I'd like to thank my opponent for challenging me to this debate.
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I thank admin for accepting. If Aff accepts, I propose a rule to limit 1-point votes, and restrict voting to those with reasoning for this debate.
== Constructive Case ==
CONTENTION 1: Metaethical Flaws
Observation One: The resolution deems the concept of a “just government” necessarily requiring a moral obligation to provide food security, and this moral obligation is based on roots of morality. Sans fulfillment of this obligation, by the terms of the resolution, a government would be unjust and immoral.
Links and Impacts
The Aff position invokes concepts of metaethics and values of morality, by providing a universalright to food security. This concept of morality hinges on the objective existence of morality, and places where metaethical values can coherently be applied. The assumption is the concept of “justice” being hinged on roots of morality, thus if the Aff position’s conception of morality is flawed, presume Neg.
The resolution’s own appeal to morality is ungrounded, since the values used are essentially an attempt to resurrect a force that holds together all objective values--God. Yet God is dead, thus appeal to what is “good” fails.Nietzsche writes:
“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” [1]
Nietzsche’s position was that the concept of God can no longer appeal as root of any moral values, and morality cannot hinge on a higher power anymore, which questions the basis of morality, and, as he notes, morality itself must thus hinge itself on the “new gods”--humanity. This would imply that the sole concept to ground morality is humans, but this would mean morality is grounded by individual perception, thus is subjective.
The link is that for the government to beobliged to necessarily provide food security to be considered just, where the resolution deems a government that does not provide food security is necessarily unjust and immoral. But if morality is subjective, then what hinges morality can’t be defined, so a position of necessarily providing food security fails to affirm morally.
The impact of the kritik is what allows it to negate--sans any moral compulsion, moral obligations cannot be enforced; thus, nothing is obligated to do anything, and obligations can’t exist objectively sans the conceptualization of God. Thus, the sole subjective morality used would be used by humans according to human need to enforce action--this fails to qualify as proper “morality”, since it would then imply the transformation of morality into a moralizing vengeance that destroys all concepts of “goodness”.
A re-explanation of the K:
The concept of morality requires something to ground it, and, if God is dead as grounding for morality, the sole ground is humanity itself, which turns morality into a subjective force that is exploited at will and becomes a core moralizing vengeance, thus evoking concepts of positive moral obligations merely forces a new moralizing vengeance.
The K is effective here because it shows an obligation impossible to take, and places morality into the principles of the government, which fails since then it would either destroy the concept of secularism or commit horrible acts in the name of morality, allowing fascism to replicate at the micropolitical level.
CONTENTION TWO: Providing True Food Security is Impossible
Observation Two: “Ought” implies “can” (OIC). To coherently hold justice to an “ought” assertion, re-explanation of the resolution leads to an interpretation of forcing an obligation on justice. In other words, the resolution says that a just government isobliged to provide food security for its citizens, which would mean that if the government did not provide food security to its citizens, it would be considered unjust and immoral. But an entity cannot coherently be considered unjust if it fails to do something which it is unable to do, ergo if something is obligated to perform an action, it should be able to perform that action.
Argument
High levels of agriculture and food acquisition are required to maintain food security.Strange and Scott:
“Catastrophic plant disease exacerbates the current deficit of food supply … Plant pathogens are difficult to control because their populations are variable in time, space, and genotype. Most insidiously, they evolve, often overcoming the resistance that may have been the hard-won achievement of the plant breeder.” [2]
In addition to disease, attempts to provide everyone with food often ends up with giving food to the wrong person, and no one truly in need of food gains food.Fong:
“[R]ecipients … misrepresent themselves to receive benefits. … a series of audits of 10 States to assess … potentially fraudulent recipients … revealed that a total of 8,594 recipients were receiving potential improper payments. Some … were using the social security numbers of deceased individuals … these recipients could be receiving about $1.1 million a month.” [3]
Affirming food security, additionally, often helps insurgents who hijack attempts to provide food security, e.g. in the case of Somalia.Franks:
“[T]he [WFP] was left with little decision but to withdraw from Somalia in 2011. Much of its food aid was being lost to al Shabaab. This left a lot more people vulnerable to famine but there are very significant risks regarding where food aid will ultimately end up.” [4]
Climate change endangers food security. “[C]limate change [has] already cut into the global food supply. Global crop yields were beginning to decline – especially for wheat – raising doubts as to whether production could keep up with population growth.” [5]
== Conclusion ==
Thus, morality cannot affirm food security, and food security is impossible, thus we hold just governments to an impossible obligation. The resolution is negated.
== Sources ==
[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Madman”: The Gay Science, section 125.
[2] Richard N. Strange and Peter R. Scott. “Plant Disease: A threat to global food security.” Phytopathology 43 (2005).
[3] “Statement of the Honorable Phyllis K.Fong, Inspector General - before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, US House of Representatives.” U.S. Department of Agriculture Official Website. March 8, 2012. Web.
[5] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/31/climate-change-threat-food-security-humankindReturn To Top | Posted:
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I thank my opponent for opening their case.
- Many states have done it already. Food security isn't exactly unprecedented here. Remember we're not talking about global food security, only the food security of one state.
- Supply issues are constantly being reduced with better pesticide technology etc. Yields for all major crops are experiencing rapid growth.
- Further, even if this were not the case, there are plenty of opportunities for meeting these challenges.
- Climate change = more greenhouse gases = faster growing crops, not slower growing like con said. This is why greenhouses exist.
- Similarly, distribution issues are reduced by globalization, more efficient management etc. We find that echoed in the fact that in general, food insecurity is, in fact, declining as crop yields rise. The following data comes from the Phillipines:
- Social development, too, can broadly empower people to improve food security. We take evidence of this from BRAC, the world's largest NGO, and their "inclusionary" approach to dealing with hunger, including the education of women. This helps them to better manage their farms and produce more yield.
- Food security is an area of increasing concern. Paradoxically, as it has become less of a problem, it has become more apparent in our consciousness. Evidence of this is to be found in the fact we're doing this debate at all, or say, in the Pope's recent Encyclical.
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... to Zaradi for permission to use the core of his ideas to negate the resolution.
PREFACE
In this round, I’ll only refute the Aff case, and will defend Neg case later. Thanks for an eloquent response.
PRO’S CASE
R1. Role of the State
The Aff case invokes the conception of what normativity requires, and upholds that justice requires upholding what is morally perfect. Such desire can have an overall negative impact. While the purpose of governments is care for citizens, desire for such care being upheld by justice doesn’t work, especially since no moral obligation can exist, and, as such, positive obligations are incoherent.
The cause for government being care doesn’t imply that governments ought to care for their citizens in order to be considered just. Desire for such an obligation can only have negative impact. A basic psychological conceptualization of desire is that desire is a constant flow of production. This definition is denied when the desire is for something justice lacks.
Lack is anti-production, and, as such, desire for a clear value that is lacked by anything considered “just” can only be negative, especially if such a value is impossible to uphold (see C2). For the links, I hold that desire is generally understood as wanting a material object, or something needed, rather than something lacked, thus emerging as a constant flow of production. Desiring what justice lacks is a problematic understanding of desire itself. Deleuze and Guattari write:
“Desire is the set of passive synthesis that engineer partial objects, flows, and bodies, and that function as units of production. ...Desire does not lack anything; … It is, rather, ... desire that lacks a fixed subject; there is no fixed subject unless there is repression …needs are derived from desire: they are counterproducts within the real that desire produces. …Lack is a countereffect of desire; it is deposited, distributed, vacuolized within a realm that is natural and social … There is only desire and the social, and nothing else.” [1]
Justice is not based on normativity – since desire of normativity is grounded by a lack-based framework. This lack-based framework has grounds solely in spirit, and not in actual terms of societal needs and pragmatism. Nietzsche notes:
“Pure spirit is pure lie … [when theologians and priests seek political power] the will to the end, the nihilistic will, wants power.” [2]
A reconceptualization of desire can form revolution and prevent the replication of totalitarianism. Deleuze and Guattari 2: “[The] thesis of schizoanalysis is between two poles … the … reactionary and fascisizing pole and the schizoid revolutionary pole … The two poles are defined, the one by the enslavement of production and the desiring-machines to the gregarious aggregates that they constitute on a large scale under a given form of power or selective sovereignty; the other by the inverse subordination and overthrow of power … by these molar structured aggregates.”
For there to be true revolution, we must challenge any form of fascism and uphold justice with simple and pragmatic means.
This is merely an expansion of the K I presented in R1, and it applies to any lack-based framework of morality. Only pragmatic affirmations of morality can embrace justice in its true form, not holding it to any obligations.
As such, the role of the state isn’t to uphold something impossible – only to pragmatically gain means to help citizens, thus affirming justice, instead of turning it into a fascist, authoritarian moralizing vengeance.
R2. Natural Justice
The entirety of this argument is based on equality – to uphold a moral framework of equality, we can easily distribute food equally. But this argument fails to account for the impossibility of ensuring food security. Basically, let me phrase this argument syllogistically:
P1. Food security should be ensured to uphold equality if it is possible to do so.
P2. It is possible to do so.
C. Food security should be ensured.
I question both premises. The second premise, in particular, is completely refuted by my C2, and the first premise assumes a framework of morality is based on equality. But reductio ad absurdum – equality can even mean no food for anyone, which would uphold Pro’s conceptualization of justice in his C2. An equality-based framework of justice is also inherently flawed as it fails to account for net utility, which is required to affirm true justice.
For instance, there are two people in a desert, and only a single waterskin. Either they can choose to be righteous and equal, and not take any water from the waterskin, or they can decide one person to drink the water and the other to die. The latter would increase net utility, and, thus, is a pragmatic and moral decision. That completely negates the assumption that “natural justice” requires food security.
== Sources ==
1. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Anti-Oedipus, pp. 26-29.
2. Friedrich Nietzsche. The Antichrist, pp. 8-9.
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I thank my opponent for answering my case. Since my opponent has not offered further answers to my extensive rebuttal to his case in the previous round, and since he has barely engaged with CX, I would like to take this round to further explain and defend my own case.
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I'm sorry, but due to time constraints, I'm forced to concede this debate.
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Round Forfeited
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Round Forfeited
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I'll just let my round expire. If you forfeit your round as well, we can end the debate here.Posted 2015-07-13 15:00:40
Disregard "defense", etc. all rounds for any form of rebuttalPosted 2015-06-27 21:11:23