I affirm, the resolution posits the question of whats permissible.

Permissibility does not imply an obligation; hence we need active reason to make something impermissible, therefore the Neg has the burden to prove prohibition. If I prove that there is no moral prohibition, then we can default to permissibility. PRESUME affirmative and this interpretation absent egregious abuse because 1) Time skew a. My opponent can just run theory on one caveat, thereby forcing me to undercover the substantial arguments b. I have less time in addressing the NC and the attack of the AC, I shouldnt be expected to defend a Caunter Interpretation in just 4 minutes 2) Blind speech a. The negative gets to tailor his speech to my advocacy, thereby being able to use all of its prep ground while I walk into the round blind. 3) Balanced strategy a. At TOC bid tournaments, the Aff loses on average about 64 % percent of the time. b. This interpretation is just trying to get it to be a 50-50 chance. 4) Truth Testing a. Rigor is required when testing the hypothesis of moral prohibition Zarefsky 1
[Zarefsky, David. Argument as Hypothesis Testing. 1976. Quarterly Journal of Speech.]

the proposition is the hypothesis being put to the test. Any different statement of a proposition assumes the character of an alternative hypothesis. In order for the proposition X to withstand the challenge that alternative hypothesis Y could account equally well for the phenomena being discussed, a specific defense must be made for proposition X-not just for a "change" or even for a direction in which change should proceed. Hence, the genre of
By contrast the wording of the proposition is of central importance, since "justification" arguments is of special significance. For example. the proposition that the Federal Government should establish, finance, and administer programs to control air and water pollution fails if reason cannot be given for each of the three indicated actions, for actions by the federal government and for controls over both air and water pollution. To do less might call for an alternative proposition, but not the specific one at hand. Or, as Trapp summarizes, the key question for the judge is, "Does the Affirmative case provide sufficient reason to

Presumption is placed against the specific proposition being debated. This procedure, as described above, assures a rigorous test of the proposition. b. The risk if far greater to accept the hypothesis of moral prohibiton Zarefsky 2
affirm or justify all of the terms of the resolution?" One might ask why rigor is served by placing presumption always against the proposition; indeed, it might seem that to do so is to fail to test rigorously the arguments advanced by the negative., the Rejecting the proposition

does not preclude taking any other position. An alternative hypothesis may be proposed for testing originally hypothesis may be refined and then re-examined, further study may be undertaken, and so forth. By contrast, to

Since rejection involves fewer risks than does acceptance, it is appropriate to locate presumption against the proposition. Such reasoning is analogues to that by which the scientist presumes the null hypothesis. Next, THEORETICAL PREMPTS
affirm the proposition is to make a personal commitment that it is probably true.

A. The Aff should get the RVI because 1. It deters bad theory and checks on abusive ones 2. Theory destroys clash, thereby nullifying any Topical preround prep 3. Time skew cause the aff to undercover substantial debate, hence theory should be a dead on voting issue B. Textuality should be the basis for advocacies 1. The negative should only defend textually sound advocacies 2. The text is the only basis for predictability 3. The text is what triggers topic specific education through the literature 4. Ignoring the resolution kills education because it discourages understanding of both the topic literature and discourages critical thinking about the logical structure of propositions. C. Education comes before Fairness 1. Education is evaluated first because if debates arent educational then school will lose their incentive to fund teams and debaters will lose their incentive to compete, meaning that we can no longer access the benefits of any other theoretical standards. 2. Education is more important because it has outside value; the educational value attained through debate helps us in the real world, whereas fairness is only valuable in a hypothetical debate setting. Strait and Wallace
L. Paul Strait and Brett Wallace, GMU and GWU, DRG 07 george Mason University and George Washington University, Debaters Research Guide, 2007["The Scope of Negative Fiat and the Logic of Decision Making" http://groups.wfu.edu/debate/MiscSites/DRGArticles/2007/The %20Scope%20of%20Negative%20Fiat%20and%20the%20Logic%20of%20Decision %20Making.pdf] mgt
Why debate? Seine do it for scholarships. some do it for social purposes, and many just believe it is fun. These are certainly all relevant considerations when making the decision to join the debate team, but as debate theorists they

the focus of our concern. Our concern is nding a framework for debate that educates the largest quantity of students with the highest quality of
arent

skills, while at the same time pre- serving competitive equity. The ability to make decisions deriving from discussions, argumentation or debate, is the key skill. It is
the one thing every single one of us will do every day of our lives besides breathing. Decision-making transcends boundaries between categories of learning like policy education" and kritik education, it makes irrelevant

and it transcends questions of what substantial content a debate round should contain. The implication for this analysis is that the critical thinking and argumentative skills offered by real-world decision-making are comparatively greater than any educational disadvantage weighed against them. it is the skills we learn, not the content of our arguments. that can best improve all of our lives. While policy comparison skills are
considerations of whether we will eventually be policymakers, going to be learned through debate in one way or another, those skills are use- less if they are not grounded in the kind of logic actually used to make decisions.

3. Unless my opponent can prove that Fairness has an objective standard of evaluation along with it, there is not way to determine violations. 4. Fairness can be a tool for oppression Backer
(Larry Cata Backer, Executive Director at the Tulsa Comparative & International Law Center, Professor of Law, University of Tulsa College of Law; B.A. 1977 Brandeis University; M.P.P. 1979 Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; J.D. 1982 Columbia University University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review Summer, 1999)
Our goal must be fairness. Fairness is a condition with perhaps an immutable definition but with a complex and transitory application. Fairness tolerates difference, but fairness ought not to tolerate disadvantage, either within a group or between groups. Fairness

can be a trap and a cover for promoting separation. I mention only one problem here, that of the measure of fairness. Much has been made of the difference between equality of opportunity and equality of result. n105 Both contain within them culturally significant risk. Equality of opportunity as a measure of fairness contains strong leanings toward sameness. It suggests unity and
minimizes difference yet provides little in the way of mechanisms for mediating situations where difference has an effect on the quality of opportunity. It

can provide less protection against abuse by the dominant in a society of difference. At its limit it can suggest implosion of difference and provide a potent cultural weapon for involuntary assimilation n106 and disappearance. n107 On the [*875] other hand, equality of result as a measure of fairness contains strong leanings toward difference. It suggests separation and minimizes sameness yet provides little in the way of mechanisms for mediating situations where difference would overcome any sense of meta-group cohesion. It can provide less protection against abuse by non- dominant groups and can result in reverse hegemony. It suggests the power of cultural veto by the smallest minority. It thus contains the danger of providing little protection against the unfairness of the smaller (instead of the larger) groups. At its limit it can suggest explosion of difference and provide a potent cultural weapon for separation. Fairness requires that we be willing to acknowledge
as part of our cultural common sense that we all are part of the same group. Without a master unity, our differences can overcome us.

Moving on to my case, the burden of the Aff is to prove on the a priori level that there is no moral prohibition, while the Neg has the burden to prove the converse. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 1

Russell, Bruce, "A Priori Justification and Knowledge", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <> http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/apriori/ But why think that all-things-considered a priori justification implies either that a person who

has that sort of justification is entitled to ignore empirical information or that it is always rational for her to believe what she does no matter what the empirical evidence is? A priori justification must be independent of experience, which implies that it must be
independent of empirical evidence. But there is an interpretation of that sort of independence that does not imply that the person is entitled to ignore empirical information or that her justification will remain no matter what the empirical evidence is. Suppose being justified independent of experience simply means that experiential sources do not provide the justification, that the justification is provided solely by some non-experiential source. That

does not imply that the experiential evidence could not defeat that non-experiential justification. In other circumstances, it may. As Laurence BonJour says, for a priori justification it is enough if it is
capable of warranting belief where experience is silent (BonJour 1998, 121). That does not imply that the justification will remain where experience is not silent. It allows that experience might defeat that a priori justification.

Hence I do not need a value or other formats to win because my argument is questioning the very notion of the truth of the resolution; since it is a priori, if I win this argument then I should thereby win the round. My thesis and sole contention is that morality does not have the strength to enforce prohibition. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2
Klein, Peter, "Skepticism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/skepticism/>.

philosophical skepticism attempts to render doubtful every member of a class propositions that we think falls within our ken. One member of the class is not pitted against another. The grounds for either withholding assent to the claim that we can have such knowledge or denying that we can have such knowledge are such that there is no possible way to either answer them or neutralize them by appealing to another member of the class because the same doubt applies to each and every member of the class. Thus, philosophic doubt
In contrast, of or philosophical skepticism, as opposed to ordinary incredulity, does not, in principle, come to an end. Or so the philosophic skeptic will claim!

Thus, in case of doubt we have to default on the presumption. CONT. 1 Variations in moral codes and views follow from the way of life of the individual, they are created not to objectively codify right and wrong, they exist to justify the mannerisms of the individual or society: Mackie 1
[Mackie, John. Ethics Inventing Right and Wrong, Penguin Books. 1977. Fellow at Oxford University]

The argument from relativity has as its premise in the well-known variation in moral codes from one society to another and from one period to another, and also the differences in moral beliefs between different groups and classes within a complex community. Such variation is in itself merely a truth of descriptive morality, and of
anthropology which entails neither first order nor second order ethical views. Yet it may indirectly support second order subjectivism: radical

differences between first order moral judgments make it difficult to treat those judgments as apprehensions of objective truths. But it is not the mere
occurrence of disagreements that tells against the objectivity of values. Disagreement on questions in history or biology or cosmology does not show that there are no objective issues in these fields for investigators to disagree about. But such scientific disagreement results from speculative inferences or explanatory hypotheses based on inadequate evidence, and it is hardly plausible to interpret moral disagreement in the same way.

Disagreement about moral codes

seems to reflect people's adherence to and participation in different ways of life. The causal connection seems to be mainly that way round: it is that people approve of monogamy because they
participate in a monogamous way of life rather than that they participate in a monogamous way of life because they approve of monogamy. Of course, the standards may be an idealization of the way of life from which they arise: the monogamy in which people participate may be less complete, less rigid, than that of which it leads them to approve. This is not to say that moral judgments are purely conventional. Of course there have been and are moral heretics and moral reformers, people who have turned against the established rules and practices of their own communities for moral reasons, and often for moral reasons that we would endorse. But this can usually be understood as the extension, in ways which, though new and unconventional, seemed to them to be required consistency, of rules to which they already adhered as arising out of an

the argument from relativity has some force simply cause the actual variations in the moral codes are more readily explained by the hypothesis that they reflect ways of life than by the hypothesis that they express perceptions, most of them seriously inadequate and badly distorted, of objective values.
existing way of life. In short,

Baier
Annette Baier. On Postures of the Mind.

Moral disagreement pervades society. In the real world we have no way of determining which ethical theory is true. This means the process of philosophical education is ultimately self-defeating. Moral rules are often too vague to actually guide decisions and even if they were specific enough people will bend the rules to justify their skeptical, self-interested beliefs. Thus, one cannot evaluate any of the myriad moral theories that exist as true, as they are not based on empirical evidence, but rather are created justifications for the lifestyle of the society or individual in which they were conceived. Then, moral perception varies within cultures Velasquez
Manuel Velasquez, Claire Andre, Thomas Shanks, S.J., and Michael J. Meyer Santa Clara University http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/ethicalrelativism.html

is relative to the norms of one's culture. same action may be morally right in one society but be morally wrong in another. For the ethical relativist, there are no universal moral standards -- standards that can be universally applied to all peoples at all times. The only moral standards against which a society's practices can be judged are its own. If ethical relativism is correct, there can be no common framework for resolving moral disputes or for reaching agreement on ethical matters among members of different societies. Rachels
That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. The

Ethical relativism is the theory that holds that morality

James Rachels, The Challenge of Cultural Relativism, 2000 As a beginning, we may distinguish the following claims, all of which have been made by cultural relativists:

1. Different societies have different moral codes. 2. There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one societal code better than another. 3. The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is merely one among many. 4. There is no universal truth in ethics that is, there are no moral truths that hold for all peoples at all times. 5. The moral code of a society determines what is right within that society; that is, if the moral code of a society says
that a certain action is right, the that action is right, at least within that society. 6. It is mere arrogance for us to try to judge the conduct of other peoples. We should adopt an attitude of tolerance toward the practices of other cultures. Although it may seem that these six propositions

go naturally together, they are independent of one another, in the sense that some of them might be true even if others are false.

Insofar as there is no way to empirically verify any claims by moral codes, nor adjudicate between differing moral claims as none of them can be followed back to their so-called objective source, we have no cogent reason to accept any moral theory as logically consistent, or prefer one over another. Lastly, we have no way to determine objective values for morality Mackie 2 furthers
Even more important, however, and certainly more generally applicable, is the argument from queerness. This has two

If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe. Correspondingly, if we were aware of them, it would have to be by some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary
parts,one metaphysical, the other epistemological. ways of knowing everything else. These points were recognized by Moore when he spoke of non-natural qualities, and by the intuitionists in their talk about a faculty of moral intuition Intuitionism has long been out of favour, and it is indeed easy to point out its implausibilities. What is not so often stressed, but is more important, is that the central thesis of intuitionism is one to which any objectivist view of values is in the end committed: intuitionism merely makes unpalatably plain what other forms of objectivism wrap up. Of course the suggestion that moral judgements are made or moral problems solved by just sitting down and having an ethical intuition is a travesty of actual moral thinking. But, however

complex the real process, it will require(if it is to yield authoritatively prescriptive conclusions) some input of this distinctive sort, either premises or forms of argument or both. When we ask the awkward question, how we can be aware of this authoritative prescriptivity, of the truth of these distinctively ethical premises or of the cogency of this distinctively ethical pattern of reasoning, none of our ordinary accounts of sensory perception introspection or the and confirming of explanatory hypotheses or inference or logical construction or conceptual analysis, or any combination of these, will provide a satisfactory answer; special sort of in is a lame answer, but it is the one to which the
headed objectivist is compelled to resort.

Leiter
Leiter "Moral Skepticism and Moral /disagreement in Nietache, UChicago Law School) As I argued in my book (Leiter 2002: 148-149), these kinds of remarks suggest a best explanation argument for anti-realism about moral value: the best explanation for our

moral experiences is not that they pick out objective moral features of phenomena, but rather that they are caused by facts about our psychological make-up: for example, ressentiment or what Neil Sinhababu has recently dubbed vengeful

thinking (Sinhababu 2007) to describe the mechanism by which slavish types come to believe strength, nobility, and wealth constitute what is evil. If the best explanation of our moral judgments appeals only to psychological facts about us, and need make no reference to

objective moral facts, then we have reason to be skeptical about the existence of moral facts. Lastly, Err aff on theory because: 1) Always err aff otherwise the negative can take advantage of the time skew by forcing me to cover bad theory. 2) Default aff on theory to counteract negative presumption in the round because automatically restricts affirmative ground, warranting a reciprocal affirmative advantage in theory.