Tournament: Harvard | Round: 1 | Opponent: Lake Highland Prep NP | Judge: Eric He
Pleasure and pain are the starting point for moral reasoning—they’re our most baseline desires and the only things that explain the intrinsic value of objects or actions
Moen 16, Ole Martin (PhD, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo). "An Argument for Hedonism." Journal of Value Inquiry 50.2 (2016): 267.
Prerequisite – Humankind is the sole conferrer of morality therefore extinction is a prerequisite to other frameworks
Green 19 - director of technology ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. His work is focused on the ethics of technology, including such topics as AI and ethics, the ethics of space exploration and use, the ethics of technological manipulation of humans, the ethics of mitigation of and adaptation towards risky emerging technologies (including ones with catastrophic risk potential), and various aspects of the impact of technology and engineering on human life and society, including the relationship of technology and religion (Brian Patrick Green, Self-preservation should be humankind’s first ethical priority and therefore rapid space settlement is necessary, Futures, Volume 110, 2019, Pages 35-37, ISSN 0016-3287, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2019.02.006. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328718303173) Abstract: Human survival is currently threatened by many existential risks. Because humankind is the only known species capable of complex morality, if humankind went extinct, morality would die with us. Given that the existence of humankind is a precondition for morality, therefore the first principle of morality should be, as Hans Jonas noted, that humankind must exist. Compared to ensuring human survival, all other moral values and actions are secondary. While protecting human life on Earth is the obvious choice for human survival, as long as humanity is in only one place, it will never be completely safe. Because space settlement gives humankind the opportunity to significantly raise the chances of survival for our species, it is therefore a moral imperative to settle space as quickly as possible. Keywords: Space; Space exploration; Existential risk; Catastrophic risk; Ethics; Hans Jonas)
Cognitive biases – extinction is more likely than we think
GPP 17 (Global Priorities Project, Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, “Existential Risk: Diplomacy and Governance,” Global Priorities Project, 2017, https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/Existential-Risks-2017-01-23.pdf,
Epistemic modesty – Can’t rule out that util is true therefore extinction still outweighs
Pummer 15 Theron, Junior Research Fellow in Philosophy at St. Anne's College, University of Oxford. “Moral Agreement on Saving the World” Practical Ethics, University of Oxford. May 18, 2015