Utilitarianism

The value criterion is maximizing expected wellbeing. Prefer this criterion for the
round for the following reasons:
1. Morality must take the form of a universal rule.
Singer, Peter Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics, Princeton], “The Groundwork of Utilitarian Morals:
Reconsidering Hare’s Argument for Utilitarianism,” draft prepared for the Conference on Issues in
Modern Philosophy: “The Foundations of Morality,” NYU Philosophy Department, November 7, 2009,
When I prescribe [an action] something, using moral language, my prescription [it] commits me to a substantive moral
judgment about all relevantly similar cases. This includes hypothetical cases in which I am in a different position from my
actual one. So to make a moral judgment, I must put myself in the position of the other person affected by my proposed
action – or to be more precise, in the position of all those affected by my action. Whether I can accept the
judgment – that is, whether I can prescribe it universally – will then depend on whether I could accept it if I had to liv[ing]
the lives of all those affected by the action.

This tells us that making general moral statements (like the resolution) requires that
we consider all persons affected.
And Universalizability justifies utilitarianism.
Singer, Peter. “Practical Ethics,” Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 13-14
The universal aspect of ethics, I suggest, does provide a persuasive, although not conclusive, reason for taking a broadly utilitarian position. My reason for
suggesting this is as follows. In
accepting that [since] ethical judgments must be made from a universal point of view, I am
accepting that my own interests cannot, simply because they are my interests, count more than the interests of
anyone else. Thus my very natural concern that my own interests be looked after must, when I think ethically, be
extended to the interests of others. Now, imagine that I am trying to decide between two possible courses of action - perhaps whether to eat all the
fruits I have collected myself, or to share them with others. Imagine, too, that I am deciding in a complete ethical vacuum, that I know nothing of any ethical
considerations - I am, we might say, in a pre-ethical stage of thinking. How would I make up my mind? One thing that would be still relevant would be how the
possible courses of action will affect my interests. Indeed, if we define 'interests' broadly enough, so that we count anything people desire as in their interests
(unless it is incompatible with another desire or desires), then it would seem that at this pre-ethical stage, only one's own interests can be relevant to the decision.
Suppose I then begin to think ethically, to the extent of recognizing that my own interests cannot count for more, simply because they are my own, than the
interests of others. In place of my own interests, I now have to take into account the interests of all those affected by my decision .
This requires me to
weigh up all these interests and adopt the course of action most likely to maximize the interests of those
affected.

2. Moreover, the actor in this resolution is the government. Utilitarianism is the only
moral system that can be realistically used by public agents.
90 Robert Goodin, fellow in philosophy, Australian National Defense University, THE UTILITARIAN
RESPONSE, 1990, p. 141-2
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, they are relatively poorly informed as to the effects that their choices will have on individuals , one
by one. What they 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 allows public policy-makers to use the
utilitarian calculus – assuming they want to use it at all – to

3. Assuming that all humans have equal fundamental worth, this standard
recognizes and upholds that worth by considering the suffering of all humans with
equal gravity. It removes bias about any individual characteristics or traits that are not
morally relevant.
Rakowski, Eric. Taking and Saving Lives. Page 1065 of 1063-1156 ,, Columbia Law reviw, 1993
On one side, it presses toward the consequentialist view [is] that individuals'
status as moral equals requires that the
number of people kept alive be maximized. Only in this way, the thought runs, can we give due weight to
the fundamental equality of persons; to allow more deaths when we can ensure fewer is to treat
some people as less valuable than others. Further, killing some to save others, or letting some die for that purpose, does not
entail that those who are killed or left to their fate are being used merely as means to the well-being of others, as would be true if they were
slain or left to drown merely to please peo? ple who would live anyway. They do, of course, in some cases serve as means. But they do not act
merely as means.
Those who die are no less ends than those who live. It is because they are also no more ends
than others whose lives are in the balance that an impartial decisionmaker must choose to save the
more numerous group, even if she must kill to do so.

4. A valid system of morality must motivate one to act upon it, else it has no meaning
because it has no impact on human’s moral status and can’t be affected in the real
world.
Klein
Pains motivate us. Motivational force is an intrinsic property of pains just as it is for pleasure. Physical pain is a
positive stimuli triggering reflex mechanisms in the brain as an inbred survival mechanism. It is a
biologically necessary drive embedded in human genes as a fundamental survival device. With the evolution
of higher intelligence, similar biochemical response, including the release of neurotransmitters into the blood flow to to the emotions
we call fear, anger, and anxiety have similar motivating effects on humans.

Thus from an empirical and scientific standpoint pain, both physical and emotional, is
intrinsically capable of motivating action. This intrinsic capability is unique because it
precludes any externalist motivations

5. The desire to avoid pain is the only universalizable maxim because it is shared
among all humans regardless of culture. Different societies have differing values and
social maxims This intrinsic urge exists independent of governmental, legal, or societal
norms and thus should be preferred over other moral theories.

6. Maximizing life comes prior to any other ethical evaluation.

Den, Douglas Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen, Professors of Philosophy, Bellarmine College and St. John's
University, READING NOZICK, Jeffrey Paul, ed., 1981, p245. (PDNSS1794)
In so far as one chooses, regardless of the choice, one must choose (value) man's life. It
makes no sense to value some X without also
valuing that which makes the valuing of X possible ~: notice that this is different from saying "that which makes X possible"). If one
lets X be equivalent to "death" or "the greatest happiness for the greatest number," one is able to have such a valuation only because of the precondition of being a
living being. Given
that life is a necessary condition for valuation, there is no other way we can value
something without also (implicitly at least) valuing [life].that which makes valuation possible.

7. Experience necessitates that we value the pain and pleasure of others.

Schwartz
The empirical support for the fundamental principle of empiricism is diffuse but salient. Our common empirical experience and experimental
psychology offer evidence that humans do not have any capacity to garner knowledge except by
empirical sources. The fact is that we beatlieve there is no source of knowledge, information, or evidence apart from
observation, empirical scientific investigations, and our sensory experience of the world, and we believe this on the basis of our empirical a posteriori
experiences and our general empirical view of how things work. For example, we believe on empirical evidence that humans are continuous with
the rest of nature and that we rely like other animals on our senses to tell us how things are. If humans are more successful
than other animals, it is not because we possess special non-experiential ways of knowing, but because we are better at cooperating, collating, and inferring. In
particular we
do not have any capacity for substantive a priori knowledge. There is no known mechanism
by which such knowledge would be made possible. This is an empirical claim.