Summary

• Objects (1 modified, 1 added, 0 removed)
  • Caselist.CitesClass[26]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[27]

Details

Caselist.CitesClass[26]

EntryDate

...	...	@@ -1,1 +1,1 @@
1		-2016-10-16 14:22:46.645
	1	+2016-10-16 14:22:46.0

Caselist.CitesClass[27]

Cites

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,27 @@
	1	+The rez is a question of state obligations since the state alone has the power to prohibit nuclear power – prefer actor specific obligations since they differ – police have a duty to arrest criminals but civilians don’t.
	2	+
	3	+This is different from individual morality – the state doesn’t have an intent since policymakers pass laws for different reasons, and doesn’t have the reflexive capacity of individuals so it can’t be valued intrinsically. Policymakers have to use util Goodin
	4	+Robert Goodin 90, professor of philosophy at the Australian National University college of arts and social sciences, “The Utilitarian Response,” pgs 141-142
	5	+
	6	+My larger argument turns on the proposition that there is something special about the situation of public officials that makes utilitarianism more probable for them than private individuals. Before proceeding with the large argument, I must therefore say what it is that makes it so special about public officials and their situations that make it both more necessary and more desirable for them to adopt a more credible form of utilitarianism. Consider, first, the argument from necessity. Public officials are obliged to make their choices under uncertainty, and uncertainty of a very special sort at that. All choices – public and private alike – are made under some degree of uncertainty, of course. But in the nature of things, private individuals will usually have more complete information on the peculiarities of their own circumstances and on the ramifications that alternative possible choices might have for them. Public officials, in contrast, are relatively poorly informed as to the effects that their choices will have on individuals, one by one. What they typically do know are generalities: averages and aggregates. They know what will happen most often to most people as a result of their various possible choices, but that is all. That is enough to allow public policy-makers to use the utilitarian calculus – assuming they want to use it at all – to choose general rules or conduct.
	7	+
	8	+So the standard is minimizing suffering
	9	+
	10	+First, we should preserve our future ability to find moral truths. Bostrom 12
	11	+Nick Bostrom, Existential Risk Prevention as a Global Priority, 2012. NS
	12	+
	13	+These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk. Let me elaborate. Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know—at least not in concrete detail—what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving—and ideally improving—our ability to recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value.
	14	+
	15	+2. Extinction risks outweigh everything else regardless of probability. Matheny 07
	16	+
	17	+MATHENY 7 (Jason, Department of Health Policy and Management, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, “Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction,” Risk Analysis, Vol 27, No 5)
	18	+
	19	+Even if extinction events are improbable, the expected values of countermeasures could be large, as they include the value of all future lives. This introduces a discontinuity between the CEA of extinction and nonextinction risks. Even though the risk to any existing individual of dying in a car crash is much greater than the risk of dying in an asteroid impact, asteroids pose a much greater risk to the existence of future generations (we are not likely to crash all our cars at once) (Chapman, 2004). The “death-toll” of an extinction-level asteroid impact is the population of Earth, plus all the descendents of that population who would otherwise have existed if not for the impact. There is thus a discontinuity between risks that threaten 99 of humanity and those that threaten 100.
	20	+
	21	+3. Moral tunnel vision is complicit with evil. Issac 2
	22	+
	23	+—Professor of Political Science at Indiana-Bloomington, Director of the Center for the Study of Democracy and Public Life, PhD from Yale (Jeffery C., Dissent Magazine, Vol. 49, Iss. 2, “Ends, Means, and Politics,” p. Proquest)
	24	+
	25	+As a result, the most important political questions are simply not asked. It is assumed that U.S. military intervention is an act of "aggression," but no consideration is given to the aggression to which intervention is a response. The status quo ante in Afghanistan is not, as peace activists would have it, peace, but rather terrorist violence abetted by a regime~-~-the Taliban~-~-that rose to power through brutality and repression. This requires us to ask a question that most "peace" activists would prefer not to ask: What should be done to respond to the violence of a Saddam Hussein, or a Milosevic, or a Taliban regime? What means are likely to stop violence and bring criminals to justice? Calls for diplomacy and international law are well intended and important; they implicate a decent and civilized ethic of global order. But they are also vague and empty, because they are not accompanied by any account of how diplomacy or international law can work effectively to address the problem at hand. The campus left offers no such account. To do so would require it to contemplate tragic choices in which moral goodness is of limited utility. Here what matters is not purity of intention but the intelligent exercise of power. Power is not a dirty word or an unfortunate feature of the world. It is the core of politics. Power is the ability to effect outcomes in the world. Politics, in large part, involves contests over the distribution and use of power. To accomplish anything in the political world, one must attend to the means that are necessary to bring it about. And to develop such means is to develop, and to exercise, power. To say this is not to say that power is beyond morality. It is to say that power is not reducible to morality. As writers such as Niccolo Machiavelli, Max Weber, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Hannah Arendt have taught, an unyielding concern with moral goodness undercuts political responsibility. The concern may be morally laudable, reflecting a kind of personal integrity, but it suffers from three fatal flaws: (1) It fails to see that the purity of one's intention does not ensure the achievement of what one intends. Abjuring violence or refusing to make common cause with morally compromised parties may seem like the right thing; but if such tactics entail impotence, then it is hard to view them as serving any moral good beyond the clean conscience of their supporters; (2) it fails to see that in a world of real violence and injustice, moral purity is not simply a form of powerlessness; it is often a form of complicity in injustice. This is why, from the standpoint of politics~-~-as opposed to religion~-~-pacifism is always a potentially immoral stand. In categorically repudiating violence, it refuses in principle to oppose certain violent injustices with any effect; and (3) it fails to see that politics is as much about unintended consequences as it is about intentions; it is the effects of action, rather than the motives of action, that is most significant. Just as the alignment with "good" may engender impotence, it is often the pursuit of "good" that generates evil. This is the lesson of communism in the twentieth century: it is not enough that one's goals be sincere or idealistic; it is equally important, always, to ask about the effects of pursuing these goals and to judge these effects in pragmatic and historically contextualized ways. Moral absolutism inhibits this judgment. It alienates those who are not true believers. It promotes arrogance. And it undermines political effectiveness.
	26	+
	27	+4. Life is a prerequisite to any other aims – regardless of what people desire or wish to pursue, they need to be alive to pursue it in the first place, so extinction is a pre-requisite to anything else

EntryDate

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+2016-10-16 14:22:47.196

Judge

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Rebecca Kuang

Opponent

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Evanston HS

ParentRound

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+27

Round

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+6

Team

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+Harvard Westlake Chaudhary Neg

Title

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+SEPT-OCT Util NC

Tournament

...	...	@@ -1,0 +1,1 @@
	1	+St Marks