclear deterrence. After noting that Kantians typically have condemned the indiscriminate destruction implicit in a policy of deterrence, he adds that it therefore seemed [to Kantians] profoundly immoral to destroy cities full of children merely for the sake of the theory of deterrence. The word seemed is surprising. Shouldnt most people, not only Kantians, be appalled by the prospect of destroying cities full of children? To not be appalled, I submit, is the result of either having been swept away by the morality of consequences or having studied too much political science. It is noteworthy that the reason we are appalled relies on a Kantian-style explanation. If we were to adopt an exclusive consequentialist view, if the ends were always capable of justifying the means, then the death of millions of innocents should be trivialmere fluff in the face of moral truth. The idea that there are some things that should not be done is precisely a deontological notion. The idea that, no matter how powerful a deterrent it may be, the strapping of babies to the front of tanks is nonetheless wrong, cannot be understood entirely in consequentialist terms. It does not follow that the policy of nuclear deterrence is wrong from the viewpoint of deontology. Some deontologists accept nuclear deterrence while others do not. But deontologists insist correctly that not only the assessment of the consequences, but an assessment of the means used to achieve consequences, must be factored into the moral evaluation of nuclear deterrence.

Deontology Framework for Practice Debates Payne Griffin

MBHS Debate 14

Util Bad = Foundation For War

Utilitarianism taken alone allows unjustified war; full weight must be given to deontological analysis in order to achieve the best policy option. Eric Heinze in 99 (assistant prof. of polisci @ University of Oklahoma, Human Rights & Human Welfare, Waging War for Human Rights: Towards a Moral-Legal Theory of Humanitarian Intervention, http://www.du.edu/gsis/hrhw/volumes/2003/heinze-2003.pdf, p. 5) By itself, this utilitarianism of rights test has serious problems when employed as a threshold level of human suffering that triggers a humanitarian intervention. This is because it suggests that aggregate human suffering is the only moral concern that should be addressed (Montaldi 1985: 135). If we are to accept the general presumption against war as enshrined in Article 2 of the UN Charter, we do so because of wars inherent destructiveness and its detrimental effect on international security. The use of force, including humanitarian intervention, will always result in at least some loss of life. The principle of utility ameliorates this effect of intervention, but once an intervention is employed to halt such widespread suffering, a pure utilitarian ethos would sanction the pursuit of this primary end (achieving the military and/or humanitarian objective) without exception, so long as fewer people are killed than are rescued in an intervention. Not only does this reduce the moral relevance of the individual, it opens up the door for aggression disguised as humanitarian intervention, as long as there are individuals who are suffering and dying within a stateeven if their suffering is entirely accidental. Taken as part and parcel of the utilitarian framework, therefore, military intervention must only be sanctioned when it is in response to violations that are intentionally perpetrated Thus, as Fernando Tesn eloquently explains in his chapter, The Liberal Case for Humanitarian Intervention, the best case for humanitarian intervention contains a deontological elementthat is, a principled concern for the respectful treatment of individuals (not intentionally or maliciously mistreating them)as well as a consequentialist onethe utilitarian requirement that interventions cause more good than harm (Holzgrefe and Keohane: 114). Consider NATOs intervention in Kosovo, where a significant number of Serbian civilians were killed by NATO bombs in the process of coercing the Milosevic regime to stop its ethnic cleansing of Kosovars. Regardless of whether more lives were saved than lost, in accidentally killing noncombatants, NATO was in essence accepting the notion that human rights are not absolute. This is despite the fact that such killing was done in order to save the lives of

Deontology Framework for Practice Debates Payne Griffin other innocent civilians.

MBHS Debate 15

Deontology Framework for Practice Debates Payne Griffin

MBHS Debate 16

AFF Utilitarianism Bad Overview

1. There is no way to measure the various degrees of happiness obtained from an action. Since humans have different perceptions and derive various amounts of happiness from different situations, then there is no possible way to tell which action causes the greatest amount of happiness and therefore Utilitarianism cannot function.

2. Contemplating consequences takes too much time. Since the possible outcomes of a situation are infinite, and the amounts of possible situations are infinite, then humans subjected to Utilitarian principles would spend all of their lives contemplating on the outcomes of their actions, rendering it impossible for society to function or for life to exist.

3. Human rights-violations Utilitarianism advocates the violations of human rights to achieve the greater good. However, rights-violations hold more weight than utils.

4. Utilitarianism cannot differentiate between right and wrong. Since Utilitarianism holds that an action that results in the most happiness is the only right action, and all other actions are wrong, then it also advocates that other actions that are considered moral that do not achieve as much happiness as the other action are also wrong.