Resolved:Itismorallypermissibleforvictimstousedeadlyforceasa

deliberateresponsetorepeateddomesticviolence.
2014 March/April TopicResolved: Placing political conditions on humanitarian
aid to foreign countries is unjust
1. If solipsism is true and we work via a normative framework that requires us
to respect agency, then theoretically, any action that we take that we make a
conscious decision to take is moral. That's because if morality is subjective
then we determine morality ourselves and any action we take would
automatically then be in accordance with our agency and thus, morality.
2. This is a sketchier usage, but if you use metaphysical or ontological
solipsism (as opposed to epistemological), then you can make the argument
that subjectivity means that everything we know is simply a construction in
our brains. That means that certain things don't necessarily exist and you
then can't affirm statements about them.
3. This is also a little sketchy, but if solipsism is true, then it means we can't
affirm truth statements so it would be a reason to negate. I ran an aff on
solipsism on that topic, but a common response was that you should presume
neg because of it.
I'm also attaching notes for a lecture I gave on existentialism and its use in
debate at VBI a few years ago in case that's useful.

I affirm and value morality because the resolution is a question of a moral conflict
between two different actions in global policy. This value subsumes other values,
such as that of justice. Bauman writes Michael. "Law and Morality." Law and Morality Comments. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2013

,.

Because every law springs from a system of values and beliefs, every law is an
instance of legislating Morality. Further, because a nations laws always exercise a pedagogical or teaching influence, law
inescapably exerts a shaping effect over the beliefs, character, and actions of the nations citizens, whether for good or ill. Those who seek to
separate morality from law, therefore, are in pursuit both of the impossible and the
destructive. The question before us is never whether or not to legislate morality, but which moral system ought to be made legally binding.
The AC framework makes an agent neutral claim about what ought to be done in human
relations, there is a difference between this normative statement and one that says that
individuals are prohibited from doing x, because it does not individually guide action, it
says what individuals can do which provides the basis for morality.
And vote aff in the absence of a prohibition because if there is no reason to not do
something we assume it is permissible. Further, the resolution doesnt provide an actor as
such it would be unfair to assume that the resolution occurs in a certain situation or

country. This controls the internal link to textuality, which precludes their standards
because the resolution is the basis of preround prep.
Now for the frame:
Epistemology comes first, since we declare what is moral or immoral based on what we
know. As such, we have to determine the scope of what we know before we can conduct
moral deliberation.
And the epistemological theory of solipsism says that what we know is only determined
by our mind, all that I know is limited to that which I experience.
Thornton/

Solipsism is sometimes expressed as the view that I am the only

mind which exists, or My mental states are the only mental states. However, the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust might truly
come to believe in either of these propositions without thereby being a solipsist . Solipsism is therefore more
properly regarded as the doctrine that, in principle,
existence means for me my existence and that of my
mental states. Existence is everything that I experience
physical objects, other people, events and processes
anything that would commonly be regarded as a constituent
of the space and time in which I coexist with others and is
necessarily construed by me as part of the content of my
consciousness. For the solipsist, it is not merely the case that he believes that his thoughts, experiences, and emotions are, as a matter of
contingent fact, the only thoughts, experiences, and emotions. Rather, the solipsist can attach no meaning to the supposition that there could be thoughts,

. In short, the true solipsist understands

the word pain, for example, to mean my pain. He
cannot accordingly conceive how this word is to be applied
in any sense other than this exclusively egocentric one.
experiences, and emotions other than his own

And solipsism means we evaluate morals on what fulfills

humans and second morality is inherently epistemological, we
should aim to increase our epistemic boundaries to better
understand moral rules, third this means that morality doesnt
ask us to determine the quality of an action or an end state
but rather that we are responsible for our own actions since
that is all we know.
Given that I only know that which I experience the only way to
increase moral evaluation is to solve for my conceptions of the
world, which requires my freedom and agency.
Gordon/
Sartres argument for freedom is unique in the history of philosophy because it treats freedom as the
essential characteristic of human consciousness as opposed to

a property or capacity of consciousness or mind. In one of Sartres famous formulations, man is freedom, the idea is that
consciousness has no properties at all, that is nothing more than a relation to
real existent things, and it relates to those things by defining
their significance. The conscous person must interpret the significance of the existent thing; he must construct a
coherent world from what is given. The given has no interpretation. For a given state of affairs to
function as a cause of my conduct, I must first confer upon
that state of affairs a certain meaning, which in turn informs
that situation with its power to cause. I, then, am the source of its
causal efficacy. But determinism requires that the nature and compelling power of the cause exist in themselves, quite
independently of any characteristic of the entity undergoing the cause-effect process. Since this necessary condition of determinism is never

Experience cannot be caused.

met by consciousness, determinism is inapplicable to human experience.

To experience is to appropriate, to interiorize the given, to make it ones own. In virtue of the relationship between consciousness and the

my freedom to choose is inescapable.

condemned to be free.
given,

Sartre therefore concludes

, Man is

Existentialism and Its Use in Debate

What is it?
The philosophical and cultural movement which holds that the starting
point of philosophical thinking must be the individual and experiences
of the individual
How is it useful in debate?
- Metaphysics (Explained later on in the lecture)
- Virtue Ethics
o We can save ourselves from our existential crisis by committing
ourselves to pursue activities that give value to our lives
- To critique consequentialism
o If were all going to die eventually then we should take actions that
serve the pleasure of our experiences
- To critique rationality derived theories
o Any use of rationality as a metric for morality is a false guise since
individuals adopt rationality claims to overcome existential dread
The Different Types
Soren Kierkegaard:
- Danish philosopher (19th Century)
- Father of Existentialism
- Subjectivity is truth
- Objective facts are important, but what is more important is how we
individually relate to those facts
- On death: we must embrace that it is all around us and live in awareness
of it
- On religion: There is a battle between religion and ethics, but religion is
always the higher calling

On individuality: We have an ethical imperative to become aware of our

true selves
Better to read synopses instead of books

Jean-Paul Sartre
- 20th Century French philosopher
- The other Father of Existentialism
- Man is condemned to be free
- Humans arent like paper-cutters- we are not created for a purpose, thus it
is up to us to find our own in life
- Existence precedes essence
- Everyone must be responsible for their own actions
- Truth and Existence, Existentialism is Humanism, Notebook on Ethics
Nietzsche
- The Father of Nihilism
- 19th Century Prussian Philosopher
- Believed that God was dead, so life is meaninglesstherefore there can
be no objective values or truths. The only thing that people should be
concerned with becoming ubermensches
Solipsism
Epistemological Solipsism
Our own mental states form the boundary of knowledge because that
is all experience representsin other words, all that I know is limited to
that which I experience since coherent thought is based upon past
occurrences
Justifications
-

We decide what is moral or immoral on the basis of what we know in the

first place
We must resolve the scope of what we know to understand what we can
generally determine
We can only experience our own pain and cant conceive of the word in
any sense other than the exclusively egocentric one. I can never
understand what it means for you to feel what I perceive I feel
Objectivity collapses into subjectivity, since everything that is objectively
true must be perceived from my own reality
Solipsism is the best metric to account for individual identities and
egalitarianism since it places paramount value on the thoughts and
perceptions of individual beings

Solipsism leads to moral evaluation by determining what fulfills humans.

Accepting authentic moral deliberation is required for personal
epistemological fulfillment.

Metaphysical Solipsism
-

We have no logical reason to posit the existence of an external reality

other than our own
Reality is subjectivewe each have our own worlds
How it works
o If others are only parts of your reality, then what happens to them
only matters through your own subjective lens
o Next level: victims dont exist they are only portions of our own
worlds

At this time, we will go over my Jan/Feb 2012 Solipsism AC, so the

students can see how the philosophy can be applied in a debate sense
Objections
- Russell/The Scarsdale StrategyYou cant make a moral statement
about something if it doesnt actually exist
- Theres a logical fallacy in Russellhis conclusion would be
either that it is the case that the King of France is bald or it is
not the case that the king of France is bald. But if both of those
statements are false, it doesnt mean that the AC framework isnt
true; rather, it means that his argument would devolve into
nonsense, because the statement cant have a truth or falsity
value. If we devolve to nonsense, mrace the AC framework
since the Russell debate is a wash.
- It doesnt matter if he says it doesnt exist, because it exists
within my subjective reality, so I think it exists.
- We, as the interpreters of the resolution, can know that these
things might not exist, but the people in these situations think
they do. Thats why theres a resolutional conflict in the first
place.
- Domestic violence is clearly something that is shared across at
least our realities, since were able to talk about appropriate
responses to it.
- Solipsism doesnt account for dying/being born

- When we die, our constructed reality ceases to exist. Our being

born is the same as how we might enter a dream state. We never
know how we got there, but the dream seems to begin
- Saying that everything is permissible justifies atrocities like the Holocaust
- Extreme applications of most ethical theories can justify the
Holocaust, but we should evaluate theories generally
- The AC justifies violent responses to things like the Holocaust,
not the Holocaust itself (since thats institutionalized), meaning if
nothing else, I take action to avoid that mindset
- The AC is not meant to label something morally right or wrong.
Rather, we must determine whether or not it is allowable, by a
permissibility standard
- It is objectively true that individuals each have different
conceptions of right and wrong as per the AC framework. If most
believe certain acts are wrong, as they do in the instance of the
Holocaust, extreme situations are avoided anyways
Why
-

its strategic as a framework

Its intuitive
Its basically non-falsifiable
Frameworks that rely on the worth of individuals treat them as objects of a
theory as opposed to the source of that theory, reducing them to objects
and devaluing them more