1ac- societal welfare 1nc- espec kant 1ar- all 2nr- espec 2ar- ac
Blue Key
5
Opponent: Strake EP | Judge: Arjan Kang
1ac- stock 1nc- k case 1ar- new offs all 2n- all 2ar- shell
Mid America Cup
1
Opponent: Boise WS | Judge: Spencer Orlowski
1ac- racialized medicine 1nc- kant case 1ar- all 2nr- all 2ar- all
Mid America Cup
4
Opponent: Harker NA | Judge: Sam Anderson
1ac- trade secrets 1nc- T-WTO theory kant case 1ar- all 2nr- kant 2ar- case
Yale
1
Opponent: Unionville MG | Judge: Katy Senner
lay
Yale
6
Opponent: La Salle TP | Judge: Abishek Stanley
1ac- stock 1nc- kant innovation case 1ar- all 2nr- kant 2ar- case
Yale
3
Opponent: Princeton CB | Judge: David Herrera
1ac- evergreening 1nc- spec medicines kant case 1ar- all 2nr- kant 2ar- case
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0 - Contact Info
Tournament: na | Round: Finals | Opponent: na | Judge: na Hey, I'm Olivia! she/her
fb: Olivia Liu (pls friend request me first) email: olivialiu82@gmail.com Contact me before round if you want me to disclose in any specific way
I will try to provide any content warnings. Let me know before round if you have any specific triggers.
9/26/21
0 - Disclosure Note
Tournament: any | Round: Quads | Opponent: any | Judge: any my wikify button glitches out so I've just been pasting cites in without bolding/first 3 last 3 very sorry for ppl who only look at cites. anyway, pls refer too osource docs serves as an i-meet to violations on cites, i'm trying my best here thanks
9/26/21
0 - Navigation
Tournament: na | Round: Quads | Opponent: na | Judge: na G - Generics NSD - camp SO - September/October ND - November/December JF - January/February
9/26/21
ND - K
Tournament: Blue Key | Round: 5 | Opponent: Strake EP | Judge: Arjan Kang Capitalism is accelerating- the rate of physical and knowledge production and growth of capitalistic desires is increasing faster than ever before. At every second, thousands of bits of new information and and products are created. Competing claims make finding truth impossible: everything undergoes reproduction infinitely - copies have copies of copies; the original item is no longer locatable. However, these copies can often contain contradictory or inconsistent info, thus making truth harder to find- means seeking meaning becomes meaningless and impossible. e.g. Trumps’s inaugaration- from one angle, Fox News and his own social accounts depict a huge crowd of over a million, but from a different source like CNN or Vox, there were only 300,000. We have no idea who to trust and what is the full truth. The resulting world is the hyperreality- a place where copies upon copies of the original text exist in the capitalist space devoid of meaning. Binding claims must begin with hyperreality: A Empiricism: subject’s conceptions of the external world are filtered through the lens of accelerated capitalism, wherein the proliferation of images makes truth and falsity increasingly difficult to differentiate between. B Circular: Questioning hyperreality concedes the authority of hyperreality because 1 it displays the radical confusion increased signs inflicts on subjects and 2 exemplifies the detachment between signifier – the very word “hyperreality” – and signified – the world as we believe we know it Next, the relevant feature of late stage capitalism is accelerationism: as production increases, the goal of the very producing has oriented towards production for the sake of production. Clear objectives die as information is disseminated with the goal of merely reproducing, as opposed to reproducing with knowledge intact.
Thus, the standard is to vote for the debater who best ruptures hyperreality. Prefer:
1 Critical Subjectivity: the capacity to reflect is premised upon the view of a cohesive subject, which papers over the way signifiers from flesh – both intrinsic and inflicted – transform the I 2 Academia: contemporary pedagogical sites have been coopted by mindless bureaucrats – ethical subjects have an a priori commitment to dismantle overcoding in spaces of movement building and organization 3 Performativity: debate is premised upon a mutual value ascribed to each agent in the room, which necessitates an understanding of the gap between signifier and signified to comprehend why we value the site itself.
Survival rhetoric organizes around those who can claim they’ve overcame in a consumable form to be marketed and sold as a good in the symbolic economy. The aff steps into the role of the archiver that translates resilience into empty communicative signs that ultimately get coopted. James 15 Robin James is an Associate Professor of Philosophy @ UNC Charlotte. “Resilience and Melancholy: Pop Music, Feminism, Neoliberalism, Publisher: Zero Books p. 88-92 MRWSaP= early 21st-century globalized Western race/gender/sexuality/capitalist hegemony Resilience must be performed explicitly, legibly, and spectacularly. Overcoming is necessary but insufficient; to count and function as resilience, this overcoming must be accomplished in a visible or otherwise legible and consumable manner. Overcoming is a type of “affective labor” which, as Steven Shaviro puts it, “is productive only to the extent that it is a public performance. It cannot unfold in the hidden depths; it must be visible and audible” (PCA 49n33) In order to tune into feminine resilience and feed it back into its power supply, MRWaSP has to perceive it as such. “Look,! Overcame!” is the resilient subject’s maxim or mantra. Gender and race have always been “visible identities,” to use philosopher Linda Martin Alcoff’s term, identities strongly tied to one’s outward physical appearance. However, gendered/racialized resilience isn’t visible in the same way that conventional gender and racial identities are visible. To clarify these differences, it’s helpful to think of resilience in terms of a “Look, I overcame!” imperative. “Look, I Overcame!” Is easy to juxtapose to Frantz Fanon’s “Look a Negro!”, which is the touch stone for his analysis of gendered racialization in “The Fact of Blackness.” In both cases, looking is a means of crafting race/gender identities and distributing white patriarchal privilege. But, in the same way that resilience discourse “upgrades” traditional methods for crafting identities and distributing privilege, the “looking” in “Look, I Overcame’” is an upgrade on the “looking” in “Look, a Negro” According to Fanon, the exclamation “Look, a Negro!” racializes him as a black man. To be “a Negro” is to be objectified by the white supremacist gaze. This gaze fixes him as an object, rather than an ambiguous transcendence (which is a more nuanced way of describing the existentialist concept of subjectivity). “The black man,” as Fanon argues, “has no ontological resistance for the white man” (BSWM 110) because, as an object and not a mutually-recognized subject, he cannot return the white man’s gaze (“The Look” that is so important to Sartre’s theory of subjectivity in Being and Nothingness). The LIO narrative differs from Fanon’s account in the same way it differs from Iris Young’s account of feminine body comportment: in resilience discourse, objectification isn’t an end but a means, any impediment posed by the damage wrought by the white/male gaze Is a necessary prerequisite for subjectivity, agency, and mutual recognition. In other words, being looked at isn’t an impediment, but a resource. Resilience discourse turns objectification (being looked at) into a means of subjectificatlon (overcoming). It also makes looking even more efficient and profitable than simple objectification could ever be. Recognizing and affirming the affective labor of the resilient performer, the spectator feeds the performer’s individual overcoming Into a second-order therapeutic narrative: our approbation of her overcoming is evidence of our own overcoming of our past prejudices. This spectator wants to be seen by a wider audience as someone who answers the resilient feminine subject’s hail, “Look, I Overcame’. Just as individual feminine subjects use their resilience as proof of their own goodness, MRWaSP uses the resilience of its “good girls” as proof that they’re the “good guys” — that its social and ethical practices are truly just, and that we really mean it this time when we say everyone is equal. For example, the “resilience” of “our” women is often contrasted with the supposed “fragility” of Third-World women of color. Or, in domestic US race-gender politics, the resilience of some African-American women (their bootstraps-style class ascendance) is contrasted to the continued fragility of other African-American women, and thus used to reinforce class distinctions among blacks. There are a million different versions of this general story: “our” women are already liberated — they saved themselves —but, to riff on Gayatri Spivak, “brown women need saving from brown men.” Most mainstream conversations about Third-World women are versions of this story: discussions of “Muslim” veiling, female circumcision, sweatshops, poverty ‘development.” they’re are all white-saviorist narratives meant to display MRWaSP’s own resilience. Look, I Overcame!” upgrades ‘Look, a Negro’ by (a) recycling objectification into overcoming and (b) compounding looking, so that one can profit from others’ resilience, treating their overcoming as one’s own overcoming. This upgrade in white supremacist patriarchy requires a concomitant upgrade in looking.” This shift in looking practices parallels developments in film and media aesthetics. As Steven Shaviro has argued, the values, techniques, and compositional strategies most common in contemporary mainstream Western cinema — like Michael Bay’s Transformers—are significantly different than the ones used in modernist and post-modernist cinema, and that these differences in media production correlate to broader shifts in the means of capitalist and ideological production. Neoliberalism’s aesthetic is, he argues, “post-cinematic.” This post-cinematic aesthetic applies not just to film and media, but to resilience discourse. Its performance practices and looking relations configured by the “Look. I Overcame!” imperative, resilience is, in a way, another type of post-cinematic medium. In the next section I use Shaviro’s theory of post-cinematic media to identify some specific ways in which traditional patriarchal tools are updated to work compatibly with MRWaSP resilience discourse. The looking in the “Look, I Overcame!” narrative is not the same kind of looking described by concepts like “the male gaze” or “controlling images” This looking is a type of deregulated MRWaSP visualization. Illusion of posting thoughts into outside worl- illusion of public eye for affective investments The system requires its participants to be both subjects, to strive for false liberation, and objects, to ultimately submit to the will of the hyperreal. Engaging in “liberatory practices” fuel the system. Baudrillard 81 Jean; Simulacra and Simulation; French Sociologist/Philosopher; 1981; University of Michigan Press; LCA-BP *edited for lang With one caution. We are face to face with this system in a double situation and insoluble double bind - exactly like children faced with the demands of the adult world. Children are simultaneously required to constitute themselves as autonomous subjects, responsible, free and conscious, and to constitute themselves as submissive, inert, obedient, conforming objects. The child resists on all levels, and to a contradictory demand he responds with a double strategy. To the demand of being an object, they opposes all the practices of disobedience, of revolt, of emancipation; in short, a total claim to subjecthood. To the demand of being a subject they opposes, just as obstinately and efficaciously, an object's resistance, that is to say, exactly the opposite: childishness, hyperconformism, total dependence, passivity, idiocy. Neither strategy has more objective value than the other. The subject-resistance is today unilaterally valorized and viewed as positive - just as in the political sphere only the practices of freedom, emancipation, expression, and the constitution of a political subject are seen as valuable and subversive. But this is to ignore the equal, and without a doubt superior, impact of all the object practices, of the renunciation of the subject position and of meaning - precisely the practices of the masses - that we bury under the derisory terms of alienation and passivity. The liberating practices respond to one of the aspects of the system, to the constant ultimatum we are given to constitute ourselves as pure objects, but they do not respond at all to the other demand, that of constituting ourselves as subjects, of liberating ourselves, expressing ourselves at whatever cost, of voting, producing, deciding, speaking, participating, playing the game - a form of blackmail and ultimatum just as serious as the other, even more serious today. To a system whose argument is oppression and repression, the strategic resistance is the liberating claim of subjecthood. But this strategy is more reflective of the earlier phase of the system, and even if we are still confronted with it, it is no longer the strategic terrain: the current argument of the system is to maximize speech, the maximum production of meaning. Thus the strategic resistance is that of the refusal of meaning and of the spoken word - or of the hyperconformist simulation of the very mechanisms of the system, which is a form of refusal and of non-reception. It is the strategy of the masses: it is equivalent to returning to the system its own logic by doubling it, to reflecting meaning, like a mirror, without absorbing it. This strategy (if one can still speak of strategy) prevails today, because it was ushered in by that phase of the system which prevails. To choose the wrong strategy is a serious matter. All the movements that only play on liberation, emancipation, on the resurrection of a subject of history, of the group, of the word based on "consciousness raising," indeed a "raising of the unconscious" of subjects and of the masses, do not see that they are going in the direction of the system, whose imperative today is precisely the overproduction and regeneration of meaning and of speech.
The intensity with which information is disseminated leads to chronic cynicism – issues seem too complex to be helped, so the public doesn’t undertake change Gao Liyan; prof @ Monash; “Ideological cynicism in the modern information age with Sloterdijk and Zizek”; Eras Journal vol18no1; LCA-BP In our information-obsessed society, people are bombarded with more information than they can process and comprehend. Paul Virilio identifies two aspects to the way the public consumes information that are peculiar to new media. First, the sheer speed at which we receive information diminishes the time for digestion, contemplation and reflection. Secondly, the immense diffusion of viewpoints creates a kind of mass aporia that debilitates our ability to act in any particular direction. Virilio argues just as the military may deliberately plant multiple viewpoints within the public sphere to crush potential dissent, the public can become overwhelmed with information and push the issue aside as something too complex to understand: they are unable or unwilling to form an oppositional stance. The function of new media is the same. 29 Given the multitude of problems facing modern society, we need to prioritise how to spend our limited energies and resources as when the task looks too enormous and too difficult there are overwhelming feelings of disempowerment. Zizek compares the reporting of the Gulf War with that of the Bosnian War. In the former, the employment of ‘evil versus good’ framing was used to demonise Saddam Hussein and to justify the war. In the latter, journalists focused on the complexities of the issue including the long history of conflict in the region.30 Though this approach informs people of more facts, it clouds the brute reality that ethnic cleansing and genocide was rife during the war. By painting the Bosnian War as too complex for both citizens and politicians of the West to understand, people were absolved from the responsibility of intervening in the crisis. Cynicism is this aporia raised to the level of a psychological barrier: new media can present world problems as too complicated, too extensive, too global, beyond the control and understanding of any one individual, and thus, as problems we cannot hope to intervene in or politically organise to oppose. Merely being more knowledgeable about the complexity of the problems in our society does not dispel ideology nor is it necessarily empowering. When we feel overwhelmed and disempowered to change the current situation and condition, we learn to adapt and accept them. Subsequently, numbness and apathy comes from paradoxically caring.
Thus, the alternative is to embrace radical nihilism. Capitalism engages in unending reproduction, so a drainage of excess solves. A society that maintains capitalist production is contingent upon subjects that are forced to labor under hyperreality – so we let the system collapse in on itself. Baudrillard 4 Jean; Simulacra and Simulation; Sociologist/Philosopher, cool dude; 1981; University of Michigan Press; LCA-BP Nihilism no longer wears the dark, Wagnerian, Spenglerian, fuliginous colors of the end of the century. It no longer comes from a Weltanschauung of decadence nor from a metaphysical radicality born of the death of God and of all the consequences that must be taken from this death. Today's nihilism is one of transparency, and it is in some sense more radical, more crucial than in its prior and historical forms, because this transparency, this irresolution is indissolubly that of the system, and that of all the theory that still pretends to analyze it. When God died, there was still Nietzsche to say so - the great nihilist before the Eternal and the cadaver of the Eternal. But before the simulated transparency of all things, before the simulacrum of the materialist or idealist realization of the world in hyperreality (God is not dead, he has become hyper-real), there is no longer a theoretical or critical God to recognize his own. The universe, and all of us, have entered live into simulation, into the malefic, not even malefic, indifferent, sphere of deterrence: in a bizarre fashion, nihilism has been entirely realized no longer through destruction, but through simulation and deterrence. From the active, violent phantasm, from the phantasm of the myth and the stage that it also was, historically, it has passed into the transparent, falsely transparent, operation of things. What then remains of a possible nihilism in theory? What new scene can unfold, where nothing and death could be replayed as a challenge, as a stake? We are in a new, and without a doubt insoluble, position in relation to prior forms of nihilism: Romanticism is its first great manifestation: it, along with the Enlightenment's Revolution, corresponds to the destruction of the order of appearances. Surrealism, dada, the absurd, and political nihilism are the second great manifestation, which corresponds to the destruction of the order of meaning. The first is still an aesthetic form of nihilism (dandyism), the second, a political, historical, and metaphysical form (terrorism). These two forms no longer concern us except in part, or not at all. The nihilism of transparency is no longer either aesthetic or political, no longer borrows from either the extermination of appearances, nor from extinguishing the embers of meaning, nor from the last nuances of an apocalypse. There is no longer an apocalypse (only aleatory terrorism still tries to reflect it, but it is certainly no longer political, and it only has one mode of manifestation left that is at the same time a mode of disappearance: the media - now the media are not a stage where something is played, they are a strip, a track, a perforated map of which we are no longer even spectators: receivers). The apocalypse is finished, today it is the precession of the neutral, of forms of the neutral and of indifference. I will leave it to be considered whether there can be a romanticism, an aesthetic of the neutral therein. I don't think so - all that remains, is the fascination for desertlike and indifferent forms, for the very operation of the system that annihilates us. Now, fascination (in contrast to seduction, which was attached to appearances, and to dialectical reason, which was attached to meaning) is a nihilistic passion par excellence, it is the passion proper to the mode of disappearance. We are fascinated by all forms of disappearance, of our disappearance. Melancholic and fascinated, such is our general situation in an era of involuntary transparency. I am a nihilist. I observe, I accept, I assume the immense process of the destruction of appearances (and of the seduction of appearances) in the service of meaning (representation, history, criticism, etc.) that is the fundamental fact of the nineteenth century. The true revolution of the nineteenth century, of modernity, is the radical destruction of appearances, the disenchantment of the world and its abandonment to the violence of interpretation and of history. I observe, I accept, I assume, I analyze the second revolution, that of the twentieth century, that of postmodernity, which is the immense process of the destruction of meaning, equal to the earlier destruction of appearances. He who strikes with meaning is killed by meaning. The dialectic stage, the critical stage is empty. There is no more stage. There is no therapy of meaning or therapy through meaning: therapy itself is part of the generalized process of indifferentiation. The stage of analysis itself has become uncertain, aleatory: theories float (in fact, nihilism is impossible, because it is still a desperate but determined theory, an imaginary of the end, a weltanschauung of catastrophe).*1 Analysis is itself perhaps the decisive element of the immense process of the freezing over of meaning. The surplus of meaning that theories bring, their competition at the level of meaning is completely secondary in relation to their coalition in the glacial and four-tiered operation of dissection and transparency. One must be conscious that, no matter how the analysis proceeds, it proceeds toward the freezing over of meaning, it assists in the precession of simulacra and of indifferent forms. The desert grows. Implosion of meaning in the media. Implosion of the social in the masses. Infinite growth of the masses as a function of the acceleration of the system. Energetic impasse. Point of inertia. A destiny of inertia for a saturated world. The phenomena of inertia are accelerating (if one can say that). The arrested forms proliferate, and growth is immobilized in excrescence. Such is also the secret of the hypertelie, of what goes further than its own end. It would be our own mode of destroying finalities: going further, too far in the same direction - destruction of meaning through simulation, hypersimulation, hypertelie. Denying its own end through hyperfinality (the crustacean, the statues of Easter Island) - is this not also the obscene secret of cancer? Revenge of excrescence on growth, revenge of speed on inertia. The masses themselves are caught up in a gigantic process of inertia through acceleration. They are this excrescent, devouring, process that annihilates all growth and all surplus meaning. They are this circuit short-circuited by a monstrous finality. It is this point of inertia and what happens outside this point of inertia that today is fascinating, enthralling (gone, therefore, the discreet charm of the dialectic). If it is nihilistic to privilege this point of inertia and the analysis of this irreversibility of systems up to the point of no return, then I am a nihilist. If it is nihilistic to be obsessed by the mode of disappearance, and no longer by the mode of production, then I am a nihilist. Disappearance, aphanisis, implosion, Fury of Verschwindens. Transpolitics is the elective sphere of the mode of disappearance (of the real, of meaning, of the stage, of history, of the social, of the individual). To tell the truth, it is no longer so much a question of nihilism: in disappearance, in the desertlike, aleatory, and indifferent form, there is no longer even pathos, the pathetic of nihilism - that mythical energy that is still the force of nihilism, of radicality, mythic denial, dramatic anticipation. It is no longer even disenchantment, with the seductive and nostalgic, itself enchanted, tonality of disenchantment. It is simply disappearance. The trace of this radicality of the mode of disappearance is already found in Adorno and Benjamin, parallel to a nostalgic exercise of the dialectic. Because there is a nostalgia of the dialectic, and without a doubt the most subtle dialectic is nostalgic to begin with. But more deeply, there is in Benjamin and Adorno another tonality, that of a melancholy attached to the system itself, one that is incurable and beyond any dialectic. It is this melancholia of systems that today takes the upper hand through the ironically transparent forms that surround us. It is this melancholia that is becoming our fundamental passion. It is no longer the spleen or the vague yearnings of the fin-de-siecle soul. It is no longer nihilism either, which in some sense aims at normalizing everything through destruction, the passion of resentment (ressentiment).*2 No, melancholia is the fundamental tonality of functional systems, of current systems of simulation, of programming and information. Melancholia is the inherent quality of the mode of the disappearance of meaning, of the mode of the volatilization of meaning in operational systems. And we are all melancholic. Melancholia is the brutal disaffection that characterizes our saturated systems. Once the hope of balancing good and evil, true and false, indeed of confronting some values of the same order, once the more general hope of a relation of forces and a stake has vanished. Everywhere, always, the system is too strong: hegemonic. Against this hegemony of the system, one can exalt the ruses of desire, practice revolutionary micrology of the quotidian, exalt the molecular drift or even defend cooking. This does not resolve the imperious necessity of checking the system in broad daylight. This, only terrorism can do. It is the trait of reversion that effaces the remainder, just as a single ironic smile effaces a whole discourse, just as a single flash of denial in a slave effaces all the power and pleasure of the master. The more hegemonic the system, the more the imagination is struck by the smallest of its reversals. The challenge, even infinitesimal, is the image of a chain failure. Only this reversibility without a counterpart is an event today, on the nihilistic and disaffected stage of the political. Only it mobilizes the imaginary. If being a nihilist, is carrying, to the unbearable limit of hegemonic systems, this radical trait of derision and of violence, this challenge that the system is summoned to answer through its own death, then I am a terrorist and nihilist in theory as the others are with their weapons. Theoretical violence, not truth, is the only resource left us. But such a sentiment is Utopian. Because it would be beautiful to be a nihilist, if there were still a radicality - as it would be nice to be a terrorist, if death, including that of the terrorist, still had meaning. But it is at this point that things become insoluble. Because to this active nihilism of radicality, the system opposes its own, the nihilism of neutralization. The system is itself also nihilistic, in the sense that it has the power to pour everything, including what denies it, into indifference. In this system, death itself shines by virtue of its absence. (The Bologna train station, the Oktoberfest in Munich: the dead are annulled by indifference, that is where terrorism is the involuntary accomplice of the whole system, not politically, but in the accelerated form of indifference that it contributes to imposing.)
10/30/21
ND - Kant
Tournament: Blue Key | Round: 2 | Opponent: Neenah SH | Judge: Matthew Berhe Ethics must be derived from the constitutive features of agents – ethics based internally fail because they can’t generate universal obligations and ethics based externally fail because they are nonbinding as agents could opt-out and have no motivation to follow them which means they fail to guide action. Constitutivism solves – it allows for universal obligations among all agents but they are binding and cannot be opted out of.
Next, only practical reason is constitutive: 1 Regress – to question why one should reason concedes its authority since it is an act of reasoning itself which proves it’s binding and inescapable 2 action theory - Any action can be split into infinite smaller actions. For example, when I’m taking a bite of food, I am making infinite movements of my hand and mouth – only the intention unifies the action. If we can’t unify action, we can’t call actions moral or immoral because they are made up of infinite parts.
That justifies universalizability - insofar as there is no a priori distinction between reasoners, a reason for one agent must also be a reason for another. Willing a maxim that violates freedom is a contradiction in conception – you cannot violate someone’s freedom without having your own freedom to do so.
Thus, the standard is consistency with the categorical imperative– actions that terminate in contradictions when universalized are bad, so only our restrictions can solve Impact calc: Intentions first – only the intention in pursuing a certain end is relevant when considering whether or not it is universalizable
Also Prefer Additionally –
1 We must value freedom insofar as we value our ends which justifies valuing the freedom of agents setting and pursuing ends since anything else would be contradictory. Gewirth ’84 Alan Gewirth, “The Ontological Basis of Natural Law: A Critique and an Alternative,” The American Journal of Jurisprudence, Vol. 29, No. 1 (1984), Pg. 95–121. Gewirth was professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. CHSTM Brackets for gendered language/grammar BHHS AK recut Let me briefly sketch the main line of argument that leads to this conclusion. As I have said, the argument is based on the generic features of human action. To begin with, every agent acts for purposes he they regards as good. Hence, he they must regard as necessary goods the freedom and well-being that are the generic features and necessary conditions of his action and successful action in general. From this, it follows that every agent logically must hold or accept that he has they have rights to these conditions. For if he were to deny that he has they have these rights, then he they would have to admit that it is permissible for others persons to remove from him the very conditions of freedom and well-being that, as an agent, he they must have. But it is contradictory for him to hold both that he must have these conditions and also that he may not have them. Hence, on pain of self-contradiction, every agent must accept that he has rights to freedom and well-being. Moreover, every agent must further admit that all other agents also have those rights, since all other actual or prospective agents they have the same general characteristics of agency on which they must ground his their own right-claims.¶ What I am saying, then, is that every agent, simply by virtue of being an agent, must regard his freedom and well being as necessary goods and must hold that he and all other actual or prospective agents have rights to these necessary goods. Hence, every agent, on pain of self-contradiction, must accept the following principle: Act in accord with the generic rights of your recipients as well as of yourself. The generic rights are rights to the generic features of action, freedom, and well-being. I call this the Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC), because it combines the formal consideration of consistency with the material consideration of the generic features and rights of action
2 Performativity – arguing against my framework presupposes freedom because without freedom to reason you would not be able to make arguments and try to win. – this means that contesting any of my arguments proves my framework true.
3 A posteriori ethics fail: a Problem of induction Vickers 14, John Vickers, 2014, The Problem of Induction, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/ The original problem of induction can be simply put. It concerns the support or justification of inductive methods; methods that predict or infer, in Hume's words, that “instances of which we have had no experience resemble those of which we have had experience” (THN, 89). Such methods are clearly essential in scientific reasoning as well as in the conduct of our everyday affairs. The problem is how to support or justify them and it leads to a dilemma: the principle cannot be proved deductively, for it is contingent, and only necessary truths can be proved deductively. Nor can it be supported inductively—by arguing that it has always or usually been reliable in the past—for that would beg the question by assuming just what is to be proved. b Is/Ought Gap – experience just describes how the world is but doesn’t indicate how it ought to be which means there must be an a priori conception of good c Inability to know each other’s experience makes it an unreliable basis for ethics because different experiences bring different concepts of truth – only a priori ethics solve since a priori truths are accessible to all agents 4 Consequentialism fails – A Predictions assumes specific causes of past consequences which can’t be verified as the actual cause B Butterfly effect - every action has infinite consequences so it is impossible to evaluate an action; one government policy could end up causing nuclear war in a million years. C Aggregation is impossible – pleasure and pain are subjective
Offense
1 Strikes fail to fulfill duty Fourie 17 Johan Fourie 11-30-2017 "Ethicality of Labor-Strike Demonstrates by Social Workers" https://www.otherpapers.com/essay/Ethicality-of-Labor-Strike-Demonstrates-by-Social-Workers/62694.html (Johan Fourie is professor of Economics and History at Stellenbosch University.) JG Kantian Ethics Kantian ethics suggest that actions are morally permissible based on whether it fulfils a person's duty (Banks, 2006). To further the concept of duty, Kantian ethics held the notion of Categorical Imperatives which is believed to determine the morality of duties as it enforces and commands adherence, complicity and application. The Categorical Imperatives consist of three formulas. Once such a formula is to "act only on the maximum whereby at the same time you can will that it become a universal law" (Parrott, 2006, p. 51). Through this perspective, Kant held that persons are to engage in actions that they are willing to allow others to engage in as well without conditions and exceptions. Applying this formula to the ethicality of social workers participating in labor strike demonstrations, it becomes evident that such an action is not morally permissible or executing its duty. Arguably, as much as social workers are trained professionals and rendering services that are crucial to the functioning and well-being of society, they remain ordinary citizens who also at some point will require crucial services. Examples of these crucial services that may cause significant harm because of its absence due to labor strike action are medical personnel, suicide watch centers, mental health care professionals, law enforcement, court systems, municipal service delivery, etc. With these services not available, social workers will experience suffering, frustration, unhappiness, harm as the clients will do with their absence from the office. To this regard, participating and demonstrating labor strike action is not adhering to duty or morally permissible. adhering to duty or morally permissible. 2 Workers promise in contracts not to strike, these contracts grant employers the right to fire people if they strike and has been upheld by the state. "Employer Sanctions for Violation of No-Strike Clause: Union Busting through Mass Discharge and Rescission." Yale Law Journal, digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=8323andcontext=ylj. Accessed 23 June 2021. EMPLOYERS often secure no-strike clauses 1 in collective bargaining contracts 2 with their employees' unions, 3 in order to ensure greater union responsibility for the maintenance of stable production schedules.4 Under such clauses, the union promises not to authorize or sanction any strike during the term of its contract.' The employer is usually given power to discipline or discharge all the individual union members who strike in violation of the no-strike clause.0 When confronted with a union-sponsored strike in violation of a no-strike clause, the employer may be forced to accede to the union's demands because of production requirements or the scarcity of replacement workers. 7 Alternatively, he may shut down his plant and wait out the strike, disciplining the strikers when they return to work, subject to an arbitrator's review.8 However, if he believes his bargaining position to be strong, he may discharge all the strikers, rescind the contract, and refuse thereafter to deal with the union.0 The National Labor Relations Board has upheld such employer actions on the grounds that they are justified by the union's prior material breach of the contract,' ° and that strikers in violation of contract are not protected by the National Labor Relations Act."1 Promise breaking is bad
10/30/21
ND - T - ESpec
Tournament: Blue Key | Round: 2 | Opponent: Neenah SH | Judge: Matthew Berhe nterpretation: Debaters must specify how they enforce the unconditional right of workers to strike. Violation: you didn’t’ 1 Topic lit – enforcement is the core question of the topic and there's no consensus on normal means so you must spec- also proves this specific interp isn’t infinitely regressive bc it is grounded in topic lit Weiss Marley S. Weiss Professor of Law, University of Maryland School of Law, 2000, "The Right To Strike In Essential Services Under United States Labor Law", https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2189andcontext=fac'pubs 2. Strikes, Lockouts, and Other Lawful Primary Weapons under the NLRA The
AND
to which bargaining is required over the decisions themselves have been hotly contested.
This acts as a resolvability standard. Debate has to make sense and be comparable for the judge to make a decision which means it's an independent voter and outweighs. 2 Stable advocacy – 1AR clarification delinks neg positions that prove why enforcement in a certain instance is bad by saying it isn't their method of enforcement – wrecks neg ballot access and kills in depth clash – CX doesn't check since it kills 1NC construction pre-round since I don't know advocacy till in round, and judges do not flow cross ex so its not verifiable. 3 Prep skew – I don't know what they will be willing to clarify until CX which means I could go 6 minutes planning to read a disad and then get screwed over in CX when they spec something else.
10/30/21
SO - DA - Innovation
Tournament: Yale | Round: 6 | Opponent: La Salle TP | Judge: Abishek Stanley intellectual property protections are fundamental to motivating companies to take the risk to make new drugs. The research and development of new drugs takes billions of dollars and a huge time investment only for the smallest fraction of these drugs to make it to market. Intellectual property protection is necessary to motivate companies to endure this process. Grabowski 15 (Henry, Professor of Economics, member of the faculty for the Health Sector Management Program, and Director of the Program in Pharmaceuticals and Health Economics at Duke University) “The Roles of Patents and Research And Development Incentives In Biopharmaceutical Innovation,” Health Affairs, 2/2015 JL
The essential rationale for patent protection for biopharmaceuticals is that long-term benefits in the form of continued future innovation by pioneer or brand-name drug manufacturers outweigh the relatively short-term restrictions on imitative cost competition associated with market exclusivity. Regardless, the entry of other branded agents remains an important source of therapeutic competition during the patent term. Several economic characteristics make patents and intellectual property protection is particularly important to innovation incentives for the biopharmaceutical industry. 5 The RandD process often takes more than a decade to complete, and according to a recent analysis by Joseph DiMasi and colleagues, per new drug approval (including failed attempts), it involves more than a billion dollars in out-of-pocket costs. 6 Only approximately one in eight drug candidates survive clinical testing. As a result of the high risks of failure and the high costs, research and development must be funded by the few successful, on-market products (the top quintile of marketed products provide the dominant share of RandD returns). 7,8 Once a new drug’s patent term and any regulatory exclusivity provisions have expiresd, competing manufacturers are allowed to sell generic equivalents that require the investment of only several million dollars and that have a high likelihood of commercial success. Absent intellectual property protections that allow marketing exclusivity, innovative firms would be unlikely to make the costly and risky investments needed to bring a new drug to market. Patents confer the right to exclude competitors for a limited time within a given scope, as defined by patent claims. However, they do not guarantee demand, nor do they prevent competition from nonidentical drugs that treat the same diseases and fall outside the protection of the patents. New products may enter the same therapeutic class with common mechanisms of action but different molecular structures (for example, different statins) or with differing mechanisms of action (such as calcium channel blockers and angiotensin receptor blockers). 9 Joseph DiMasi and Laura Faden have found that the time between a first-in-class new drug and subsequent new drugs in the same therapeutic class has been dramatically reduced, from a median of 10.2 years in the 1970s to 2.5 years in the early 2000s. 10 Drugs in the same class compete through quality and price for preferred placement on drug formularies and physicians’ choices for patient treatment. Patents play an essential role in the economic “ecosystem” of discovery and investment that has developed since the 1980s. Hundreds of start-up firms, often backed by venture capital, have been launched, and a robust innovation market has emerged. 11 The value of these development-stage firms is largely determined by their proprietary technologies and the candidate drugs they have in development. As a result, the strength of intellectual property protection plays a key role in funding and partnership opportunities for such firms. b a statistical analysis of multiple studies confirms that intellectual property protections are key to productive research and development. We warrant exactly how patent rights have a direct relationship to research and development. Cory ‘19 Stephen Ezell, vice president and global innovation policy @ ITIF, BS Georgetown School of Foreign Service. Nigel Cory, associate director covering trade policy @ ITIF, MA public policy @ Georgetown. "The Way Forward for Intellectual Property Internationally," Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, 4-25-2019, accessed 8-25-2021, https://itif.org/publications/2019/04/25/way-forward-intellectual-property-internationally HWIC IPRs Strengthen Innovation Intellectual property rights power innovation. For instance, analyzing the level of intellectual property protections (via the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness reports) and creative outputs (via the Global Innovation Index) shows that counties with stronger IP protection have more creative outputs (in terms of intangible assets and creative goods and services in a nation’s media, printing and publishing, and entertainment industries, including online), even at varying levels of development.46 IPR reforms also introduce strong incentives for domestic innovation. Sherwood, using case studies from 18 developing countries, concluded that poor provision of intellectual property rights deters local innovation and risk-taking.47 In contrast, IPR reform has been associated with increased innovative activity, as measured by domestic patent filings, albeit with some variation across countries and sectors.48 For example, Ryan, in a study of biomedical innovations and patent reform in Brazil, found that patents provided incentives for innovation investments and facilitated the functioning of technology markets.49 Park and Lippoldt also observed that the provision of adequate protection for IPRs can help to stimulate local innovation, in some cases building on the transfer of technologies that provide inputs and spillovers.50 In other words, local innovators are introduced to technologies first through the technology transfer that takes place in an environment wherein protection of IPRs is assured; then, they may build on those ideas to create an evolved product or develop alternate approaches (i.e., to innovate). Related research finds that trade in technology—through channels including imports, foreign direct investment, and technology licensing—improves the quality of developing-country innovation by increasing the pool of ideas and efficiency of innovation by encouraging the division of innovative labor and specialization.51 However, Maskus notes that without protection from potential abuse of their newly developed technologies, foreign enterprises may be less willing to reveal technical information associated with their innovations.52 The protection of patents and trade secrets provides necessary legal assurances for firms wishing to reveal proprietary characteristics of technologies to subsidiaries and licensees via contracts. Counties with stronger IP protection have more creative outputs (in terms of intangible assets and creative goods and services in a nation’s media, printing and publishing, and entertainment industries, including online), even at varying levels of development. The relationship between IPR rights and innovation can also be seen in studies of how the introduction of stronger IPR laws, with regard to patents, copyrights, and trademarks, affect RandD activity in an economy. Studies by Varsakelis and by Kanwar and Evenson found that RandD to GDP ratios are positively related to the strength of patent rights, and are conditional on other factors.53 Cavazos Cepeda et al. found a positive influence of IPRs on the level of RandD in an economy, with each 1 percent increase in the level of protection of IPRs in an economy (as measured by improvements to a country’s score in the Patent Rights Index) equating to, on average, a 0.7 percent increase in the domestic level of RandD.54 Likewise, a 1 percent increase in copyright protection was associated with a 3.3 percent increase in domestic RandD. Similarly, when trademark protection increased by 1 percent, there was an associated RandD increase of 1.4 percent. As the authors concluded, “Increases in the protection of the IPRs carried economic benefits in the form of higher inflows of FDI, and increases in the levels of both domestically conducted RandD and service imports as measured by licensing fees.”55 As Jackson summarized, regarding the relationship between IPR reform and both innovation and RandD, and FDI, “In addition to spurring domestic innovation, strong intellectual property rights can increase incentives for foreign direct investment which in turn also leads to economic growth.”56 Innovation is crucial 1. Increasing accessibility of medicines around the world and increase their effectiveness 2. to respond to future health crises 3. increasing life expectancy for diseases without treatments yet ow on timeframe, scope and magnitude Jenner ’16 Jenner, Andrew. “Value of Innovation.” IFPMA, IFPMA, 23 Feb. 2016, www.ifpma.org/subtopics/value-of-innovation/. Many lower and middle-income countries are making important investment in developing their healthcare infrastructure as part of their commitment to achieving Universal Health Coverage. Increasing access to new medicines and vaccines can help sustain such investment by reducing the need for costly surgical interventions and hospitalization. In many cases, the use of innovative medicines by health systems can pay for themselves several times over. One study found that a reduction in the age of drugs used reduces non-drug spending 7.2 times as much as it increases drug expediture, with most of the savings coming from reduced hospitalization and physician office-visit expenditures. Vaccines, for instance, have proven to be one of the most effective preventative technologies in the fight against infectious diseases with an almost unparalleled impact on public health, saving the lives of over 2.5 million children each year. Estimates show that increasing access to six vaccines (including new vaccines for rotavirus and malaria) could save USD 6.2 billion in treatment costs globally. Increased productivity due to averted illness could gain the world an additional $145bn. The upfront cost of procuring vaccines is dwarfed by these benefits. In addition to these economic benefits, the innovation we bring along has transformed the lives of millions of patients all over the world. For instance, improvements in existing cancer treatments have cut annual death rates by half in the United States. High cholesterol and other heart diseases, which required extensive treatment in the 1970s, can now be easily managed with oral therapy. Our industry has played a crucial role in researching and developing the medicines that have contributed to this. The mission of the life sciences industry – in New Jersey, across the United States and around the world – is as ambitious as it is straightforward: to research and develop new medicines, therapies, medical devices, technologies and diagnostics to detect, treat and cure disease and improve the quality of life for patients. Driven to improve global human health, for more than 100 years, the life sciences industry – which includes biopharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical technology, device and diagnostics companies – has helped people live longer, more productive and fulfilling lives. Medical innovation has consistently responded to the challenge in times of crisis and is currently at the forefront of the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic as it has been through so many other health emergencies. Discovering and developing new medicines, therapies, medical devices and technologies is a complex, time-consuming, expensive and risk-laden process that life sciences companies willingly undertake, spending more than $100 billion annually in search of alleviating human suffering. The societal value of new medical innovation lies not only in improving human health, but in doing so in a cost-effective manner that brings efficiency to the delivery of health care. When medical breakthroughs can cure a disease rather than requiring an organ transplant, or when chemotherapy can be administered orally rather than by infusion, the patient, the health care system and the economy all benefit. MEDICAL INNOVATION: EXTENDING LIFE – SAVING LIVES Collectively, new therapies have been among the greatest contributors to increased life expectancy over the past century. U.S. life expectancy at birth has risen from 47 years at the turn of the 20th century to 78 years today. New therapies accounted for 73 percent of the increased life expectancy in 30 developing and high-income countries between 2000-09. U.S. cancer survivorship alone has more than tripled since 1970, with nearly 16.9 million cancer survivors alive in the country as of January 1, 2019. This number is expected to increase to 22.2 million by 2030. As of 2018, the cancer death rate for men and women combined had fallen 31 percent from its peak in 1991. This decline translates to 3.2 million deaths avoided. Biopharmaceutical innovation, through improvements in treatment, has contributed to 76 percent of the improvements in mortality rates for HIV/AIDS patients and 60 percent of improvements in life expectancy for breast cancer patients. Heart disease mortality has been improved by 52 percent due to advancements in medicines. MEDICAL INNOVATION’S ADDED VALUE – COST SAVINGS AND ECONOMIC PRODUCTIVITY In addition to improving patient outcomes, medical innovation offers other, often underappreciated benefits – reducing costs in the health care system and increasing economic productivity. With new technologies and therapies that can detect and treat a disease earlier in its onset, and medicines to manage chronic disease, the cost of health care can be significantly reduced. Less than 10 cents of the U.S. health care dollar was spent on prescription medicines in 2019. This percentage has remained unchanged since the 1960’s. In 2013, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) started to incorporate the savings from prescription medicines into the cost of Medicare policies. For every 1 percent increase in the number of prescriptions, the CBO incorporates a 0.2 percent decrease in spending on medical services. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, improved medication adherence can save $100-$300 billion annually in direct health care costs. Between 1980 and 2010, advanced medical technology helped cut the number of days patients spent in hospitals by 58 percent. Treating people with chronic disease (e.g., heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, obesity, arthritis) (about half of all U.S. adults) accounts for 86 percent of our nation’s health care costs. By investing in prevention and treatment of the most common chronic diseases, the cost of treatment in the U.S. could decrease by $218 billion per year, and the impact of disease on the economy would be reduced by $1.1 trillion annually. MEDICATION ADHERENCE – KEY TO IMPROVED OUTCOMES AND REDUCING HEALTH CARE COSTS Medication adherence is a critical factor in improving patient outcomes and bringing efficiency and cost savings to the health care system. Of the approximately 187 million Americans who take one or more prescription medications, it is estimated that up to one-half do not take their medications as prescribed, with more than 1 in 5 new prescriptions not being filled. Non-adherence in the U.S. is estimated to result in approximately 125,000 deaths and at least 10 percent of hospitalizations. Medication non-adherence costs the U.S. roughly $330 billion annually in unnecessary medical expenses, as estimated by Express Scripts in 2015. An extra $1 spent on medicines for adherent patients with congestive heart failure, high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol can generate $3-$10 in savings on emergency room visits and inpatient hospitalizations. Adherence to medications for congestive heart failure could result in $22.4 billion saved in the U.S. over a 10-year period. Nearly 1 million hospitalizations could be avoided with better adherence to, and treatment with, hypertensive medicines. LIFE SCIENCES RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT – RESOURCES AND RISK IN SEARCH OF THE NEXT TREATMENT Thousands of scientists go to their labs every day in search of the next treatment, therapy or technology to improve human health and alleviate the suffering of patients. With the odds heavily against success, life sciences companies invest billions of dollars annually to support the work of these dedicated scientists in their quest to discover the next medical breakthrough. America’s biopharmaceutical industry in total invested $102 billion in U.S. research and development in 2018. The biopharmaceutical industry is responsible for 17 percent of RandD spending by U.S. businesses, the single largest share of any industry. 91 percent of drugs are developed by the private sector with no direct government role. On average, it costs $2.6 billion and takes 10-15 years to discover, develop and bring a new medicine to market. Only 5 of 5,000 compounds that enter preclinical testing will enter a clinical trial, and only one will be commercialized. Only 12 percent of new molecular entities that enter clinical trials eventually receive FDA approval. Only 2 of 10 new medicines that come to market will be deemed a commercial success – meaning they will produce revenues that exceed the average RandD cost. More than 7,000 medicines currently are in development around the world for cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, immunological disorders, infectious disease and other disease states. Of these 7,000 treatments, 70 percent are potential first-in-class therapies, meaning they use a completely new approach to fighting disease.
9/25/21
SO - Kant
Tournament: Yale | Round: 3 | Opponent: Princeton CB | Judge: David Herrera Permissibility and presumption negate – a the resolution indicates the aff has to prove an obligation, and permissibility would deny the existence of an obligation b Statements are more often false than true because any part can be false. This means you negate if there is no offense because the resolution is probably false.
Ethics must be derived from the constitutive features of agents – ethics based internally fail because they can’t generate universal obligations and ethics based externally fail because they are nonbinding as agents could opt-out which means they fail to guide action. 1)Empiricism could also change, meaning external fw are arbitrary. 2)past experiences have no effect on causality or internal link to continuity, i.e. raining yesterday doesn’t mean rain today. 3)Is/Ought Gap – experience just describes how the world is but doesn’t indicate how it ought to be which means there must be an a priori conception of good 4)Transcendental idealism – what we see is not what is, but our representations of reality – only a priori knowledge is a lane to truth as perception is the lane to truth insofar as a lack of the subject removes material constitution and abstracts sensibility as it is then unknown.
Constitutivism solves – it allows for universal obligations among all agents but they are binding and cannot be opted out of.
Next, only practical reason is constitutive: 1 Regress – to question why one should reason concedes its authority since it is an act of reasoning itself which proves it’s binding and inescapable That means we must universally will maxims— any non-universalizable norm justifies someone’s ability to impede on your ends. Thus, the standard is consistency with the categorical imperative. Prefer additionally: 1 Performativity—freedom is the key to the process of justification of arguments. Willing that we should abide by their ethical theory presupposes that we own ourselves in the first place 2 Consequentialism fails - a induction fails: the logic of looking into the past to predict the future is predicated on past experiences, meaning it’s circular, b butterfly effect: every consequence is infinitely cascading so we don’t know the true extent of our actions, meaning we cannot predict consequences 3 A posteriori ethics fail: a Problem of induction Vickers 14, John Vickers, 2014, The Problem of Induction, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/ The original problem of induction can be simply put. It concerns the support or justification of inductive methods; methods that predict or infer, in Hume's words, that “instances of which we have had no experience resemble those of which we have had experience” (THN, 89). Such methods are clearly essential in scientific reasoning as well as in the conduct of our everyday affairs. The problem is how to support or justify them and it leads to a dilemma: the principle cannot be proved deductively, for it is contingent, and only necessary truths can be proved deductively. Nor can it be supported inductively—by arguing that it has always or usually been reliable in the past—for that would beg the question by assuming just what is to be proved. b Is/Ought Gap – experience just describes how the world is but doesn’t indicate how it ought to be which means there must be an a priori conception of good c Inability to know each other’s experience makes it an unreliable basis for ethics because different experiences bring different concepts of truth – only a priori ethics solve since a priori truths are accessible to all agents
negate 1 Intellectual property is an inalienable personal right of economic use Pozzo 6 Pozzo, Riccardo. “Immanuel Kant on Intellectual Property.” Trans/Form/Ação, vol. 29, no. 2, 2006, pp. 11–18., doi:10.1590/s0101-31732006000200002. SJDA recut SJKS recut Cookie JX Corpus mysticum, opus mysticum, propriété incorporelle, proprietà letteraria, geistiges Eigentum. All these terms mean intellectual property, the existence of which is intuitively clear because of the unbreakable bond that ties the work to its creator. The book belongs to whomever has written it, the picture to whomever has painted it, the sculpture to whomever has sculpted it; and this independently from the number of exemplars of the book or of the work of art in their passages from owner to owner. The initial bond cannot change and it ensures the author authority on the work. Kant writes in section 31/II of the Metaphysics of Morals: “Why does unauthorized publishing, which strikes one even at first glance as unjust, still have an appearance of being rightful? Because on the one hand a book is a corporeal artifact (opus mechanicum) that can be reproduced (by someone in legitimate possession of a copy of it), so that there is a right to a thing with regard to it. On the other hand a book is also a mere discourse of the publisher to the public, which the publisher may not repeat publicly without having a mandate from the author to do so (praestatio operae), and this is a right against a person. The error consists in mistaking one of these rights for the other” (Kant, 1902, t.6, p.290). The corpus mysticum, the work considered as an immaterial good, remains property of the author on behalf of the original right of its creation. The corpus mechanicum consists of the exemplars of the book or of the work of art. It becomes the property of whoever has bought the material object in which the work has been reproduced or expressed. Seneca points out in De beneficiis (VII, 6) the difference between owning a thing and owning its use. He tells us that the bookseller Dorus had the habit of calling Cicero’s books his own, while there are people who claim books their own because they have written them and other people that do the same because they have bought them. Seneca concludes that the books can be correctly said to belong to both, for it is true they belong to both, but in a different way The peculiarity of intellectual property consists thus first in being indeed a property, but property of an action; and second in being indeed inalienable, but also transferable in commission and license to a publisher. The bond the author has on his work confers him a moral right that is indeed a personal right. It is also a right to exploit economically his work in all possible ways, a right of economic use, which is a patrimonial right. Kant and Fichte argued that moral right and the right of economic use are strictly connected, and that the offense to one implies inevitably offense to the other. In eighteenth-century Germany, the free use came into discussion among the presuppositions of a democratic renewal of state and society. In his Supplement to the Consideration of Publishing and Its Rights, Reimarus asked writers “instead of writing for the aristocracy, to write for the tiers état of the reader’s world.” (Reimarus, 1791b, p.595). He saluted with enthusiasm the claim of disenfranchising from the monopoly of English publishers expressed in the American Act for the Encouragement of Learning of May 31, 1790. Kant, however, was firm in embracing intellectual property. Referring himself to Roman Law, he asked for its legislative formulation not only as patrimonial right, but also as a personal right. In Of the Illegitimity of Pirate Publishing, he considered the moral faculties related to intellectual property as an “inalienable right (ius personalissimum) always himself to speak through anyone else, the right, that is, that no one may deliver the same speech to the public other than in his (the author’s) name” (Kant, 1902, t.8, p.85). Fichte went farther in the Demonstration of the Illegitimity of Pirate Publishing. He saw intellectual property as a part of his metaphysical construction of intellectual activity, which was based on the principle that thoughts “are not transmitted hand to hand, they are not paid with shining cash, neither are they transmitted to us if we take home the book that contains them and put it into our library. In order to make those thoughts our own an action is still missing: we must read the book, meditate – provided it is not completely trivial – on its content, consider it under different aspects and eventually accept it within our connections of ideas” (Fichte, 1964, t.I/1, p.411). At the center of the discussion was the practice of reprinting books in a pirate edition after having them reset word after words after an exemplar of the original edition. Given Germany’s division in a myriad of small states, the imperial privilege was ineffective against pirate publishing. Kant and Fichte spoke for the acceptance of the right to defend the work of an author by the usurpations of others so that he may receive a patrimonial advantage from those who utilize the work acquiring new knowledge and/or an aesthetic experience. In particular, Fichte declared the absolute primacy of the moral faculties within the corpus mysticum. He divided the latter into a formal and a material part. “This intellectual element must be divided anew into what is material, the content of the book, the thoughts it presents; and the form of these thoughts, the manner in which, the connection in which, the formulations and the words by means of which the book presents them” (Fichte, 1964, t.I/1, p.411). Fichte’s underlining the author’s exclusive right to the intellectual content of his book – “the appropriation of which through another is physically impossible” (ibid.) – brought him to the extreme of prohibiting any form of copy that is not meant for personal use. In Publishing Considered anew, Reimarus considered on the contrary copyright in its patrimonial aspects as a limitation to free trade: “What would not happen were a universal protection against pirate publishing guaranteed? Monopoly and safer sales certainly do not procure convenient price; on the contrary, they are at the origin of great abuses. The only condition for convenient price is free-trade, and one cannot help noticing that upon the appearance of a private edition, publishers are forced to substantially lower the price of a book” (Reimarus, 1791a, pp.402-3). Reimarus admitted of being unable to argue in terms of justice. Justice was of no bearing, he said, for whom, like himself, considered undemonstrated the author’s permanent property of his work (herein supported by the legislative vacuum of those years). What mattered, he said, was equity. In sum, Reimarus anticipated today’s stance on free use by referring to the principle that public interest on knowledge ought to prevail on the author’s interest and to balance the copyright. Moreover, Reimarus extended his argument beyond the realm of literary production to embrace, among others, the today vital issue of pharmaceutical production on patented receipts. “Let us suppose that at some place a detailed description for the preparation of a good medicine or of any other useful thing be published, why may not somebody who lives in places that are far away from that one copy it to use it for his own profit and but must instead ask the original publisher for the issue of each exemplar?” (Reimarus, 1791b, t.2, pp.584). To sum up, Reimarus’s stance does not seem respondent to rule of law. For in all dubious case the general rule ought to prevail, fighting intellectual property with anti-monopolistic arguments in favor of free trade brings with itself consequences that are not tranquilizing also for the ones that are expected to apply the law. By resetting literary texts, one could obviously expurgate some errors. More frequently, however, some were added, given the exclusively commercial objectives of the reprints. The valid principle was, thus, that reprints were less precise than original editions, but they were much cheaper for the simple reason that the pirate publisher had a merely moral obligation against the author and the original publisher. In fact, he was not held to pay any honorarium to the author upon handling over the manuscript, nor to paying him royalties, nor to pay anything to the original publisher. The only expense in charge of the pirate publisher was buying the exemplar of the original edition out of which he was to make, as we say today, a free use.
2 The aff violates the categorical imperative and is non-universalizable- governments have a binding obligation to protect creations Van Dyke 18 Raymond Van Dyke, 7-17-2018, "The Categorical Imperative for Innovation and Patenting," IPWatchdog, https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/07/17/categorical-imperative-innovation-patenting/id=99178/ SJDA recut SJKS As we shall see, applying Kantian logic entails first acknowledging some basic principles; that the people have a right to express themselves, that that expression (the fruits of their labor) has value and is theirs (unless consent is given otherwise), and that government is obligated to protect people and their property. Thus, an inventor or creator has a right in their own creation, which cannot be taken from them without their consent. So, employing this canon, a proposed Categorical Imperative (CI) is the following Statement: creators should be protected against the unlawful taking of their creation by others. Applying this Statement to everyone, i.e., does the Statement hold water if everyone does this, leads to a yes determination. Whether a child, a book or a prototype, creations of all sorts should be protected, and this CI stands. This result also dovetails with the purpose of government: to protect the people and their possessions by providing laws to that effect, whether for the protection of tangible or intangible things. However, a contrary proposal can be postulated: everyone should be able to use the creations of another without charge. Can this Statement rise to the level of a CI? This proposal, upon analysis would also lead to chaos. Hollywood, for example, unable to protect their films, television shows or any content, would either be out of business or have robust encryption and other trade secret protections, which would seriously undermine content distribution and consumer enjoyment. Likewise, inventors, unable to license or sell their innovations or make any money to cover RandD, would not bother to invent or also resort to strong trade secret. Why even create? This approach thus undermines and greatly hinders the distribution of ideas in a free society, which is contrary to the paradigm of the U.S. patent and copyright systems, which promotes dissemination. By allowing freeriding, innovation and creativity would be thwarted (or at least not encouraged) and trade secret protection would become the mainstay for society with the heightened distrust.
9/26/21
SO - Kant v2
Tournament: Mid America Cup | Round: 1 | Opponent: Boise WS | Judge: Spencer Orlowski I value morality. Ethics must be derived from the constitutive features of agents – ethics based internally fail because they can’t generate universal obligations and ethics based externally fail because they are nonbinding as agents could opt-out and have no motivation to follow them which means they fail to guide action. Constitutivism solves – it allows for universal obligations among all agents but they are binding and cannot be opted out of. Thus, the meta ethic is constitutivism.
Next, only practical reason is constitutive: 1 Regress – practical reason is inescapable because when you question why you should use practical reason, you are using reason itself. Anything else is infinitely regressive and nonbinding because you can always ask “why should I do that” continuously without any terminal justification. Bindingness is required in morality; otherwise people could opt out of it and have no moral guidance. 2 Action Theory – Every action can be broken down to infinite amounts of movements, i.e. me moving my arm can be broken down to the infinite moments of every state my arm is in. Only reason can unify these movements because we use practical reason to achieve our goals, means all actions collapse to reason
Morality must be grounded in a priori truth to guide action, otherwise everyone would have different ethical codes and different rules. And, truth exists independent of human experience since certain things can be self-proving, i.e. a triangle has three sides. This is the difference between a priori and a posteriori. Reject a posteriori truth since they are just arbitrary states of being, not constitutive of ethics. Next, practical reason means we all have a unified perspective: What can be justified to me can be justified to everyone who is a practical reasoner. If I can conclude that 2+2 is 4, then I understand not only that I know 2+2 is 4, but that everyone around me can arrive at the same conclusion A priori truth has to apply to everyone: A) absent universal ethics, morality becomes arbitrary and fails to guide action, which means that ethics is rendered useless, B) otherwise it creates a contradiction in which you justify your freedom while limiting others’ Thus the standard is consistency with the categorical imperative.
Prefer additionally: 1 Performativity—freedom is the key to the process of justification of arguments. Willing that we should abide by their ethical theory presupposes that we own ourselves in the first place
2 Consequentialism fails -, a Problem of induction Vickers 14, John Vickers, 2014, The Problem of Induction, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/ The original problem of induction can be simply put. It concerns the support or justification of inductive methods; methods that predict or infer, in Hume's words, that “instances of which we have had no experience resemble those of which we have had experience” (THN, 89). Such methods are clearly essential in scientific reasoning as well as in the conduct of our everyday affairs. The problem is how to support or justify them and it leads to a dilemma: the principle cannot be proved deductively, for it is contingent, and only necessary truths can be proved deductively. Nor can it be supported inductively—by arguing that it has always or usually been reliable in the past—for that would beg the question by assuming just what is to be proved. b butterfly effect: every consequence is infinitely cascading so we don’t know the true extent of our actions, meaning we cannot predict consequences c Inability to know each other’s experience makes it an unreliable basis for ethics because different experiences bring different concepts of truth – only a priori ethics solve since a priori truths are accessible to all agents
3 Frameworks are an interpretation of the word “ought” in the resolution, which means they are a topicality interpretation and thus should be theoretically justified. Prefer my framework bc of Resource disparities—a focus on evidence and statistics privileges debaters with the most prep which excludes lone-wolfs who lack huge files. A Kantian debate can easily be won without any prep since only analytics are required. That controls the internal link to other voters because a pre-req to debating is access to the activity
1NC – Offense 1 Intellectual property is an inalienable personal right of economic use Pozzo 6 Pozzo, Riccardo. “Immanuel Kant on Intellectual Property.” Trans/Form/Ação, vol. 29, no. 2, 2006, pp. 11–18., doi:10.1590/s0101-31732006000200002. SJDA recut SJKS recut Cookie JX recut OL Corpus mysticum, opus mysticum, propriété incorporelle, proprietà letteraria, geistiges Eigentum. All these terms mean intellectual property, the existence of which is intuitively clear because of the unbreakable bond that ties the work to its creator. The book belongs to whomever has written it, the picture to whomever has painted it, the sculpture to whomever has sculpted it; and this independently from the number of exemplars of the book or of the work of art in their passages from owner to owner. The initial bond cannot change and it ensures the author authority on the work. Kant writes in section 31/II of the Metaphysics of Morals: “Why does unauthorized publishing, which strikes one even at first glance as unjust, still have an appearance of being rightful? Because on the one hand a book is a corporeal artifact (opus mechanicum) that can be reproduced (by someone in legitimate possession of a copy of it), so that there is a right to a thing with regard to it. On the other hand a book is also a mere discourse of the publisher to the public, which the publisher may not repeat publicly without having a mandate from the author to do so (praestatio operae), and this is a right against a person. The error consists in mistaking one of these rights for the other” (Kant, 1902, t.6, p.290). The corpus mysticum, the work considered as an immaterial good, remains property of the author on behalf of the original right of its creation. The corpus mechanicum consists of the exemplars of the book or of the work of art. It becomes the property of whoever has bought the material object in which the work has been reproduced or expressed. Seneca points out in De beneficiis (VII, 6) the difference between owning a thing and owning its use. He tells us that the bookseller Dorus had the habit of calling Cicero’s books his own, while there are people who claim books their own because they have written them and other people that do the same because they have bought them. Seneca concludes that the books can be correctly said to belong to both, for it is true they belong to both, but in a different way The peculiarity of intellectual property consists thus first in being indeed a property, but property of an action; and second in being indeed inalienable, but also transferable in commission and license to a publisher. The bond the author has on his work confers him a moral right that is indeed a personal right. It is also a right to exploit economically his work in all possible ways, a right of economic use, which is a patrimonial right. Kant and Fichte argued that moral right and the right of economic use are strictly connected, and that the offense to one implies inevitably offense to the other. In eighteenth-century Germany, the free use came into discussion among the presuppositions of a democratic renewal of state and society. In his Supplement to the Consideration of Publishing and Its Rights, Reimarus asked writers “instead of writing for the aristocracy, to write for the tiers état of the reader’s world.” (Reimarus, 1791b, p.595). He saluted with enthusiasm the claim of disenfranchising from the monopoly of English publishers expressed in the American Act for the Encouragement of Learning of May 31, 1790. Kant, however, was firm in embracing intellectual property. Referring himself to Roman Law, he asked for its legislative formulation not only as patrimonial right, but also as a personal right. In Of the Illegitimity of Pirate Publishing, he considered the moral faculties related to intellectual property as an “inalienable right (ius personalissimum) always himself to speak through anyone else, the right, that is, that no one may deliver the same speech to the public other than in his (the author’s) name” (Kant, 1902, t.8, p.85). Fichte went farther in the Demonstration of the Illegitimity of Pirate Publishing. He saw intellectual property as a part of his metaphysical construction of intellectual activity, which was based on the principle that thoughts “are not transmitted hand to hand, they are not paid with shining cash, neither are they transmitted to us if we take home the book that contains them and put it into our library. In order to make those thoughts our own an action is still missing: we must read the book, meditate – provided it is not completely trivial – on its content, consider it under different aspects and eventually accept it within our connections of ideas” (Fichte, 1964, t.I/1, p.411). At the center of the discussion was the practice of reprinting books in a pirate edition after having them reset word after words after an exemplar of the original edition. Given Germany’s division in a myriad of small states, the imperial privilege was ineffective against pirate publishing. Kant and Fichte spoke for the acceptance of the right to defend the work of an author by the usurpations of others so that he may receive a patrimonial advantage from those who utilize the work acquiring new knowledge and/or an aesthetic experience. In particular, Fichte declared the absolute primacy of the moral faculties within the corpus mysticum. He divided the latter into a formal and a material part. “This intellectual element must be divided anew into what is material, the content of the book, the thoughts it presents; and the form of these thoughts, the manner in which, the connection in which, the formulations and the words by means of which the book presents them” (Fichte, 1964, t.I/1, p.411). Fichte’s underlining the author’s exclusive right to the intellectual content of his book – “the appropriation of which through another is physically impossible” (ibid.) – brought him to the extreme of prohibiting any form of copy that is not meant for personal use. In Publishing Considered anew, Reimarus considered on the contrary copyright in its patrimonial aspects as a limitation to free trade: “What would not happen were a universal protection against pirate publishing guaranteed? Monopoly and safer sales certainly do not procure convenient price; on the contrary, they are at the origin of great abuses. The only condition for convenient price is free-trade, and one cannot help noticing that upon the appearance of a private edition, publishers are forced to substantially lower the price of a book” (Reimarus, 1791a, pp.402-3). Reimarus admitted of being unable to argue in terms of justice. Justice was of no bearing, he said, for whom, like himself, considered undemonstrated the author’s permanent property of his work (herein supported by the legislative vacuum of those years). What mattered, he said, was equity. In sum, Reimarus anticipated today’s stance on free use by referring to the principle that public interest on knowledge ought to prevail on the author’s interest and to balance the copyright. Moreover, Reimarus extended his argument beyond the realm of literary production to embrace, among others, the today vital issue of pharmaceutical production on patented receipts. “Let us suppose that at some place a detailed description for the preparation of a good medicine or of any other useful thing be published, why may not somebody who lives in places that are far away from that one copy it to use it for his own profit and but must instead ask the original publisher for the issue of each exemplar?” (Reimarus, 1791b, t.2, pp.584). To sum up, Reimarus’s stance does not seem respondent to rule of law. For in all dubious case the general rule ought to prevail, fighting intellectual property with anti-monopolistic arguments in favor of free trade brings with itself consequences that are not tranquilizing also for the ones that are expected to apply the law. By resetting literary texts, one could obviously expurgate some errors. More frequently, however, some were added, given the exclusively commercial objectives of the reprints. The valid principle was, thus, that reprints were less precise than original editions, but they were much cheaper for the simple reason that the pirate publisher had a merely moral obligation against the author and the original publisher. In fact, he was not held to pay any honorarium to the author upon handling over the manuscript, nor to paying him royalties, nor to pay anything to the original publisher. The only expense in charge of the pirate publisher was buying the exemplar of the original edition out of which he was to make, as we say today, a free use.
Unauthorized publication and usage of text is wrongful and infringes on inalienable moral rights Barron ’11. Barron, Anne (2011) Kant, copyright and communicative freedom. Law and philosophy . pp. 1-48. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/37521/1/Kant_Copyright_and_Communicative_Freedom_28lsero29.pdf NChu My claim in this article is that a significantly different, and arguably richer, conception of what a free culture entails and how the rights of authors relate to it emerges from a direct engagement with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant.15 The immediate justification for turning to Kant in this context is that he dealt very directly with the issue of authors’ rights – first in an essay published in 178516 (hereinafter ‘1785 Essay’) and again briefly in a section – entitled “What is a Book” – of his late work of political philosophy, Part I of The Metaphysics of Morals. 17 Moreover, he theorized these rights as speech rights, and not as rights of property in works considered as crystallizations of their authors’ communications.18 The most wellknown of the arguments contained in these writings can be briefly outlined. Kant’s premise is that a book considered as a material object must be distinguished from a book considered as the vehicle for an activity of authorial speech. On the one hand, an author’s manuscript, and every printed copy of it, is an ordinary object of property attracting an ordinary right of property vested in whomever is legitimately in possession of the object. This right would include the right to use the object, to sell the object and indeed to copy the object. On the other hand, a published book (considered as the vehicle of its author’s speech) is also a communication from publisher to public in the name of the author. Hence it is also an action, and as such it has its existence in a person – the person of the author. For Kant, it follows that unauthorized publication of copies of the author’s text – though not unauthorized reproduction as such – is wrongful. By selling copies of an author’s text to the public, the unauthorized publisher is not just dealing with commodities – printed books – in his own name, but is disseminating an author’s speech, thus compelling the author to speak against his will,19 to acknowledge the book as his own and be responsible for it.20 Actions “belong exclusively to the person of the author, and the author has in them an inalienable right always himself to speak through anyone else, the right, that is, that no one may deliver the same speech to the public other than in his (the author’s) name”21 or deliver a fundamentally altered speech in his name.22 However if the work is indeed so altered that it would be wrong to attribute it to the author, it can rightfully be published in the modifier’s name.23 These remarks on authors’ rights have not gone unnoticed by copyright lawyers. On the contrary, Kant’s 1785 Essay is often cited as inspiration for the theory – now institutionalized in international copyright law – that authors ought to have inalienable ‘moral’ rights in relation to their works.24 These are enforceable legal rights which are ‘moral’ in the sense that they concern authors’ non-pecuniary interests in relation to their works (such as the interest in being identified as author, and in ensuring that one’s works are published only in the form in which they were created); and they contrast with the economic rights (e.g. to control the reproduction and distribution of copies) which protect authors’ pecuniary interests in the commercial exploitation of their works. Yet moral rights in practice afford far less protection to authors than the theory would suggest, and transferable economic rights to the most commercially valuable works are more often than not held by corporate investors. And since it is economic rights which are the focus of concerns about copyright expansionism and its implications for the public domain, the formal recognition of a doctrine of moral rights has done little to allay these concerns.
2 The aff violates the categorical imperative and is non-universalizable- governments have a binding obligation to protect creations Van Dyke 18 Raymond Van Dyke, 7-17-2018, "The Categorical Imperative for Innovation and Patenting," IPWatchdog, https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/07/17/categorical-imperative-innovation-patenting/id=99178/ SJDA recut SJKS As we shall see, applying Kantian logic entails first acknowledging some basic principles; that the people have a right to express themselves, that that expression (the fruits of their labor) has value and is theirs (unless consent is given otherwise), and that government is obligated to protect people and their property. Thus, an inventor or creator has a right in their own creation, which cannot be taken from them without their consent. So, employing this canon, a proposed Categorical Imperative (CI) is the following Statement: creators should be protected against the unlawful taking of their creation by others. Applying this Statement to everyone, i.e., does the Statement hold water if everyone does this, leads to a yes determination. Whether a child, a book or a prototype, creations of all sorts should be protected, and this CI stands. This result also dovetails with the purpose of government: to protect the people and their possessions by providing laws to that effect, whether for the protection of tangible or intangible things. However, a contrary proposal can be postulated: everyone should be able to use the creations of another without charge. Can this Statement rise to the level of a CI? This proposal, upon analysis would also lead to chaos. Hollywood, for example, unable to protect their films, television shows or any content, would either be out of business or have robust encryption and other trade secret protections, which would seriously undermine content distribution and consumer enjoyment. Likewise, inventors, unable to license or sell their innovations or make any money to cover RandD, would not bother to invent or also resort to strong trade secret. Why even create? This approach thus undermines and greatly hinders the distribution of ideas in a free society, which is contrary to the paradigm of the U.S. patent and copyright systems, which promotes dissemination. By allowing freeriding, innovation and creativity would be thwarted (or at least not encouraged) and trade secret protection would become the mainstay for society with the heightened distrust. 3 No aff offense IP is considered a form of property under the fw Pozzo 06 (POZZO, R. Immanuel Kant sobre propriedade intelectual. Trans/Form/Ação, (São Paulo), v.29(2), 2006, p.11-18.) The peculiarity of intellectual property consists thus first in being indeed a property, but property of an action; and second in being indeed inalienable, but also transferable in commission and license to a publisher. The bond the author has on his work confers him a moral right that is indeed a personal right. It is also a right to exploit economically his work in all possible ways, a right of economic use, which is a patrimonial right. Kant and Fichte argued that moral right and the right of economic use are strictly connected, and that the offense to one implies inevitably offense to the other. In eighteenth-century Germany, the free use came into discussion among the presuppositions of a democratic renewal of state and society. In his Supplement to the Consideration of Publishing and Its Rights, Reimarus asked writers “instead of writing for the aristocracy, to write for the tiers état of the reader’s world.” (Reimarus, 1791b, p.595). He saluted with enthusiasm the claim of disenfranchising from the monopoly of English publishers expressed in the American Act for the Encouragement of Learning of May 31, 1790. Kant, however, was firm in embracing intellectual property. Referring himself to Roman Law, he asked for its legislative formulation not only as patrimonial right, but also as a personal right. In Of the Illegitimity of Pirate Publishing, he considered the moral faculties related to intellectual property as an “inalienable right (ius personalissimum) always himself to speak through anyone else, the right, that is, that no one may deliver the same speech to the public other than in his (the author’s) name” (Kant, 1902, t.8, p.85). Fichte went farther in the Demonstration of the Illegitimity of Pirate Publishing. He saw intellectual property as a part of his metaphysical construction of intellectual activity, which was based on the principle that thoughts “are not transmitted hand to hand, they are not paid with shining cash, neither are they transmitted to us if we take home the book that contains them and put it into our library. In order to make those thoughts our own an action is still missing: we must read the book, meditate – provided it is not completely trivial – on its content, consider it under different aspects and eventually accept it within our connections of ideas” (Fichte, 1964, t.I/1, p.411). At the center of the discussion was the practice of reprinting books in a pirate edition after having them reset word after words after an exemplar of the original edition. Given Germany’s division in a myriad of small states, the imperial privilege was ineffective against pirate publishing. Kant and Fichte spoke for the acceptance of the right to defend the work of an author by the usurpations of others so that he may receive a patrimonial advantage from those who utilize the work acquiring new knowledge and/or an aesthetic experience. In particular, Fichte declared the absolute primacy of the moral faculties within the corpus mysticum. He divided the latter into a formal and a material part. “This intellectual element must be divided anew into what is material, the content of the book, the thoughts it presents; and the form of these thoughts, the manner in which, the connection in which, the formulations and the words by means of which the book presents them” (Fichte, 1964, t.I/1, p.411). Fichte’s underlining the author’s exclusive right to the intellectual content of his book – “the appropriation of which through another is physically impossible” (ibid.) – brought him to the extreme of prohibiting any form of copy that is not meant for personal use.
Kant justifies a fundamental right to property Merges 11 (Robert, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati Professor of Law and Technology, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law) “Justifying Intellectual Property,” Harvard University Press, 2011 JL recut OL Kant believed that any object onto which a person projects his or her will may come to be owned. Kant seemed to consider ownership as a primitive concept whose roots run very deep in human consciousness. This is evident from the language he uses. The origin of property, he says, is in a deep and abiding sense of “Mine and Yours.” “That is rightfully mine,” he writes, “if I am so bound to it that anyone who uses it without my consent would thereby injure me.”15 But what is the point of this? Why do people want to be bound to things? In essence, Kant says, to expand their range of freedom— their autonomy.16 People have a desire to carry out projects in the world. Sometimes, those projects require access to and control over external objects. The genesis of property is the desire of an individual to carry out personal projects in the world, for which various objects are necessary. For Kant, this desire must be given its broadest scope, to promote the widest range of human choice, and therefore human projects. Kant accordingly refuses to accept any binding legal rule that makes some objects strictly unownable, because the rationale for such a rule would conflict with the basic need for maximal freedom of action. Freedom to appropriate is so basic, so tied to matters of individual will and personal choice, that Kant finds it unthinkable to rule out large categories of things from the domain of the potentially ownable. As Kant scholar Paul Guyer says, for Kant, “The fundamental principle of morality dictates the protection of the external use of freedom or freedom of action, as a necessary expression of freedom of choice and thus as part of autonomy as a whole. . . .”17 This captures it in a nutshell: freedom of action, including the right to possess, as a necessary expression of freedom of choice, or autonomy. IP is property Schultz 14 (Mark, Chair in Intellectual Property Law and the Director of the Intellectual Property and Technology Law Program at the University of Akron School of Law and co-founder and a leader of the Center for Intellectual Property x Innovation Policy at George Mason University) “A free market perspective on intellectual property rights,” American Enterprise Institute, 2/23/2014 JL recut OL
Point 1. Intellectual property secures the same values as physical property As an institution, property secures rights in what we create through our work. In this regard, there’s no cause or need to distinguish intellectual property from any other forms of property. In all cases, a person employs his intellect and talents to impose his plan and will on his environment to bring something new into the world. This is the essence of productive labor, the fruits of which property protects. Distinguishing between physical and intellectual labor, as some would, is misguided, because both are, at heart, the same activity. Whether it is a carpenter building a house, a farmer planting a field, an author writing a book, a director filming a movie, or an inventor developing a new drug, the activity is, ultimately, productive labor.
9/25/21
SO - Kant v3
Tournament: Yale | Round: 6 | Opponent: La Salle TP | Judge: Abishek Stanley I value morality. Ethics must be derived from the constitutive features of agents – ethics based internally fail because they can’t generate universal obligations and ethics based externally fail because they are nonbinding as agents could opt-out and have no motivation to follow them which means they fail to guide action. Constitutivism solves – it allows for universal obligations among all agents but they are binding and cannot be opted out of. Thus, the meta ethic is constitutivism.
Next, only practical reason is constitutive: 1 Regress – practical reason is inescapable because when you question why you should use practical reason, you are using reason itself. Anything else is infinitely regressive and nonbinding because you can always ask “why should I do that” continuously without any terminal justification. Bindingness is required in morality; otherwise people could opt out of it and have no moral guidance. 2 Action Theory – Every action can be broken down to infinite amounts of movements, i.e. me moving my arm can be broken down to the infinite moments of every state my arm is in. Only reason can unify these movements because we use practical reason to achieve our goals, means all actions collapse to reason
Morality must be grounded in a priori truth to guide action, otherwise everyone would have different ethical codes and different rules. And, truth exists independent of human experience since certain things can be self-proving, i.e. a triangle has three sides. This is the difference between a priori and a posteriori. Reject a posteriori truth since they are just arbitrary states of being, not constitutive of ethics. Next, practical reason means we all have a unified perspective: What can be justified to me can be justified to everyone who is a practical reasoner. If I can conclude that 2+2 is 4, then I understand not only that I know 2+2 is 4, but that everyone around me can arrive at the same conclusion A priori truth has to apply to everyone: A) absent universal ethics, morality becomes arbitrary and fails to guide action, which means that ethics is rendered useless, B) otherwise it creates a contradiction in which you justify your freedom while limiting others’ Thus the standard or value criterion is consistency with the categorical imperative.
Prefer additionally: 1 Performativity—freedom is the key to the process of justification of arguments. Willing that we should abide by their ethical theory presupposes that we own ourselves in the first place, ow ur perf on spec
2 Consequentialism fails - a induction fails: the logic of looking into the past to predict the future is predicated on past experiences, meaning it’s circular, b butterfly effect: every consequence is infinitely cascading so we don’t know the true extent of our actions, meaning we cannot predict consequences
3resource disparities – a lone wolf debater from Idaho can defeat a Harvard-Westlake debater in a Kant debate as it doesn’t require loads of prep that big schools inevitably have more of; analytics are all that’s required. This controls the internal link to all other voters as we can’t debate without accessibility.
1 The aff violates the categorical imperative and is non-universalizable- governments have a binding obligation to protect creations Van Dyke 18 Raymond Van Dyke, 7-17-2018, "The Categorical Imperative for Innovation and Patenting," IPWatchdog, https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/07/17/categorical-imperative-innovation-patenting/id=99178/ SJDA recut SJKS As we shall see, applying Kantian logic entails first acknowledging some basic principles; that the people have a right to express themselves, that that expression (the fruits of their labor) has value and is theirs (unless consent is given otherwise), and that government is obligated to protect people and their property. Thus, an inventor or creator has a right in their own creation, which cannot be taken from them without their consent. So, employing this canon, a proposed Categorical Imperative (CI) is the following Statement: creators should be protected against the unlawful taking of their creation by others. Applying this Statement to everyone, i.e., does the Statement hold water if everyone does this, leads to a yes determination. Whether a child, a book or a prototype, creations of all sorts should be protected, and this CI stands. This result also dovetails with the purpose of government: to protect the people and their possessions by providing laws to that effect, whether for the protection of tangible or intangible things. However, a contrary proposal can be postulated: everyone should be able to use the creations of another without charge. Can this Statement rise to the level of a CI? This proposal, upon analysis would also lead to chaos. Hollywood, for example, unable to protect their films, television shows or any content, would either be out of business or have robust encryption and other trade secret protections, which would seriously undermine content distribution and consumer enjoyment. Likewise, inventors, unable to license or sell their innovations or make any money to cover RandD, would not bother to invent or also resort to strong trade secret. Why even create? This approach thus undermines and greatly hinders the distribution of ideas in a free society, which is contrary to the paradigm of the U.S. patent and copyright systems, which promotes dissemination. By allowing freeriding, innovation and creativity would be thwarted (or at least not encouraged) and trade secret protection would become the mainstay for society with the heightened distrust.
Kant justifies a fundamental right to property Merges 11 (Robert, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati Professor of Law and Technology, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law) “Justifying Intellectual Property,” Harvard University Press, 2011 JL Kant believed that any object onto which a person projects his or her will may come to be owned. Kant seemed to consider ownership as a primitive concept whose roots run very deep in human consciousness. This is evident from the language he uses. The origin of property, he says, is in a deep and abiding sense of “Mine and Yours.” “That is rightfully mine,” he writes, “if I am so bound to it that anyone who uses it without my consent would thereby injure me.”15 But what is the point of this? Why do people want to be bound to things? In essence, Kant says, to expand their range of freedom— their autonomy.16 People have a desire to carry out projects in the world. Sometimes, those projects require access to and control over external objects. The genesis of property is the desire of an individual to carry out personal projects in the world, for which various objects are necessary. For Kant, this desire must be given its broadest scope, to promote the widest range of human choice, and therefore human projects. Kant accordingly refuses to accept any binding legal rule that makes some objects strictly unownable, because the rationale for such a rule would conflict with the basic need for maximal freedom of action. Freedom to appropriate is so basic, so tied to matters of individual will and personal choice, that Kant finds it unthinkable to rule out large categories of things from the domain of the potentially ownable. As Kant scholar Paul Guyer says, for Kant, “The fundamental principle of morality dictates the protection of the external use of freedom or freedom of action, as a necessary expression of freedom of choice and thus as part of autonomy as a whole. . . .”17 This captures it in a nutshell: freedom of action, including the right to possess, as a necessary expression of freedom of choice, or autonomy. IP is property Schultz 14 (Mark, Chair in Intellectual Property Law and the Director of the Intellectual Property and Technology Law Program at the University of Akron School of Law and co-founder and a leader of the Center for Intellectual Property x Innovation Policy at George Mason University) “A free market perspective on intellectual property rights,” American Enterprise Institute, 2/23/2014 JL
Point 1. Intellectual property secures the same values as physical property As an institution, property secures rights in what we create through our work. In this regard, there’s no cause or need to distinguish intellectual property from any other forms of property. In all cases, a person employs his intellect and talents to impose his plan and will on his environment to bring something new into the world. This is the essence of productive labor, the fruits of which property protects. Distinguishing between physical and intellectual labor, as some would, is misguided, because both are, at heart, the same activity. Whether it is a carpenter building a house, a farmer planting a field, an author writing a book, a director filming a movie, or an inventor developing a new drug, the activity is, ultimately, productive labor.
9/25/21
SO - Kant v4
Tournament: Mid America Cup | Round: 4 | Opponent: Harker NA | Judge: Sam Anderson Ethics must be derived from the constitutive features of agents – ethics based internally fail because they can’t generate universal obligations and ethics based externally fail because they are nonbinding as agents could opt-out which means they fail to guide action. 1)Empiricism could also change, meaning external fw are arbitrary. 2)past experiences have no effect on causality or internal link to continuity, i.e. raining yesterday doesn’t mean rain today. 3)Is/Ought Gap – experience just describes how the world is but doesn’t indicate how it ought to be which means there must be an a priori conception of good
Constitutivism solves – it allows for universal obligations among all agents but they are binding and cannot be opted out of.
Next, only practical reason is constitutive: 1 Regress – to question why one should reason concedes its authority since it is an act of reasoning itself which proves it’s binding and inescapable That means we must universally will maxims— any non-universalizable norm justifies someone’s ability to impede on your ends. Thus, the standard is consistency with the categorical imperative. Prefer additionally: 1 Performativity—freedom is the key to the process of justification of arguments. Willing that we should abide by their ethical theory presupposes that we own ourselves in the first place 2 Consequentialism fails - a induction fails: the logic of looking into the past to predict the future is predicated on past experiences, meaning it’s circular, b butterfly effect: every consequence is infinitely cascading so we don’t know the true extent of our actions, meaning we cannot predict consequences C Aggregation is impossible – pleasure and pain are subjective and qualitative 1NC – Offense 1 Intellectual property is an inalienable personal right of economic use Pozzo 6 Pozzo, Riccardo. “Immanuel Kant on Intellectual Property.” Trans/Form/Ação, vol. 29, no. 2, 2006, pp. 11–18., doi:10.1590/s0101-31732006000200002. SJDA recut SJKS recut Cookie JX Corpus mysticum, opus mysticum, propriété incorporelle, proprietà letteraria, geistiges Eigentum. All these terms mean intellectual property, the existence of which is intuitively clear because of the unbreakable bond that ties the work to its creator. The book belongs to whomever has written it, the picture to whomever has painted it, the sculpture to whomever has sculpted it; and this independently from the number of exemplars of the book or of the work of art in their passages from owner to owner. The initial bond cannot change and it ensures the author authority on the work. Kant writes in section 31/II of the Metaphysics of Morals: “Why does unauthorized publishing, which strikes one even at first glance as unjust, still have an appearance of being rightful? Because on the one hand a book is a corporeal artifact (opus mechanicum) that can be reproduced (by someone in legitimate possession of a copy of it), so that there is a right to a thing with regard to it. On the other hand a book is also a mere discourse of the publisher to the public, which the publisher may not repeat publicly without having a mandate from the author to do so (praestatio operae), and this is a right against a person. The error consists in mistaking one of these rights for the other” (Kant, 1902, t.6, p.290). The corpus mysticum, the work considered as an immaterial good, remains property of the author on behalf of the original right of its creation. The corpus mechanicum consists of the exemplars of the book or of the work of art. It becomes the property of whoever has bought the material object in which the work has been reproduced or expressed. Seneca points out in De beneficiis (VII, 6) the difference between owning a thing and owning its use. He tells us that the bookseller Dorus had the habit of calling Cicero’s books his own, while there are people who claim books their own because they have written them and other people that do the same because they have bought them. Seneca concludes that the books can be correctly said to belong to both, for it is true they belong to both, but in a different way The peculiarity of intellectual property consists thus first in being indeed a property, but property of an action; and second in being indeed inalienable, but also transferable in commission and license to a publisher. The bond the author has on his work confers him a moral right that is indeed a personal right. It is also a right to exploit economically his work in all possible ways, a right of economic use, which is a patrimonial right. Kant and Fichte argued that moral right and the right of economic use are strictly connected, and that the offense to one implies inevitably offense to the other. In eighteenth-century Germany, the free use came into discussion among the presuppositions of a democratic renewal of state and society. In his Supplement to the Consideration of Publishing and Its Rights, Reimarus asked writers “instead of writing for the aristocracy, to write for the tiers état of the reader’s world.” (Reimarus, 1791b, p.595). He saluted with enthusiasm the claim of disenfranchising from the monopoly of English publishers expressed in the American Act for the Encouragement of Learning of May 31, 1790. Kant, however, was firm in embracing intellectual property. Referring himself to Roman Law, he asked for its legislative formulation not only as patrimonial right, but also as a personal right. In Of the Illegitimity of Pirate Publishing, he considered the moral faculties related to intellectual property as an “inalienable right (ius personalissimum) always himself to speak through anyone else, the right, that is, that no one may deliver the same speech to the public other than in his (the author’s) name” (Kant, 1902, t.8, p.85). Fichte went farther in the Demonstration of the Illegitimity of Pirate Publishing. He saw intellectual property as a part of his metaphysical construction of intellectual activity, which was based on the principle that thoughts “are not transmitted hand to hand, they are not paid with shining cash, neither are they transmitted to us if we take home the book that contains them and put it into our library. In order to make those thoughts our own an action is still missing: we must read the book, meditate – provided it is not completely trivial – on its content, consider it under different aspects and eventually accept it within our connections of ideas” (Fichte, 1964, t.I/1, p.411). At the center of the discussion was the practice of reprinting books in a pirate edition after having them reset word after words after an exemplar of the original edition. Given Germany’s division in a myriad of small states, the imperial privilege was ineffective against pirate publishing. Kant and Fichte spoke for the acceptance of the right to defend the work of an author by the usurpations of others so that he may receive a patrimonial advantage from those who utilize the work acquiring new knowledge and/or an aesthetic experience. In particular, Fichte declared the absolute primacy of the moral faculties within the corpus mysticum. He divided the latter into a formal and a material part. “This intellectual element must be divided anew into what is material, the content of the book, the thoughts it presents; and the form of these thoughts, the manner in which, the connection in which, the formulations and the words by means of which the book presents them” (Fichte, 1964, t.I/1, p.411). Fichte’s underlining the author’s exclusive right to the intellectual content of his book – “the appropriation of which through another is physically impossible” (ibid.) – brought him to the extreme of prohibiting any form of copy that is not meant for personal use. In Publishing Considered anew, Reimarus considered on the contrary copyright in its patrimonial aspects as a limitation to free trade: “What would not happen were a universal protection against pirate publishing guaranteed? Monopoly and safer sales certainly do not procure convenient price; on the contrary, they are at the origin of great abuses. The only condition for convenient price is free-trade, and one cannot help noticing that upon the appearance of a private edition, publishers are forced to substantially lower the price of a book” (Reimarus, 1791a, pp.402-3). Reimarus admitted of being unable to argue in terms of justice. Justice was of no bearing, he said, for whom, like himself, considered undemonstrated the author’s permanent property of his work (herein supported by the legislative vacuum of those years). What mattered, he said, was equity. In sum, Reimarus anticipated today’s stance on free use by referring to the principle that public interest on knowledge ought to prevail on the author’s interest and to balance the copyright. Moreover, Reimarus extended his argument beyond the realm of literary production to embrace, among others, the today vital issue of pharmaceutical production on patented receipts. “Let us suppose that at some place a detailed description for the preparation of a good medicine or of any other useful thing be published, why may not somebody who lives in places that are far away from that one copy it to use it for his own profit and but must instead ask the original publisher for the issue of each exemplar?” (Reimarus, 1791b, t.2, pp.584). To sum up, Reimarus’s stance does not seem respondent to rule of law. For in all dubious case the general rule ought to prevail, fighting intellectual property with anti-monopolistic arguments in favor of free trade brings with itself consequences that are not tranquilizing also for the ones that are expected to apply the law. By resetting literary texts, one could obviously expurgate some errors. More frequently, however, some were added, given the exclusively commercial objectives of the reprints. The valid principle was, thus, that reprints were less precise than original editions, but they were much cheaper for the simple reason that the pirate publisher had a merely moral obligation against the author and the original publisher. In fact, he was not held to pay any honorarium to the author upon handling over the manuscript, nor to paying him royalties, nor to pay anything to the original publisher. The only expense in charge of the pirate publisher was buying the exemplar of the original edition out of which he was to make, as we say today, a free use.
1 The aff violates the categorical imperative and is non-universalizable- governments have a binding obligation to protect creations Van Dyke 18 Raymond Van Dyke, 7-17-2018, "The Categorical Imperative for Innovation and Patenting," IPWatchdog, https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/07/17/categorical-imperative-innovation-patenting/id=99178/ SJDA recut SJKS As we shall see, applying Kantian logic entails first acknowledging some basic principles; that the people have a right to express themselves, that that expression (the fruits of their labor) has value and is theirs (unless consent is given otherwise), and that government is obligated to protect people and their property. Thus, an inventor or creator has a right in their own creation, which cannot be taken from them without their consent. So, employing this canon, a proposed Categorical Imperative (CI) is the following Statement: creators should be protected against the unlawful taking of their creation by others. Applying this Statement to everyone, i.e., does the Statement hold water if everyone does this, leads to a yes determination. Whether a child, a book or a prototype, creations of all sorts should be protected, and this CI stands. This result also dovetails with the purpose of government: to protect the people and their possessions by providing laws to that effect, whether for the protection of tangible or intangible things. However, a contrary proposal can be postulated: everyone should be able to use the creations of another without charge. Can this Statement rise to the level of a CI? This proposal, upon analysis would also lead to chaos. Hollywood, for example, unable to protect their films, television shows or any content, would either be out of business or have robust encryption and other trade secret protections, which would seriously undermine content distribution and consumer enjoyment. Likewise, inventors, unable to license or sell their innovations or make any money to cover RandD, would not bother to invent or also resort to strong trade secret. Why even create? This approach thus undermines and greatly hinders the distribution of ideas in a free society, which is contrary to the paradigm of the U.S. patent and copyright systems, which promotes dissemination. By allowing freeriding, innovation and creativity would be thwarted (or at least not encouraged) and trade secret protection would become the mainstay for society with the heightened distrust.
Kant justifies a fundamental right to property Merges 11 (Robert, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati Professor of Law and Technology, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law) “Justifying Intellectual Property,” Harvard University Press, 2011 JL Kant believed that any object onto which a person projects his or her will may come to be owned. Kant seemed to consider ownership as a primitive concept whose roots run very deep in human consciousness. This is evident from the language he uses. The origin of property, he says, is in a deep and abiding sense of “Mine and Yours.” “That is rightfully mine,” he writes, “if I am so bound to it that anyone who uses it without my consent would thereby injure me.”15 But what is the point of this? Why do people want to be bound to things? In essence, Kant says, to expand their range of freedom— their autonomy.16 People have a desire to carry out projects in the world. Sometimes, those projects require access to and control over external objects. The genesis of property is the desire of an individual to carry out personal projects in the world, for which various objects are necessary. For Kant, this desire must be given its broadest scope, to promote the widest range of human choice, and therefore human projects. Kant accordingly refuses to accept any binding legal rule that makes some objects strictly unownable, because the rationale for such a rule would conflict with the basic need for maximal freedom of action. Freedom to appropriate is so basic, so tied to matters of individual will and personal choice, that Kant finds it unthinkable to rule out large categories of things from the domain of the potentially ownable. As Kant scholar Paul Guyer says, for Kant, “The fundamental principle of morality dictates the protection of the external use of freedom or freedom of action, as a necessary expression of freedom of choice and thus as part of autonomy as a whole. . . .”17 This captures it in a nutshell: freedom of action, including the right to possess, as a necessary expression of freedom of choice, or autonomy. IP is property Schultz 14 (Mark, Chair in Intellectual Property Law and the Director of the Intellectual Property and Technology Law Program at the University of Akron School of Law and co-founder and a leader of the Center for Intellectual Property x Innovation Policy at George Mason University) “A free market perspective on intellectual property rights,” American Enterprise Institute, 2/23/2014 JL
Point 1. Intellectual property secures the same values as physical property As an institution, property secures rights in what we create through our work. In this regard, there’s no cause or need to distinguish intellectual property from any other forms of property. In all cases, a person employs his intellect and talents to impose his plan and will on his environment to bring something new into the world. This is the essence of productive labor, the fruits of which property protects. Distinguishing between physical and intellectual labor, as some would, is misguided, because both are, at heart, the same activity. Whether it is a carpenter building a house, a farmer planting a field, an author writing a book, a director filming a movie, or an inventor developing a new drug, the activity is, ultimately, productive labor.
9/26/21
SO - T - WTO
Tournament: Mid America Cup | Round: 4 | Opponent: Harker NA | Judge: Sam Anderson Interpretation: The aff must defend all member nations of the WTO reduce IP protections, they can’t specify
Standards: 1 Pecision – “The” indicates reference to a noun as a whole Webster’s 5 (Merriam Webster’s Online Dictionary, http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary) 4 -- used as a function word before a noun or a substantivized adjective to indicate reference to a group as a whole Anything else justifies the aff arbitrarily jettisoning words from the resolution which means it kills the strongest link to pragmatics Semantics first – A key to predictability since the res is the only stable stasis point for pre round prep, B the only brightline for affs is topical or not and their model allows affs to be completely non-T which judges can’t vote on due to jurisdictional boundaries C pragmatics collapses to semantics cuz our interp of the res is based on the textbook definition
2 Limits and Ground – Their model allows them to defend any of 164 states and their INFINITE permutations. Kills neg prep and debatability since there are no DAs that apply to every aff, e.g. the effects of IP protections in the US differ from those in India - unlimited topics incentivize obscure affs that negs won’t have prep on. Generics don’t work since each has its own political situation and the aff will always be ahead. Leads to random state of the week affs which destroys reciprocal prep burden.
3 TVA Solves – read the aff as an advantage and defend whole res. PICs don’t matter cuz they have built in asymmetry solvency deficits.
Voters
9/26/21
SO - Theory - Spec Medicines
Tournament: Yale | Round: 3 | Opponent: Princeton CB | Judge: David Herrera Interp: The affirmative debater must specify and separately delineate the types of medicines the World Trade Organization ought to reduce intellectual property protections for. Violation: they did not Distinct patents and IP protections apply for different medicines Walker, Anthony “Pharmaceutical Patents: an overview” Alacrita https://www.alacrita.com/blog/pharmaceutical-patents-an-overview There are many different types of pharmaceutical patents, depending on the drug they are protecting. The exclusivity of each patent can be extended by various lengths because drug discovery, validation, and marketing can take more than 10 years. By extending the patent exclusivity, it encourages companies to study and develop new drugs by derisking the extended time and effort expended during development. This is especially important for drugs in understudied areas, such as rare diseases, antibiotics, and pediatric populations. Because a large portion (up to 80 percent) of pharmaceutical company’s revenue comes from their patents, they want to extend their patents for as long as possible. Once a patent expires, other companies can manufacture and sell the drug, which is where generic competitors come into play. Patents for new chemical entities (drugs that contain a portion that has never been FDA-approved) can be extended for five years under the FDA and European Medicines Agency (EMA). Sponsors may also receive up to 11 years of exclusivity for new drugs (eight years of data exclusivity, two years of market exclusivity, and a one-year extension). Patents for new methods of use (a new use for a drug or drug reformulation via extended-release drug versions, reduced dosing, or increased ease of use) can be extended for three years under the FDA and ten years under the EMA. Patents for drugs with orphan designation (drugs to treat rare diseases) have an extra seven years of exclusivity on drug sales under the FDA and ten extra years under the EMA. Patents for drugs with pediatric exclusivity (ones that include pediatric data) can enjoy an additional six months of exclusivity under the FDA and EMA. Patents for certain new antibiotics can have an extra five years of exclusivity under the FDA. Standards 1 Real world ed – 2 Stable advocacy –