NC

I negate the resolution Resolved: The United States ought to prohibit the extraction
of fossil fuels on federal public lands and waters.

To clarify the terms of this debate, I offer the following observations for the burden
of each side.

First, to prohibit is to prevent something by making it impossible

[[Link] This
means that the affirmative burden is
to defend that there will never be a single instance in which fossil fuels could be valuable in
the future. If the negative wins even a risk that there is an instance or will be a future
instance that fossil fuels could be valuable and extraction could be necessary, you as a
judge must vote negative.

Second, Cornell Law defines the term United states as the 50 states and the
territories. Because the resolution says the word federal, the public lands and waters
are federally owned. This means the affirmative burden is to prove that individual
states should enact a plan that interferes with what happens on federal land.
However, the states do not have jurisdiction over federally owned land, making the
resolution incoherent.

My framework is that moral truth doesn’t exist.

First, Motivation – Ethical principles must be intrinsically motivational otherwise agents have no
commitment to following principles. Absent this ethics can’t guide action as I could agree X is bad yet
still imply that I am going to do X regardless. However, no universal motivation exists. As Wittgenstein
explains everyone has their own tastes and inclinations and acts independently, thus proving a universal
motivation could not esxist as we could never all have the same motivations.

Second, Moral responsibility necessitates free will. Van Inwagen explains that without free will, we can’t
be morally responsible for our actions. Imagine if somebody forced you to rob a bank by threatening to
kill your family – we wouldn’t hold you morally responsible since you lacked the freedom to commit that
action. Similarly, agents lack free will since they can’t control what actions they take, so they aren’t
morally responsible for their actions.

Free will doesnt exist for 2 main reasons. First, Coyne in 2012 is a scientific study on free will
that proves that neuroscience and molecular biology converge on the belief that our brains and
wills are just instantiations of particles and molecules, predetermined by stimulus that
necessitates action. All our actions are constructs that our brain interprets external to our will
making our actions not our decisions.
Second, Colin McGinn proves that either determinism is true, or it is not. If determinism is true,
then all our actions are governed by the laws of physics, including the molecules that structure
our brain, and since we can’t change or disobey the laws of physics, we lack the freedom to
control our actions. Even if the universe is not deterministic, then probabilistic laws would
govern these molecules, which still would not give us free will.

Third, Leiter in 1 proves that justified beliefs are not sufficient to prove a truth as they are just
suggestions or examples as to why x could potentially be true, not absolute truth. This proves absolute
truth does not exist, and in fact we can never be 100% certain about objective facts.

Fourth, Leiter in 2 explains that due to the competition between ethical theories ie kantians and
ulititarians, there will never be an absolute moral truth. Theories will always compete, two hundred years
of ethics prove that this truth will never be brought about.

Finally, Moral facts are impossible due to the is/ought gap

Gray [Bracketed for clarity] Grey, JW. "The Is/Ought Gap: How Do We Get "Ought" from "Is?"" Ethical Realism. N.p., 19 July 2011. Web.
28 Oct. 2015. [Link]

How is the is/ought gap evidence of moral anti-realism? Moral anti-realists think that there are no irreducible moral facts—all moral truths can be
reduced to our beliefs, desires, commitments, and so on. Anti-realists don’t think that anything is right or wrong apart from something like a
social contract—it’s practical to commit ourselves to behaving ethically insofar as we will benefit when everyone else makes the same
commitment as well. Three
reasons that the is/ought gap is often taken to be evidence for anti-realism is
because (a) the anti-realist sees no reason to think that what morally ought to be the case is a
“moral fact” beyond our beliefs, desires, and commitments; (b) the anti-realist sees no reason to
think that we could ever know such moral facts exist; and (c) the anti-realist solutions to the
is/ought gap could be superior to the realist solutions. Is what morally ought to be the case a moral fact? Facts are
states of affairs—actual things that exist and relations between things that exist. That a cat is on
the mat is a fact. It’s unclear how what morally ought to be the case can be a fact. What morally
ought to be is often quite different from the actual state of affairs in the world. A thief steals, a
murderer kills, and so on. People aren’t actually doing what they ought to do. How can a[n] state
of affairs that ought to exist be said to be a fact when what ought to be the case is often quite
different from what actually [is] exists or happens in the world? Anti-realists see no good answers for these
questions, but they think anti-realism can solve the problem by avoiding it. If there are no moral facts, then we no longer need to answer these
questions. How can we know what morally ought to be the case? Hume was an empiricist, so he thought we could only know about reality
through observation. What we observe isn’t necessarily what ought to be. The actual state of affairs in the world can be quite different that what
people morally ought to do. We do know what is the case because we can observe it. Looking at what is the case—the actually obtaining
nonmoral facts—doesn’t seem to tell us what ought to be the case. So, it’s not obvious how we can know what morally ought to be the case
assuming that it’s a moral fact. Anti-realists think that we can avoid this problem entirely by becoming anti-realists
and admitting there are no moral facts.
This negates the resolution for 3 main reasons:

First, harms and benefits do not exist as they would imply that something is morally better than
something else, however skepticism proves that everything has no moral worth, thus meaning that
skepticism would negate as the benefits could never outweigh the harms

Second, Skep linguistically negates because sentences derive meaning from their linguistic properties
corresponding to facts about reality. For example, a claim like “my dog has four legs” requires you to
have a dog and for that dog to actually have four legs. If should means morality and that doesn’t exist, the
statement is false.

Third, the skeptical conclusion being true would deny the existence of justice prima facie,
meaning that we could never claim a side to be more just.

Look, our argument is really simple. We have provided multiple reasons why ethics dont work
empirically and moral facts dont exist. This negates as the resolution implies a moral obligation,
however we have won five reasons as to why skepticism would prove the resolution negates.