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Affirmative

TOC Juveniles

AT Skept

1/4
2010-2011

GENERIC
1. Extend ac framework, crsply
2. Extend permissibility affirms.
a. The state is currently acting by strip-searching so the 1ac is an omission.
b. Absent a morally relevant reason for distinction, we ought to treat them the same, otherwise its
tantamount to discrimination.
c. Theory stuff
3. The resolution pre-supposes morality exists by asking a question that is predicated on the existence of
morality. The resolution is asking what morality would allow, not whether it exists.
4. Without morality there is no obligation for the judge to negate, even if you win this argument.
5. Its logically impossible to prove an existential negative because the range of possible groundings for
morality is infinite. Skeptics can only eliminate particular groundings for morality, not morality in its
entirety. The neg can never meet their burden to prove there is no grounding for morality.
6. This allows for things like the holocaust to be justified. We are humans before we are debaters meaning we
have an obligation to reject arguments that we know are false but can be warranted in a debate round.
7. Just because something doesnt occur naturally doesnt mean it doesnt exist. Saying that morality doesnt
exist because it is not naturally occurring is akin to saying the Eiffel Tower doesnt exist because it wasnt
made by the clouds.
A. Interpretation- NCs must be sufficient for the aff to win off of.
B. Violation- winning skepticism is not sufficient to affirm because the converse of morals not existing is not
reason to affirm.
C. Standards
1. Reciprocal burdens- this skews ground because my opponent only has win one piece of offense to win
the round while I have to win 100% defense just to even have a shot of winning the round. In short, I
have to win the both AC and the NC while they can win either. This creates a structural disadvantage
since I have to win all parts of the debate while they have to win just one, which links to fairness.
2. Advocacy shift- in the next speech they will be able to kick out of any offence that was put on their case,
thus turns are taken away for another reason. Turns are key ground because it is one of the main the ways
we can generate offence. If I am denied one of my main routes to generating offence then I am put at a
structural disadvantage which links to fairness.
3. (FOR MULTIPLE) Both forms of abuse are multiplied extremely by the fact they have multiple
necessary but insufficient standards because there are now multiple avenues I have to meet whereas they
still only have to meet one AND the ability to shift their advocacy increases more as they have more
avenues to go for meaning it outweighs all other abuse.
D. The voter is fairness-

And skep doesnt preclud theoretical args about setting norm as these function on a higher levl outside of debate
regarding what practices exist a necc pre rw for the eexistence of making args about skep in debate.

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Affirmative
TOC Juveniles

AT Skept

2/4
2010-2011

Andrew Sepielli explains.


[1]Andrew Sepielli. What to Do When You Dont Know What to Do Rutgers New Brunswick

You and I are imperfect beings. One consequence of this is that we must make our decisions under
uncertainty. There are two types of uncertainty with which we must contend. One is nonnormative uncertainty uncertainty about
matters of nonnormative fact. Non-normative facts may include everything from the age of the universe to the GDP of Burkina Faso to the
health effects of drinking four gallons of Mountain Dew in one night.The other is normative uncertainty uncertainty about the

reasons those facts give us. Someone might, for example, be uncertain about whether the reasons to have an abortion outweigh
the reasons not to have one, even she were certain about how the fetus develops, the kind of life a child born to her would lead, and so on.
Similarly, someone may be uncertain whether the reasons to support a tax increase outweigh the reasons to oppose it, even if she is sure about
the economic and social effects of the increase. A good deal has been written on the issue of what we should do when were non-normatively
uncertain. To get a feel for the perceived importance of this issue, consider that nearly every major ethical theory has been pilloried somewhere
or other for failing to offer guidance to non-normatively uncertain agents. By contrast, almost nothing has been written on the issue of what we
should do when were normatively uncertain.1 This is both unfortunate and surprising, as normative uncertainty seems so clearly to pervade the
life of the reflective person. In this paper, Ill take some small steps towards rectifying this neglect. I will suggest that the right thing to do under
normative uncertainty is given by what Ill call a comparativist principle of rationality. The bad news is that the application of comparativist
principles is impossible without first solving a problem that I call the Problem of Value Difference Comparisons. I spend the majority of the paper
defending a solution to this problem and answering objections to this solution. Part I: The Phenomenon of Normative Uncertainty An agent

is normatively uncertain just in case a) her degrees of belief (or credences, or subjective probabilities) are
divided between at least two mutually exclusive normative propositions, and b) this division in her degrees of
belief is not entirely due to non-normative uncertainty.2 Consider a Commander-in-Chief deciding whether to go to war. If he has some
credence in the proposition going to war is better than not going to war and some credence in the proposition not going to war is better than
going to war, and this is not fully explained by his uncertainty regarding the non-normative facts, then the Commander-in-Chief is normatively
uncertain. There are many different kinds of normative proposition. The ones I want to focus on are what I call
practical comparatives. A practical comparative is a proposition of one of these forms: Action A is better than Action B; Action A is worse than
Action B; Action A is equal to Action B. These propositions are practical in that they are about what we ought to do, rather than what ought to
be, or how we ought to be. They are comparative in that theyre about how actions compare to each other, rather than how they fare
absolutely.3 Other treatments of normative uncertainty have focused on uncertainty among normative theories, rather than uncertainty among
practical comparatives.4 Normative theories include such ethical theories as utilitarianism, [and] deontology, virtue
ethics, and all the rest, as well as theories about prudence, legality, and so on. My main reason for focusing on practical comparatives rather
than on theories is that, while almost everyone has beliefs about the former which, again, are simply beliefs about which actions are better or
worse than which other actions very few people think in terms of comprehensive theories like utilitarianism. Even those who do have beliefs
about theories may have many beliefs about practical comparatives that are entirely independent of the deliverances of any of their theories.
Insofar as our goal is to offer an account of what actual people should do under normative uncertainty, itd be better to shift the focus away from
beliefs that constitute such a small part of most peoples normative thinking.5 That said, I do think uncertainty regarding normative theories is
an important topic, so at the end of the paper, Ill explain how the basic features of my approach to uncertainty about comparatives can be
cross-applied to uncertainty about theories. Part II: Responses to Normative Uncertainty. One way of putting our animating question is: Which
action should I perform when Im normatively uncertain? But this is ambiguous, for there are many senses of should. Its important to
distinguish between what Ill call the should of rationality and the should of reasons. What one should (in the former sense) do depends
only on ones own mental states. The extra-mental world plays no role in determining what its rational to do, other than, of course, the role it
plays in causing us to have the mental states we do. What one should (in the latter sense) do may depend on features of the world other than
ones own mental states. The right answer to the question above, if we take the should as the should of reasons, seems clearly to be
whichever action(s) one actually has sufficient reason to do. But as I shall argue, this is not the right way to answer the question, if should is
understood as the should of rationality. And this is the sense of should with which Ill concern myself. We must also make a further distinction
between what its globally rational to do, and what its locally rational to do. What its globally rational for an agent to do depends on all of that
agents mental states; what its locally rational for an agent to do depends on only some subset of that agents mental states. But while it makes
sense to say what its globally rational, simpliciter, for an agent to do, it doesnt make sense to say what its locally rational, simpliciter, for an
agent to do. We first have to specify which subset of the agents mental states were talking about. So evaluations of local rationality will always
be evaluations of what its locally rational to do given this or that subset of an agents mental states. Ill ask what its locally rational to do, given
a subset of the agents total mental states that includes her practical comparative beliefs, plus whichever of her other mental states it is rational
to hold along with those practical comparative beliefs. The actions that will be rational in this sense may not be rational in the global sense. It
may be locally rational, given an agents practical comparatives, for him to perform some action even though it is irrational, given his other
mental states, for him to have those practical comparatives in the first place. Maybe he believes that the evidence doesnt support them. Maybe
hes a nihilist about value who hasnt quite connected the dots. In that sort of case, its plausible that some other action may be the globally
rational one.6 So again, the cleaned-up version of our question is: Which action is it locally rational to perform,

given your practical comparative beliefs plus whatever mental states it is rational to hold

along with
those practical comparative beliefs? Perhaps the most natural answer is: Act in accordance with the practical comparative in which you have
the highest credence. That is, if your degree of belief is highest that Action A is better than Action B, then you should do A rather than B. We
should be leery of this answer, though, because some similar courses of action under non-normative uncertainty seem so clearly mistaken .

Suppose that I am deciding whether to drink a cup of coffee. I have a degree of belief of .2 that the
coffee is mixed with a deadly poison, and a degree of belief of .8 that its perfectly safe. If I act on the hypothesis in which

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Affirmative
TOC Juveniles

AT Skept

3/4
2010-2011

A good chance of coffee isnt worth such a


significant risk of death - at least, not if I've got commonsense beliefs regarding the values of coffee and death. Similarly,
suppose I am deciding between actions A and B. Theres some chance that A is better than B, and an ever so slightly
greater chance that B is better than A. I also believe that, if A is better than B, then A is saintly and B is
abominable; but if B is better than A, then B is slightly nasty and A is merely okay. Despite the fact that my
credence is higher that B is better than A, it still seems like I ought to do A instead, since As normative
upside is so much higher than Bs, and its normative downside not nearly as low . Here, then, is a
more promising answer: I should perform the action with the highest expected value. We get the expected
value of an action by multiplying the subjective probability that some practical comparative is true
by the value of that action if it is true, doing the same for all of the other practical comparatives, and adding up the results.
I have the highest credence, I will drink the coffee. But this seems like a bad call.

This strategy is sensitive not only to my credences in the various normative propositions, but also to the sizes of the upsides and downsides of
actions to which the highest credence strategy was insensitive.

(____) If we accept that truth and ethics have no ontological foundations it doesnt mean we cannot have truth,
rather, the goal is to redefine truth based on its pragmatic implications for particular social locations: Mark
Warren writes:
[Mark Warren "Nietzsche and Political Philosophy" Political Theory, Vol. 13 No. 2 (May, 1985), 183212.]
Truth claims are interpretive articulations of the world that make goal-oriented actions possible. Thus
in Nietzsche's "new language," the "falseness of a judgment" that is, [Their] lack of representational
correspondence to the world "is not necessarily an objection to a judgment. The question is to what extent it is
life promoting, life preserving, species-preserving, and perhaps even species cultivating." (n25) On the
epistemological plane, Nietzsche combines a critical formulation of the concept of power with intelligibility and
practicality criteria of adequacy. Like Kant, Nietzsche inquires after the conditions of intelligibility of the world,
thus sidestepping the correspondence theory of truth. But Nietzsche rejects the transcendental view of reason
that Kant offers as an answer and formulates a position closer to Marx and Weber: Our good reasons for holding
views about things stem from their abilities to secure conditions of agency in practice. Thus, for example,
Nietzsche's "hypothesis" of will to power ultimately is rendered true or false in terms of its success in
addressing the crisis of individual agency in Western culture. It is in this context that we should understand
Nietzsches claim that the criterion of truth resides in the enhancement of the feeling of power. (n45)... there
is nothing to life itself that has value, except the degree of power assuming that life itself is will to power
What this means is that self-experiences of agent-unity experiences of freedom, volition, and control over
ones future are the grounds of value. Stated slightly differently, Nietzsche asserts that highly organized,
highly individuated power is the ultimate value and must be the basis of any post-Christian morality. He judges
that some kinds of ideals, some moral notions, are means to individuation. Interpretive aspects of practice once
thought to possess value in themselves possess value only insofar as they are means to life or individuated
power. Values like those of Christianity that displace individuation are without value and hence nihilistic. Thus,
Nietzsches revaluation of values stems from his removal of the categories of agent-unity that lie behind the
ideals of Western culture especially the notions of autonomy, individuality, and free-will out of the realm of
the metaphysically given and into the realm of human morals or goals. As goals they can no longer be viewed as
having a natural existence. For Nietzsche the value of a goal resides in achieving self-reflective experiences
of agent unity in practice. [But] This does not mean that values have no reality whatsoever, for they provide
durable self-interpretations under the right circumstances. But values grounded in agent-unity depend on
sustained and goal oriented practices, and such practices have real empirical and cultural conditions of
possibility. Stated otherwise, goals and ideals have value for Nietzsche as conditions of positive freedom.

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Affirmative
TOC Juveniles

AT Skept

4/4
2010-2011

Our truth claims do not need to correspond to transcendent truths. Instead, they simply function to meet
our needs and to fulfill our goals in practical societal interactions. Insofar as I am proving that my evaluative
framework serves a real societal purpose, we can accept it as true.

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