Cory 2003-10-14

From Summa Bergania

August 26, 2006 - Note: I never got a reply to this rebuttal.

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From : David Bergan

Sent : Tuesday, October 14, 2003 12:07 AM

To : Cory Heidelberger

Subject : Rebuttal

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Hi Cory and Erin!

What a beautiful week! Such exquisite colors and perfect weather to enjoy them! I wish autumn could last the whole year. Do you think an omnipotent God could arrange for perpetually falling leaves and allow the rest of nature to remain as it is? Hmmmm...

Well, let's stop stalling and start rebutting.

Neg case:

I. Human life is value-neutral.

1) In I-B The Negative claims "Human life is the bedrock of every other value and social system we can conceive." I disagree. Every value system is totally independent of human life. Justice does not change when 1000 people die. Even if they die unjustly, the Standard that declares those deaths unjust does not change. Human life or death cannot budge Justice any more than a poor math test can affect the multiplication table.

Moreover, I think for true teleological ends, saving a random person's life is not likely favorable to the Negative. Is there a price that is too high for the Negative to pay to save a person's life? I think there is...

For proof consider this: Pretend a doctor has the power to completely heal a dying person at the cost of another person's life. How many people are there in the world that if dying, you, Cory, would sacrifice your life to restore them to full health? Any of your Montrose students? Your family? Friends?

My point: If there are no people for whom you are willing to make that sacrifice, then your value of life is purely selfish. Sure you may enjoy having Erin, Patrick, Toby, and possibly even David around, but their human life isn't greater than or equal to your own. Human life is subordinate to Cory's life. Having other, live, people may the most enjoyable/valuable part of Cory's life, but they are still only clowns for his circus. He can't sacrifice himself for somebody else, because if Cory dies, the Cory circus is over.

On the other hand, if you are willing to sacrifice yourself for someone else, then that shows there is a value greater than human life... namely the value of sacrificial love. And once we admit sacrificial love to be greater than mere human life, we open a door to lesser sacrifices, too. If we are willing to sacrifice our life to help someone else who is dying, is it not greater to sacrifice our life when they are not dying? Why should one squander their estate on their old dying body when they could help their grandchildren through college instead?

I don't see a third way. Either Cory's claims to value human life are entirely selfish (and we should not bother ourselves with them) or else he admits sacrificial love to be greater than human life – a value which I can ensconce nicely under stoicism.

2) As demonstrated in Cross Examination, human life has no tangible value. We do not admire living people simply because they are living, nor old people because they have more life-hours. We admire good people, productive people, innocent people, kind people, just people, and responsible people. Life and death does not affect those characteristics. If we admire Deitrich Bonhoeffer it is because of the things he did, not because he lived a long life or is currently living today. Furthermore, if we do admire Bonhoeffer, it is likely that we do so because of his sacrificial love. He was willing to be arrested and executed to try to save Europe and the Jews. We might as well remind ourselves that he failed, too, so our admiration (if any is left) is for a person that really accomplished nothing with his death... save, of course, the love he imparted by trying.

3) The Negative does not attain a permanent value. He does not give us a fountain of youth so that we may live forever. The best he does is postpone death, and there are no guarantees for how long that is. His value of “Human Life” is a glib sophist exaggeration. What he is really valuing is “On average, an extra 2 years or so of retirement… plus the satisfaction of knowing that when you die you were beyond all saving by current medical technology.”

4) Putting our own human life above all other values leads to cowardice. Any soldier with the Negative’s value ought to run away from combat. Even if we are fighting for liberty, equality, and fraternity, there is no sense in giving up our human life (“bedrock of every other value and social system”) for it. Run from battle, hide in the trees, and hope that the rest of the soldiers in your army are stupid and too unenlightened to preserve their own life… because in the long run it is in our best interest that our side wins the war so that when we emerge from the trees we don’t have to return home to a hostile, enemy-occupied town that could threaten our lives.

5) The part on deontology is bunk because Neg’s only example (Bonhoeffer) contradicts it. Moreover, I know him well enough to be sure that he thinks execution is too mild for Osama bin Laden. Nor is he a pacifist, which is necessary to uphold deontological grounds for human life.

6) His examples of God turn on him, because, ultimately, we have a world with human death in it, although it could be otherwise if God had so wished. Free will is apparently so valuable that it is better for us to have both it and death than neither. Moreover, if we really want to know whether God values human life or sacrificial love, I don’t think we have to look further than His Son’s example.

7) Kurt Vonnegut wrote an interesting play called “Fortitude”. Here he uses science fiction to make a point on values, like he did in Harrison Bergeron. The story goes like this: A wealthy woman makes a contract with a family doctor (aptly named Dr. Frankenstein) to pay him one million dollars a year for each year that he helps her live. When we enter the story, she is something like 150 years old and her head is on a tripod because the doctor realized that it would be easier to sustain her life if he replaced all her organic organs (strange alliteration…) with mechanical organs because it is easier to maintain an external kidney made of metal than an internal one made of tissue. Sylvia Lovejoy (the head on the tripod) is totally immobile and spends her days watching soap operas, listening to Mozart, and knitting sweaters with her mechanical arm. The arm, however, is designed so that it cannot reach or harm the rest of her “body”, thereby ensuring that she cannot take her own life. Another doctor comes to visit the mansion. Dr. Frankenstein goes on and on bragging about the intricacies of his “body”. The visiting physician interrupts with a simple question, “Sir, is she happy?” Frankenstein responds without hesitation, “I’m not a philosopher, I’m a doctor.”

The story continues with the visiting doctor going to speak with Sylvia’s head, hearing her lamentations, and securing her with a revolver. (Actually, I think there was another character involved with getting the revolver – it’s been awhile since I saw this.) Unfortunately, the prosthetic arm doesn’t allow Sylvia to point the gun at herself, so instead she waits until Frankenstein enters the room. She shoots him. In the next scene we see that Frankenstein’s head replaced Sylvia’s upon the tripod. The show ends with the visiting physician telling him about the years of soap operas and Mozart to look forward to as Dr. Frankenstein releases a nihilistic sigh.

The play was written in the late 60s. We may not be far from having the technology to make external organs, now. I, for one, do not look forward to a robotic or comatose life. But it seems like the logical conclusion of the Negative’s value to trap us all in such bodies (or how about The Matrix) so long as it preserves all of our lives.

8) I am convinced that this whole debate is over precisely one thing: the Negative's fear of death. And likely, the spread of socialized health care is linked to the masses sharing the same attitude. Gone are the days when civilizations prided themselves on their masculine bravery and readiness to die. I’ll elaborate more on these virtues when I address stoicism later.

For now, let me remark that the only lasting remedy to fear that I know of is faith, both natural and supernatural. We aren’t afraid of a sturdy ladder and the laws of nature because we trust them. We don’t trust a wobbly one, thus we are afraid of it. But there aren’t any natural things we can seek faith in to save us from the fear of death. And it is interesting to consider that the countries that have socialized health care (and are pushing for it) are also ones that have low church attendance. England, Canada, Sweden, Norway… Not that a country saturated in private health insurance symbolizes great amounts of faith, but it’s somewhere between that of a culture without health insurance and one with socialized health.

Insurance gives us an artificial, temporary peace of mind. Only faith gives us something eternal. So if my guess is correct that the fear of death is at the root of the debate (not only in our debate, but in the country’s, too), it is my opinion that a nationwide health care plan is a vain attempt at comfort.

II. Deserving…

1) My immediate response to the Negative’s contention is not likely to succeed because it is a Christian one: We don’t deserve anything. Our days, our health, our food, our friends, and everything else that is good is a gift to us from God. In C.S. Lewis’s _The Great Divorce_, he displays the Hellbound spirits as self-reliant stubborn souls that insist that they haven’t really done anything wrong… that everything they quarreled over in their life was something that they deserved. “I’m only telling you the sort of chap I am. I only want my rights. I’m not asking for anybody’s bleeding charity… I’m a decent man and if I had my rights I’d have been here [in Heaven] long ago and you can tell them I said so.”

The angelic response to the man was that yes, he does need the Bleeding Charity. But to ask for it is to renounce all pride and claims to have earned or merited or (especially) deserved anything we have done.

However, I will find it hard to legislate humility, nationwide… although I believe that Christianity says that God requires it, worldwide.

2) The best I can offer without the above Christian response is to say that we should earn the things we deserve. Again, with enough humble reflection, I know that I have been given far more than my soul deserves. Perhaps you have, too. But when it comes to be an issue about claiming things we want, it takes a lot of audacity to claim that I deserve something that I cannot afford. If we can’t be humble, at least we can be responsible.

3) A Neg response is that out of Christian charity we should support universal health care. Again, I disagree. I do believe we should help the sick and poor as much as we can as individuals and as Christian organizations… but not as a government. Borrowing from my dad’s email a while back, bonds of love and friendship are not secured when something is orchestrated through the government. Most preachers will tell you that the reason we need to give generously to impoverished people is not to help them as much as to help us. The selfless act of giving is what strengthens our character and our faith. There is no selflessness when a deduction is taken from our check… it was forced. As Rousseau said, “To remove all liberty from the action is to remove all morality from the act.”

There is no gratitude in someone cashing in a health care check that they had a right to. There is no love imparted from a worker who grumbles about half his salary being sent into FICA. There are no smiles on either side. A couple weeks ago when I gave a hitchhiker a ride and some money to help him find a job his response to me was, as he danced in the parking lot, “Oh my God! You made my millenium! God bless you!” He may have smiled all week. That whole interaction would have been lost if the welfare office took the money out of my check and gave it to him with a bus ticket. I don’t know him and he doesn’t know me, but there was love that day on both sides.

I concede that there will be more sick and injured people who will be saved from death (albeit temporarily) with universal health care. But nursing the body in such a way does not nurse the soul. We lose both humility and charity. Surely there will be other ways to express love if we had universal health care. It’s not that Christians will have lost their only opportunity to show charity. I am just saying that universal health care is not charity and Christians cannot accept it as an addition to or as a substitute for actual charity.

4) I continue to sustain my argument that we have no such grounds for a new right (or extension of a right) for health care. Rights-based philosophy was developed to give people the same opportunities in life… not the same benefits. The Negative is using charming rhetoric to smuggle a socialist idea with capitalistic phrases. The rights that protect the American Dream, the opportunity for everyone to be all they can be if they so desire, are being manipulated to tear it down. I can’t be all I can be if the government is going to tell me how to spend most of the money I work for. And the Negative agreed in Cross Examination that our logic seems to suggest that the “best, briefest, scariest” conclusion to draw is full-scale communism. Later in CX he states, “Put another way, in a society with “too many rights” (if that is a logically coherent statement), the weak and slothful may profit unjustly. In a society with too few rights (and I am more confident in the logical coherence of that statement), the strong and vicious may profit unjustly. If I must err (and I suspect I must) in the assignation of rights, I would rather take my chances with the weak and slothful.” However, I contend that history has answered this for us. The USSR gave everyone rights to all sorts of property and benefits. Yet, the Negative, after enduring not more than 2 years fled to one with fewer rights for benefits.

I think the lesson is that too many rights makes most people weak and slothful. And those that are born to be strong and vicious rise up without reprisal. But in capitalism, where some degree of strength and viciousness is permissible by the laws, this kind of people is allowed to reward themselves somewhat legitimately rather than wholly illegitimately. Either way, strength and viciousness is not desirable. King Solomon would drive the wheel over them all, but that usually would violate their right to life. So, I would rather live in a society that satiates the beasts with Jaguars and 1000-acre ranches, rather than one that steers them toward organized crime and corrupt politics.

III and IV. I agree with the conclusions of both contentions III and IV. I wish it were that everyone had to rely on actual person-to-person charity for health care because that is the only way to teach everyone Christian humility and sacrificial love. But that won’t happen. Making health care a right does precisely the opposite of what I want, because it removes charity and inserts the devilish word ‘deserves.’ It removes the shame out of asking for something that one can’t afford and doesn’t deserve; which, I think, is the attitude of salvation. God stuff aside, we both prefer the imbalance of capitalism to the straight jacket of communism.

Now let’s move on to the critique of something that isn’t stoicism.

It seems clear from the critique that the Negative has confused stoicism with cowardice and laziness. At one time in my case I discussed how a stoic attitude can seem like “apathy,” but I didn’t expect that statement to mislead the Negative into beating on a straw man. This confusion is easily corrected with the most common cliché about stoicism: “stoic determination.” Stoicism is not a loss of energy but a channeling of it. We give up reading the newspaper so that we can spend more time researching a cure for cancer. Virtually all of the Negative’s remarks against stoicism imply that stoicism is nothing more than jug-sipping and navel-gazing… ie that it is laziness and cowardice. But laziness and cowardice are not the Affirmative’s values. What the Affirmative is advocating is the determinism, the stiff upper lip and unflinching glare that stares Death in the eye socket. The attitude of the citizen that his civilization will be something better after he dies because he uncompromisingly dedicated himself to his task. He held the line. He kept his body on the battlefield when his soul wanted to run. He sleeps outside, exposed to the cold, disease, and wild animals, because it is his duty. To be a stoic is to take it like a man. Adversity and misfortune strikes, but he remains unmoved. That is the Affirmative value.

The stiff upper lip is what built the greatest empires in the history of the world. Name the three grandest pre-American empires. Are they not the Romans, the Chinese, and the British? The only common characteristic between those three empires is that they each rose on the wings of stoicism. When those empires started to decline was when they traded stoicism for epicurism. Stoicism gets things done. Epicurism is the unashamed pursuit of pleasure – the selfish laziness and cowardice that the Negative targets.

Crit I) Let’s distill the Negative’s reasoning:

A. Stoicism = accept things that one cannot change rather than make oneself miserable.

B. Christianity = strive for perfection.

C. Negative is a philosophical weasel.

D. Affirmative must choose A or B.

The deductive argument he looks to construct is this:

Premise 1 – Stoicism = accept things that one cannot change rather than make oneself miserable.

Premise 2 – Christianity = strive for perfection.

Premise 3 – A strive for perfection is unattainable.

Premise 4 – Striving for the unattainable makes us miserable.

Premise 5 – Stoicism removes the desires of those things which makes us miserable.

Conclusion – Stoicism removes Christianity. Therefore they are mutually exclusive. Pick one.

The reasoning is flawed, however, in Premise 4. Usually striving for the unattainable does make us miserable, but here we face a notable exception. Contrary to the Negative’s assumption, Aristotle (as well as Jesus, St. Thomas Aquinas, Confucius, and plain reason) tells us that the more virtuous we are, the happier we are… even if we cannot attain perfect virtue. Therefore, the Stoic razor does not slice away the pursuit of Christian perfection, because that pursuit does not make her miserable.

Crit II) Distilling:

Premise 1 – By themselves, individuals cannot do much in the state of nature.

Premise 2 – To the individual, much is external, especially securing life, liberty, and property.

Premise 3 – Life, liberty, and property can be secured by group effort.

Premise 4 – But striking a deal with his neighbors to create a government would be an arrogant overreaching into externals.

Conclusion – A stoic would not form a government by social contract means.

Again Premise 4, on which this critique stands, is just plain false. Nothing in what I have offered about stoicism says that the stoic has to remain on his own. None of the stoic Roman legions could have stopped Hannibal’s army on their own, but they did do it together. A wise stoic can realize the difference between an individual external and a group external. There is nothing un-stoic about securing something that is external to the individual through teamwork. Stoicism builds empires as a group effort.

Crit III)

Premise 1 – Stoicism calls on us to accept our limitations.

Premise 2 – Progress of all sorts begins with individuals questioning limitations.

Premise 3 – A stoic avoids misery by accepting limitations and turning to easier projects.

Conclusion – Stoics halt progress.

The slight of language in this critique turns on how the Negative uses the word limitations. I agree that I articulated Premise 1 in my case. However, the examples of limitations that the Negative continues with are not at all limitations in the sense that I meant them. I do not see racism, a fusion reactor, or a cure for cancer as a limitation. They may be currently beyond the limits of what our civilization has accomplished, but they are not an absolute limitation. Absolute limitations are things like the second law of thermodynamics, changing the multiplication tables, reviving a dead person, going back in time, un-getting a disease like AIDS, unscrambling an egg, un-breaking a jug, or wanting all your money back after you gave it away to complete strangers and have no means of ever finding them again. You can fix your jug or cure your disease, but that is different from un-breaking or un-getting. The fix may not restore it perfectly the way it was. The cure may harm you in some other way.

Moreover, I argue that it is the stoic that contributes the most toward progress. He is the one that is willing to give up his luxuries and clutter to focus everything upon the Cause. Always duty first. He is the one that leaves the bar to go to bed early because he has to go to the lab in the morning. He is the one willing to stay in the trenches and allow the invaders to pass only over his own dead body. The Negative’s ideal person is always checking over his shoulder to see if Death is near. The stoic knight stands where the Neg’s timid boy runs away. Virtue is uncompromisable in the stoic. We should be afraid of those are able to be bent to evil deeds at the threat of death.

Crit IV A)

Premise 1 – A stoic is to accept a condition that is beyond his control.

Premise 2 – If encountering a new condition, the stoic does not know if it is under his control.

Premise 3 – The stoic must then try to control the condition to see if it is control-able.

Premise 4 – No matter how many times the stoic tries to control the condition and fails, he might succeed with one more attempt.

Conclusion – A stoic can never be sure that something is beyond his control and thus never invokes Premise 1.

A clever argument, but alas, a generalization. It works for things like headaches, but not things like death. How long will the Negative remain over a corpse trying to revive it? Physics shows us that certain things are irreversible, and common sense tells us that more are. We cannot unscramble an egg by turning the egg-beater handle in the opposite direction. We cannot convert a tub of hot water into natural gas energy even though we can make hot water out of natural gas. We cannot travel back in time.

But to bring a better perspective on what happens when you try to control, let’s think about this for a moment: About a month ago a girl that I was really really interested in up and accepted an engagement ring from another man. According to Critique IV, I should do everything in my power to see if I can control this condition. Several thoughts come to mind. Murder. Spreading ruinous gossip about this other man. Attempting to humiliate him publicly. Begging the lady to court me. Rape. Blackmail. Sabotage. Kidnapping. Torture. And I think you’re right, I probably could secure her for myself before I exhausted the list. She may not love me, but she would be mine. Hopefully, you agree with the stoic position here. Otherwise we should have to respect all people that attempt to control others as just curiously testing their limits… and join the Dr. Sweet fan club.

Crit IV B)

Premise 1 – Stoicism cannot work unless it offers a clear, objective guide to the conditions and events beyond our control.

Premise 2 – Such a guide would require an impossible omniscience.

Premise 3 – Or clairvoyance.

Conclusion – Stoicism sucks.

Objective examples were offered earlier, and I didn’t have to use my omniscient powers to reach them. Common sense can tell most of us what the physical impossibilities are. If a physical limitation is in question, then there is no harm (to people, animals, or stoicism) to experiment around it.

However, the main thrust of stoicism is the acceptance of things in social situations, rather than attempting to control them through illegitimate means. I don’t think the Negative wants us to use murder, lying, mob frenzy, extortion, or torture to attempt to control ‘conditions’. And if I am wrong, I will surely murder him to keep his Machiavellian ethics out of my hometown.

I don’t see anything in the attacks made on the Affirmative case that I haven’t already defended. Most of it is confusion between stoicism and laziness/cowardice again… which was sufficiently clarified. Please cross-apply my arguments to where they fit, because I don’t have any desire to repeat myself, nor do I expect you to have a desire hear it again. If I disappointed you by not addressing something you are interested in, let me know.

Well, it is no longer the nice day now that it was when I started. But it’s still a fine autumn. I’d love to visit the cabin again, and I think I have a version of my video game that ought to work on your computer. So if you’re up for a 1-player Scrabble-like game, hot chocolate, and a relaxed conversation, just holler.

Your friend,

David

--David Bergan

"Do you see someone who is hasty in speech? There is more hope for a fool than for anyone like that."

-Solomon