Hopefully post more philosophical stuff soon, but for now, here’s something a little different on my visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral during my time studying abroad.

When a miscommunication left me alone in the hotel lobby, I wasn’t pleased, but the idea of a self-determined morning in London quickly filled me with excitement. I could go up to St. Paul’s. Slipping on my sunglasses, I stepped outside and made my way to the e-bikes near the hotel. I could have taken the Tube, but the weather was too nice and the freedom of a bike was too enticing. I fumbled with my phone for directions and unsteadily pushed off the curb. The electric assist was stronger than anticipated, and it made for an enjoyable but uneventful trip to the top of Ludgate Hill.

I bought a ticket and made my way inside. Instead of a wardrobe was a side entrance and instead of coats were noisy schoolkids and sweaty tourists, but my response to passing into the new world was the same as Lucy’s, minus her confusion: wonder and excitement to explore somewhere previously unknown. I was struck by the apologetic nature of the church itself—the dome showing the life of the apostle Paul, the Byzantine mosaics of the life of Christ, and the grandeur of the architecture itself. How could someone not be moved to praise the Lord? My favorite piece of art was a mosaic of Christ’s crucifixion, where his cross is a living tree, full of bright blossoms and lively limbs, bringing life to Adam and Eve. The cathedral and the people who preserved it seemed to be clearly nourished by this Tree of Life.

After exploring the ground floor, I descended the stairs into the crypt. A below-ground chapel was surrounded by what seemed like hundreds of buried people. In one sense, they’re not “my people.” I’m not British, even if I can tenuously claim to be a Scot. But in another sense, they certainly are my people. I may not know their stories, but as fellow members of the mystical body of Christ, I can relate to them as brothers and sisters. There were too many to be able to read all of their names or titles, so I made my way around and climbed the stairs back to the ground floor.

Subscribe now

In the midst of all the heroism and beauty, it was strange to see people taking pictures of the sanctuary and treating it like a tourist attraction, yet I did the same myself. It was likely that many—potentially a majority—of the people around me were not Christians and were not interested in the cathedral for spiritual reasons. I wondered if this meant that the beauty of the cathedral is not a strong enough apologetic. Britain is full of slowly emptying churches, many of them quite beautiful and full of tradition and art. Maybe there were more Christians in the crypt than in the pews on a Sunday.

If this was the case, then what did St. Paul’s stand for? I wondered if its importance in the Second World War could be reduced to it being a last vestige of a shared national identity, an English Alamo. If that’s all it was, it would make sense that its position as an icon of London had been eclipsed by other distinctive buildings, like the Tower Bridge and Elizabeth Tower. I thought about this, but made my way up the many, many stairs to the upper Golden Gallery. Pressed near to my fellow pilgrims, I looked out on the city, filled with people going about their days. Likely, many of them didn’t give a thought to the imposingly tall spire or the faith that it stands for.

The faith that it stands for—I realized that’s what is really most important. I think that’s part of why the story of St. Paul’s Watch appealed to me so much. They were regular people, standing in the face of evil, defending what they believed to be good, true, and beautiful. Yet, in Christ, even the mundane can be a shining representation of this heroism. One does not have to be a Peter fighting Maugrim. It’s entirely noble to be a Julian of Norwich, ministering to others by listening to their struggles.

I saw the cathedral differently after my pilgrimage. I now understand that a beautiful cathedral isn’t enough to keep a nation’s faith alive, but that it’s also not right to discount beautiful, symbolic architecture as futile. St. Paul’s Cathedral and its history is an instantiation of some of the most powerful Christian apologetics: Radical, hopeful bravery in the face of evil, shown through the individuals who risked their lives for the Church. Beauty, present not only in the architecture, but in the lives of those who have served the church and in the many, many Eucharists held in the building. Self-giving love, present in mosaic form and in the lives of many of the people who are buried in the crypt and who attend the church.

My unexpected pilgrimage answered, for the most part, the questions that I began to ask on the initial bike ride. Inside the church was a beautiful place to worship, in a very Anglican style. Those who sought to preserve the building likely did so for some mix of nationalism and Christian faith. The architectural heart of the cathedral is the altar, and in an ideal world the people of God who embody Christian love, worshipping together, would be its heartbeat. Even St. Paul’s hasn’t escaped the fraught relationship between Christ and culture. There was plenty to be discouraged about, yet I boarded the Tube hopeful, encouraged by what had been built and sustained by the saints—whether they be Peters or Julians or even Edmunds—who came before me.

Baylor has reached a missional crisis—a “turning point,” if you will. Baylor students and administration need to decide what the purpose of a university is, and the place politics has in pursuing that purpose. If we don’t choose our answers to those questions, Baylor will drift, unintentionally but inevitably, into an answer none of us would have chosen.

I believe that the purpose of a Christian university is to seek the truth rigorously, through research and socratic discussion, and to foster Christian virtue in its students. By and large, the TPUSA event (and the “alternative” event it inspired) didn’t help advance that purpose, and because of that, I believe that Baylor shouldn’t have allowed it on campus.

Read it here!

It’s one of my favorite pieces I’ve written, please check it out! It’s a similar vibe to what I write here.

https://thestandardspeaks.com/become-not-a-bot-advice-from-baylor-professors-and-a-drunk-russian-on-maintaining-your-humanity/

Subscribe now

Abstract

All penal theories ought to aim at justice. However, two of the most prominent penal theories in the United States, retribution and rehabilitation, are often viewed as making competing, mutually exclusive claims to justice. This Comment argues that this tension can be overcome, so long as rehabilitation and retribution are understood in their truest sense: as restoration and proportionality, respectively. However, this tension has become entrenched in the American system through a history of oscillating judicial interpretations culminating in the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. This Comment offers a framework by which these issues can be overcome, and the theories can be synthesized. It proposes that these ideals must be held in tandem: the justice system should hold unwaveringly to retribution to define the scope of a sentence but should employ rehabilitative means to administer it when possible. This approach resolves the statutory contradictions currently besetting U.S. courts and offers a practical path toward restorative, proportional punishment.

Subscribe now

Please check out everyone’s hard work, but mine starts on page 65!

Baylor Undergraduate Law Review, Fourth Edition

One of the strongest arguments against theism is the Problem of Evil (POE). Within Judeo-Christian history, the problem of evil has always been present, beginning with the book of Job. The POE rests on the assumption that evil exists. This evil cannot exist without a moral standard, the most plausible standard of which is God. So, the presence of evil in the world provides evidence that God exists, meaning the atheist has no choice but to deny that evil exists. While the most common current form of the POE is an inductive argument, I will be providing a deductive counterargument. My argument can be summarized as follows:

1. Some things are evil

2. Calling something evil requires an objective moral standard.

3. If that standard exists, God exists. (God is the best candidate for the standard)

4. If evil things exist, God exists.

5. Therefore, God exists, and either evil things do not exist, or God exists.1

Some things are evil, and some things are more evil than others. This is relatively easy to conclude personally but more difficult to prove philosophically. On an intuitive level, it is clear for example, that there is something deeply wrong about murder qua killing of an innocent human being. By committing murder as a rational being, a person has committed a moral evil in the way that they haven’t if they arationally kill another person. Accidental killing is tragic but is a different sort of evil in than murder, as evidenced in the framework of our criminal sentencing system.

Before making a further argument, it will be helpful to define exactly what is meant here by “evil.” Importantly, the theist can hold that some things are evil without claiming that evil was created by God. This is made possible through the Augustinian and Thomistic tradition, which defines evil as privation of the good rather than as something that has being in itself (ST 1.48.1). A full defense of this view is beyond the scope of this paper, but the central tenets are relatively simple: Existence (or “being”) is essentially synonymous with the good. Everything that has being must have a cause, the first of which is God. This means that all evil is a sort of non-being or a corruption of something good and is not created by God.

Under this conception of good and evil, things can be good to a lesser extent than something else yet still not evil (Davies 2014). A dog is less good than a person, insofar as it participates less in the being of God than a rational being does, but the dog is not evil. If the dog were unhealthy in some way, then that deficiency could properly be called evil, and the same is true for a person who has acted immorally. They have failed to be in the way in which they ought.

If some things are properly called evil, then an objective moral standard exists. In fact, evil can be understood as the failing of an objective moral standard. The use of the word evil implies the normative claim that something has gone morally wrong in the world, and that a perfectly good world would not contain such moral wrongs. The claim that “genocide is evil” is a radically different claim from “I dislike genocide,” or even “I wish genocide would never happen.” It implies a standard of morality outside the individual. If there is no such standard, then the existence of good and evil is merely a useful fantasy of society, perhaps instituted by the weak to oppress the strong as Nietzsche posits (1913). In such a world, the murderer accused of an evil act would simply claim that what he did was not evil, and there would be no grounds to refute him.

Subscribe now

Assuming we can conclude such a standard does exist, what sort of standard would it be? The most plausible moral standard is that which is the greatest good, namely God (ST 1.6.2). This standard could not be the greatest evil, because, per privation theory of evil, the greatest evil cannot exist, because to be is to be good. Some mean between good and evil would also fail as a standard. For one, there is no plausible candidate for what this intermediate standard could be. An intermediate standard would also fail because it provides no real definition of good and evil, no etiology for morality, and no reason to obey moral law. God, taken as the greatest good, provides a standard which solves each of these issues. Because God provides an origin for goodness, He is therefore the standard of goodness and, by proxy, evil.

Through this argument, we can see that if evil exists, God exists. This then poses an issue for the proponents of the POE. Because evil exists only if God exists, it logically follows that either evil does not exist or God does exist. The atheist is forced to choose between those two options.

To remain an atheist, one is then required to hold that evil does not exist. One potential way to salvage the POE is by replacing “evil” with “pain” (Draper 1989). The proponent of this “Evidential Problem of Pain” (EPOP) would claim that it is unlikely for an omnibenevolent, omnipotent God to allow gratuitous pain in the world. The argument appears stronger because it depends less on the evil actions of human beings, and more on the design of the world, which includes natural disasters, for example. Although potentially more convincing than the POE, the argument breaks down for the same reasons. The main issue is that still lacks a standard—it is not clear what “gratuitous” means here and how the level of pain which is gratuitous may be found out. If gratuitous means more than necessary, how can one claim what pain is necessary and what is not? Presumably, the defender of the EPOP would not claim that the pain experienced from touching a hot stove is gratuitous. This means that pain itself is not being put forward as an argument against theism. On the other hand, the EPOP proponent would claim that drought-induced starvation causes gratuitous pain. Here, there is still no real standard, although the EPOP defender is presumably assuming a certain telos of the human person, where some pain is edifying and some is harmful. This assumes some standard of good beyond pleasure or pain, raising the same issues as the POE.

The problem of evil has always been a thorn in the side of theism. However, the existence of evil actually poses a problem for the proponent of the POE, as evil requires a standard, the existence of which is most plausible in a theistic worldview. For this reason, the POE is internally inconsistent, and the view of the theist is, at the very least, consistent.

Bibliography

Aquinas, T. (n.d.). Summa theologiae (A. J. Freddoso, Trans.). University of Notre Dame. https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/TOC.htm (Original work published 1265–1274).

Davies, B. (2014). Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae: A Guide and Commentary. United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

Draper, P. (1989). Pain and Pleasure: An Evidential Problem for Theists. Noûs, 23(3), 331–350. https://doi.org/10.2307/2215486.

Nietzsche, F. (1913). The genealogy of morals: A polemic (H. B. Samuel, Trans.). In O. Levy (Ed.), The complete works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Vol. 8). T. N. Foulis. (Original work published 1887).

Appearances notwithstanding, AI has issues—one, mainly.1 It isn’t intelligent. This is a striking claim, considering the name of the technology at hand, but it is also a well-founded, reasonable claim, made by people much smarter than me (who I happen to agree with). I could dive straight into the philosophical issues, like I do here, but let’s here define intelligence without terms like rational soul or substance, as those can be a bit convoluted. Once we have a working definition, we’ll look at why AI doesn’t meet that definition and what this means for AI progress as a whole.

It should be abundantly clear that you are intelligent and a calculator is not. Let’s take that as a first principle. There are objections, even to the idea that “you” exist, but this is a quite strong place to begin. Assuming this premise, we find that intelligence is a sort of capacity rather than something one does. A person (let’s call him Fred) may never learn how to do any math beyond basic arithmetic, but that doesn’t mean Fred lacks the basic quality of intelligence. On the flip side, even a calculator that can solve second order derivatives of polynomials isn’t intelligent. It’s simply following what’s been encoded into its system.

Consider what would happen if we taught Fred, who’s unfamiliar with math, how to solve a quadratic. There’s two paths we could take. We could give him a sort of formula that shows him how to get x alone (hint hint: quadratic formula). Assuming he plugs the numbers in correctly, he will end up with the right result. While this is similar to what the calculator is doing, there is one key difference. Fred may not understand what the formula does, but he understands how to follow the formula’s steps, and he chooses to follow those steps. This is, of course, not true of the calculator. To summarize, even if one takes the first path to teaching Fred how to solve the problem without teaching Fred what the formula does, some intelligence is required on the part of Fred.

The second path is to do what our teachers did in high school algebra—teach the actual mechanics behind why the formula works. The delta between Fred and the calculator is most clear here. Fred can apprehend the quiddity (the what-ness) of a quadratic equation, judge that it follows the same pattern as other quadratic equations, then reason through the steps of the formula. The calculator does no apprehending, judging, or reasoning. This is the traditional way of understanding the intellect. It is that which apprehends reality, judges it (or puts things observed into categories), then reasons from those categories.

It’s here that we come to the main issue with the definition of intelligence, where many people defining intelligence in the AI world smuggle the bathwater in with the baby, to use a mixed metaphor. We just saw that intelligence is a capacity, meaning the intellect is more foundational than the degree of intelligence which something, like an AI model, seems to have. No matter whether Fred learns anything at all or seems smart, he still has an intellect, unlike a calculator or AI model.

“But Isaiah,” the e/acc techno-optimist bro says, “ChatGPT seems so clearly intelligent, it’s passing all these benchmarks (at an exponential pace), and it’s well on its way to PhD-level intelligence. Why would you limit your definition so as to frame out something that is so clearly intelligent.” Point taken, but that’s an argument from intuition with no working counter-definition of intelligence. To the tech bro’s credit, he’s in good company. Alan Turing, the father of computer science, made the same argument for a vague definition of intelligence. He believed that the question of whether machines could think was “too meaningless to deserve discussion.” From Turing’s perspective, once a machine could pass his “imitation game,” now known as the Turing Test, one could only conclude that the machine was thinking, thereby answering the initial question without actually defining intelligence.

I like an example from Ed Feser to explain the absurdity of Turing’s view. It goes something like this: Using an imitation game to decide whether a machine is intelligent is like deciding whether a street magician can do real magic based solely on a performance seen from 25 feet away. You’d be letting the machine or magician operate convincingly in their element, then accepting that appearance as reality without getting to the mechanism behind the magic. The incoherence of the claim that AI is truly intelligent becomes clearer when you map the tech bro’s objection onto the example of the Magician: “Why would you want to investigate up close? There’s no need! Every time I come back to watch this guy, he’s even better than before! See, that’s magic.” No. This is absurd. There exists as much intelligence in an AI as magic in a magician. This even applies to AI that can pass the Turing Test.

Point being, Turing is wrong. No matter how convincing AI is at simulating intelligence, it simply is not intelligent. Let’s now answer the question as to why AI is not only not intelligent, but it cannot be intelligent in the way that we’ve defined it.

Most of the AI models you’re familiar with (Large Language Models like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc.) are predictive models. They predict what the right response to the user is based upon their training data and data from the conversation.2 This prediction can also be called “pattern-matching.” I’m not a huge fan of the autocomplete-on-steroids way of looking at the issue, but this framing is actually more accurate than calling AI intelligent. LLMs are, in a way, farther from intelligence than a calculator, because they don’t use formal thought processes and are mostly built on semantics. Even when you ask an LLM for the solution to a math problem, it’s not reasoning through it.

Just for fun, I asked Perplexity’s Sonar-Reasoning3 model to add five and three. The reason I asked that model specifically is that it gives the sources it uses from its training data, even for super simple questions, and it also shows its “reasoning” process. Everything between <think> and </think> wouldn’t be shown to the user normally.

From this, it’s clear that the model is operating without intelligence. It’s only been trained to answer with the most likely answer. Because most of the internet gives the same answer to 5+3, that’s the answer the model gives. One of its sources is an internet math forum. It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the ability of AI to handle more complicated tasks that actually require reasoning or deciding on the truth or falsity of something.

That’s not just me speculating. A recent study from Apple confirms that complex questions with right or wrong answers trip up AI. When AI models, even “reasoning” models, were asked to solve word problems requiring mathematical reasoning (the results of which can be extended to formal logic), the AIs failed miserably after a certain number of clauses were added to the questions. They summarize that drop in ability to solve the word problems:

This is in line with the hypothesis that models are not performing formal reasoning, as the number of required reasoning steps increases linearly, but the rate of drop seems to be faster. Moreover, considering the pattern-matching hypothesis, the increase in variance suggests that searching and pattern-matching become significantly harder for models as the difficulty increases.

The researchers also find that even when only the names of the characters in the word problems are changed, it affects the models’ success.

It is both striking and concerning that such performance variance exists when only changing proper names, as this level of variability would not be expected from a grade-school student with genuine mathematical understanding.

In plain terms, an AI that costs billions to create is worse at understanding word problems than a child. The reason this happens is that AI, again, is just predicting what the best response to the question is, without truly knowing what the important part of the question being asked is. So, it guesses that the names are as important as the numbers in the problem, and this changes its answers.

This is the Achilles Heel of AI, especially promised superintelligent systems. It is quite literally impossible for AI based on pattern-matching neural nets, like all the AI models you’re familiar with, to be intelligent. Yes, they can predict, but they’re farther from actual intelligence than a calculator. A working calculator will always give the right result if you input the right numbers and operations. You can be sure that, as long as you’re reasoning using a valid syllogistic form with true premises that your conclusion will also be true. The same cannot be said for AI.4

Likely, we haven’t reached the plateau of what predictive AI can do. Yet, we ought not rely on the answers of any model like we do on human intelligence, and the more complicated, novel, and unique the questions are, the more likely that the AI model will fail to solve the problem. AI is built to provide plausibility, not truth. The human intellect is built to seek out truth through perceiving, judging, and reasoning. Thus, there exists not a quantitative difference in the degree of intelligence between AI and the human intellect, but a qualitative, insurmountable divide.

If you found this interesting, be sure to follow Def(ai) on Instagram.

However, there are very few high school debaters in the grand scheme of things, and there are only so many interesting topics to cover in that sphere. In light of this, I’m shifting the focus of the substack.

If I end up as one of many young trad philosophy-enjoyers on this platform, so be it. But I’ll be different, I promise. I’m renaming the substack Acta et Verba, a kind of play on “acta non verba” (actions, not words). Because, after all, words are important and tightly linked with action. I want to focus on the practical application of philosophy, whether that be in AI, geopolitics, or sociology. If you’re a debater, upcoming posts should still be applicable to you, but they’re no longer explicitly for you. Thanks for sticking with me.

A note on the new logo/pfp: It’s a section of a painting of Augustine by Philippe de Champaigne, where the light of truth passes through Augustine’s head and sets his heart on fire. Hopefully I can help this happen in some small way with my words, so that that inflamed heart will then drive the reader to action as well. Also I mostly picked it because it’s a sick image.

Toward the end of the great depression, Harvard University began a study. They took a cohort of 268 college sophomores, and started tracking the mens' health. They could have stopped the experiment after five or ten years, but they decided not to. They tracked the health and happiness of these men for the rest of their lives, expanding the study to the mens' wives and children, and their children's children as well. It continues to this day.

What the study has found makes sense if you've ever considered your life as a human being from a common-sense perspective, but is counterintuitive from the perspective of health science. George Vaillant, one of the study’s earlier directors, summarized the findings after 80 years: “There are two pillars of happiness revealed by the Harvard Study. One is love. The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away.”

I know this is a deep thought, but it speaks directly to what I want to convey to the classes who are graduating after the class of 2025, whether that's next year or in five years. Don't take your current stage of life and the people you're around for granted. Being grateful in the short term is the best way to be happy in the long term.

Whoever first said comparison is the thief of joy was really on to something. Sometimes we forget that this issue of comparison applies not only to other people who seem to be doing better at the same stage of life as us, but to those in another stage altogether. It's as easy for the 7th grader drawing maps of the world to wish they were finally a highschooler as it is for the senior to wish they were still working to memorize the contours of the Iberian peninsula.

This way of living life pushes love away. it takes the part of your self that would in some way be filled by what you're currently doing and keeps it empty, saving it for the “back thens” and the “somedays.” This is quite a natural but strange thing to do. Because, of course, the back thens were good for the you back then, and the somedays are there for the you you will someday be.

Subscribe now

There's nothing wrong with reminiscing or dreaming, when those things give you wisdom and motivation for the present. But if you notice yourself becoming strangely and vaguely unsatisfied with the present, it's likely an issue with your mentality rather than with reality. If your life seems more dreary than before—and i know this is cliche—keep going; look for the good in the present. Remember to be looking out for when that dreariness is gone and life feels sunny because it can be easy to overlook. Living in the present and loving the present is actually the best way to keep perspective.

Once we've found a way to keep from pushing love away, we must address the first pillar of happiness from the study—love itself. Love is a tricky word to define. If you've been in church very long at all you've probably heard about the various meanings of love and how our one English word doesn't do the Greek words justice. This is true. Yet, it's possible to over-emphasize the differences. Yes, loving music is different from loving family, and family is more important. But as philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “without music, life would be a mistake.” I don't agree with him on much, but he's completely right here. Life would be dreary without family and friends, but so would it be without music and trees and food and books, all of the things that we were created to desire and love in a world that God called “good.”

You all are young, and to be fair, so am I. I think the default mindset for a child or young person is one of love and wonder. It's only later that we're told implicitly, “no, you were living in the world of a child.” Generally, children are not told this explicitly. But from the way some grownups act, a child can tell that the adult must have a different view of the world—a dimmer, bleaker one. This seems strange to the child, but they conclude that the adult must be right because they're an adult.

So, to the upcoming classes, don't lose the love of your childhood—that simple, childlike love of people, God, and creation. Keep a spot open for this love in the repetitions of your daily life. Not only because a smart guy from Harvard says you ought to, but because it's truly what we're made for.

Share

“Although Alchemy has now fallen into contempt, and is even considered a thing of the past, the physician should not be influenced by such judgements.”

— Paracelsus

Introduction

The Artificial Intelligence developer is closer to his goal than the alchemist was to his. As lead cannot be brought close to gold, alchemy was found desperately wanting. The same is not true of AI. A new headline breaks every few days, claiming AI is encroaching ever closer to that faculty that sets humanity apart—intellect. However, this new artificial intellect is fools gold. Regardless of the size of the computer or the sophistication of the program, AI will never be rational.

There are few technologies that are as entrenched in popular discourse as AI. A recent study found that a “substantial proportion (67%) of people attribute some possibility of phenomenal consciousness to ChatGPT and believe that most other people would as well” (Colombatto & Fleming 4). This should not be misinterpreted as saying that most people believe ChatGPT has human-level consciousness. At the very least, it does show that current AI models simulate human behavior so convincingly that the distinction between real intellect and artificial simulation deserves thorough exploration. Before we begin to dissect the issue of AI and human uniqueness and establish the insurmountable difference between them, we must begin by defining several key terms. Both AI and human uniqueness are heavily loaded terms and deserve unpacking.

Artificial Intelligence

What is artificial intelligence? The layperson’s definition is likely along the lines of “a computer that does what people do” or “a machine that thinks,” neither of which are especially helpful to disambiguate the term itself. If we were to use the first definition, we might conclude that a washing machine is artificially intelligent, as it senses the amount of clothes it contains and then washes them, tasks that are historically unique to humans. However, this is certainly not the generative sort of AI dominating the current zeitgeist.

The second candidate is a bit more helpful. Its main issue is that it assumes computers can “think” in some way similar to a human, meaning this definition leaves the present thesis dead in the water. Some have tried to downplay the significance of “thinking.” Even the father of computer science, Alan Turing, believed that the question of whether machines could think was “too meaningless to deserve discussion” (Turing 442). From Turing’s perspective, once a machine could pass his “imitation game,” now known as the Turing Test, one could only conclude that the machine was thinking, thereby answering the initial question (Turing 442). This pragmatic sort of framing is common but rather unhelpful when trying to answer the question at hand. In fact, recent developments in generative AI, especially Large Language Models (LLMs), show that Turing’s Test is inadequate to determine whether machines can think (Jones and Bergen). At best, passing the Turing Test is a necessary but not sufficient condition for determining whether a computer can think. At worst, it adds confusion by equivocating a machine’s performance with its essence.

Where does this leave us? The man who coined the term “Artificial Intelligence” in 1955, Stanford professor John McCarthy defined it as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines” (Manning). Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, recognizes that intelligence is difficult to define in his 2024 paper Machines of Loving Grace. He defines it as “a general problem-solving capacity” that “includes abilities like reasoning, learning, planning, and creativity” (Amodei). This assumes that AI can actually do these things rather than simulate them, but it does provide a clear picture of what those at the forefront of AI development are striving to create. A concise definition, not dependent on what tech CEOs would like AI to be, is that AI is any sort of program designed to simulate the capabilities of the human intellect.

In this paper, the AI discussed largely fits under the umbrella of Machine Learning (ML), the process by which AI can be programmed to improve its ability to complete certain tasks. Within this umbrella, the most prominent type are artificial neural nets, which aim to replicate the behavior of neurons within the human brain (Manning). The AI that rose to prominence beginning with ChatGPT in December of 2022 are all LLMs, which are a specific type of neural net. With this sort of AI, the supposed threat to human uniqueness is quite clear: If AI does what humans do and operates like a human brain, AI seems very close indeed to moving man from a place of secure dominion over creation to competition with a technological brother.

Subscribe now

Human Uniqueness

Many of the most contentious philosophical debates boil down to who or what humans are and what we ought to do in light of that. The school of philosophy that gives the most consistent and applicable framework to answer this question is the Aristotelian-Thomistic school of thought, developed by Thomas Aquinas through a synthesis of Aristotle’s thought and a Christian worldview. The primary reason I have chosen to defend human uniqueness Thomistically is not because it is explicitly Christian, but because it is an internally consistent philosophical system which is concordant with the human experience. Following this tradition, the human person is defined as a rational animal. Not only is the human being rational, but is also “a sensitive, living, and corporeal substance” (Eberl 2). “Sensitive” here means being able to perceive the world, not being emotionally flappable. Part of what makes humanity human are the corporeal, animal aspects. In fact, this is half the definition. However, the other half of the definition is rationality, which implies some level of immateriality, as will be explored later. The synthesis of animality and rationality, the corporeal and immaterial, is exactly what makes us human beings.

From a Christian perspective, humanity is distinct not only in rational capacity, but also in calling (Bjork 99). While this is true and ought not be discounted, minimizing capacity to focus on purpose builds a shaky philosophical foundation, as capacity informs purpose. As Aristotle writes, the “virtue of a faculty is related to the special function which that faculty performs” (Nicomachean Ethics VI 1.7). A “virtuous” plant will be one that uses its vegetative capacities well. It makes no sense to claim that a plant is a bad plant because it cannot play piano—the ability to play piano is far beyond the capacity of a plant. However, if a plant withers when it ought to grow, our natural intuition is to regard it as somehow defective. This intuition is correct and can be applied to the “rational animal” as well.

This may seem like an abstruse way to talk about what makes humans different from creation. However, it is necessary to analyze this specific intellectual capacity in order to delineate between humanity and the rest of creation. This capacity is unique to humanity among material creation. Making the argument for human uniqueness the other way around, starting with the assumption that only human beings can be relationship with God, is more difficult to defend. This view must hold that AI could be nearly indistinguishable (in true ability, not just appearance) from humanity, but would not have a personal relationship with God. This begs the question as to why this is the case. The argument provides no mechanism by which humanity is by nature unique or why God could not call an AI into a relationship with him. In a world where humanity and AI have the same capacity, we could not assume that they would not differ in purpose or calling. In summary, capacity and purpose are inextricably linked, meaning that an analysis of capacity is enough to establish a philosophical basis for purpose.

To clarify, the image of God is not reducible to having an intellect and does not mean being better at math than a calculator. Living into our identity as images of God includes virtuous exercise of all of our capacities, not just the intellect. This means loving and willing what is good, and exercising our animal capacities well. To be human means being more than animal, but not less. God is not a gnostic; He created humans corporeally for a reason. Possessing an intellect is also qualitatively different from coming up with a correct solution to a math problem, beating a chess grandmaster, or creating an image or poem. Simulating the abilities of humanity, even becoming better than humanity at certain tasks, is radically different from truly having the abilities of humanity. The argument for AI ought not be made pragmatically or through equivocation, and the definitions given provide a firm foundation on which to make the argument of this thesis. To summarize, AI aims to become rational by way of simulation, and what sets humans apart are our animality and rationality.

Definitions aside, unease about AI has grown rapidly. With the release of each new AI model, AI seems to encroach more and more onto humanity’s turf without showing signs of stopping. It is an incredibly powerful technology, and while overhyped, is in the process of altering our relationship with learning, art, work, and other people. Artificial advancement in any of these spheres of life is worth discussion. However, the area that is most pressing is that of rational life itself. Will AI ever become a rational animal? To put it simply, no. AI poses no threat to a proper Christian understanding of human uniqueness and personhood. To establish this truth, we must first establish more fully the Aristotelian-Thomistic position on the philosophy of hylomorphism, the soul, and rationality, as well as why this view ought to be preferred over the alternatives. Secondly, we will consider the implications of this view in the context of computation and AI. Finally, we will analyze how the impossibility of a rational, animal AI affects, or does not affect, a consistent Christian philosophy of personhood.

Personhood as Rational Soul

What does it mean for humans to be unique? I have already posited that the best definition of human uniqueness is an Aritstotelian-Thomistic one, but what does this conception actually entail? Answering this requires an exploration of hylomorphism, the Aristotelian theory that everything physical is made up of form and matter (Feser 178). The distinction between form and matter can be thought of this way: Take an acorn, for example. It is made up of matter, and that matter is currently actualized in the form of an acorn. However, it does not have to remain this way. That acorn contains the potential to become an oak sapling. Meaning, it can retain its matter but take on a different form. There is such a thing as an acorn, but whatever matter makes up an acorn will not remain an acorn forever. It is also possible for an acorn to remain an acorn, even if a few bits of it are broken off. In this way, form accounts for the “permanence, unity, and actuality” in the world, while matter accounts for the “changeability, diversity, and potentiality” in the world (Feser, 180). While the theory is not without challenges, it is an intuitive way to reconcile the notions of being and becoming that occupied early philosophers like Heraclitus and Parmenides (Sproul 20-22). A full defense of hylomorphism is beyond the scope of this project, but a more in-depth exposition can be found in Feser (2024).

An additional aspect of hylomorphism is needed to understand its relation to artificial intelligence: the distinction between substantial and accidental form. Substantial form has to do with that which is created from prime matter, or matter without form (Hochschild, 26). This is admittedly hard to imagine. Everything with substantial form (a substance) is made directly from prime matter, and not by combining other substances. Again, this is a counterintuitive statement on face value which actually makes sense upon inspection. What is the difference between a sperm and egg glued together and a zygote? The former has accidental form, and the latter has substantial form. The distinction in proper terms is that a thing with substantial form “has properties and causal powers that are irreducible to those of its parts,” while a thing with accidental form does not (Feser 183). A sperm and egg glued together are still just a sperm and egg. A zygote is no longer a sperm and egg. It has new properties and causal powers.

Most naturally occurring things have substantial form, while most man-made objects have only accidental form. Water, an oak tree, and a dog all have substantial form, because their attributes can’t be reduced to the sum of other substances. All of these things have a sort of existential inertia by which they remain what they are and function as themselves. A computer, on the other hand, has only accidental form—a computer’s causal powers can be reduced to the function of the other substantial forms contained within it (the materials within the semiconductors, LEDs, and other parts). There is no need to refer to causal powers beyond those of the materials to explain or define what is happening in the computer. The same is not true of the acorn. While the acorn contains cells with their own function, the ability to grow into an oak tree is not reducible to those cells and can only be explained by looking at the acorn holistically.

Let us consider the distinction between the form of non-living and living substances. It is intuitively clear that there is a difference between a rock and roly-poly, beyond the fact that they are composed of different chemical elements. The bug is alive. It has been common, as science has become increasingly materialist, to minimize the distinction between living and non-living things (Carroll). There is, however, a difference.

This difference, according to Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, is that all living things possess a soul—not an ethereal, otherworldly blue shape superimposed over the physical living thing, but an animating principle. The soul is the form of a living thing (Feser 494). No more than this. The difference between something living and something dead is that the living thing has a certain form: that of a living thing. It is often difficult for the westerner living in a post-Cartesian world to think of the soul defined this broadly, but the Hebrew and Greek words nephesh and psychē often translated “soul” refer simply to the animating principle of a living thing, not our modern conception of the human soul (Feser 494). The most important distinction between the two views is that the Aristotelian soul possesses a “unity not a duality” (Boylan). It is not that a person possesses or inhabits a body, but that a person is a unity of body and soul. With our conception of the soul disambiguated, let us explore why the counterintuitive notion that every living thing possesses a soul has powerful explanatory power and is not as strange as it first appears.

The idea that any living thing possesses an animating principle (or soul) means that it is self-moving (Feser 210). This is the traditional distinction between the living and non-living. The best way to delineate this is by referring to whether a substance is self-moving (possessing immanent causation), or not (possessing only transeunt causation). In this case, “self-moving” does not necessitate movement through space, but rather development toward a certain end.

Edward Feser defines immanent causation as such: “A causal process is immanent when it originates within the agent and terminates within it in a way that tends towards the agent’s own self-perfection or completion” (210). Any living thing acts in such a way as to “complete” the living thing in some way. A complete acorn is a healthy oak tree, a complete wolf is one that exists in a pack and has enough to eat, and a complete human is a rational animal in community with others and God. The causal powers of a living thing stand in stark opposition to the causal powers of something like a boulder. It and other non-living things exhibit only transeunt causation, where an event or state of affairs brings about another event or state of affairs through the object (Chisholm 7). For example, the wind may cause an avalanche, but this is much different from a human beginning one with dynamite. The wind is not an agent and is itself the result of transeunt causation. The avalanche does not “terminate in anything like completion or self-perfection” (Feser 211). On the other hand, the development of the human or acorn will. This distinction between immanent and transeunt causation will become more important as we consider the position of AI within this philosophical framework. For now, we will look at the distinctions between classes of living beings and why these different beings have different standards of self-perfection.

Not all souls are created equal. Aquinas distinguishes three classes of souls, set apart by their causal powers in reference to the organ that performs the action and the object to which the action is directed (Summa Theologiae I q. 78 a. 1). At the very bottom is the vegetative soul, whose “vegetative power acts only on the body to which the soul is united,” according to Aquinas (ibid). Earlier he explains that this power includes those operations of the soul that are “performed by a corporeal organ, and by virtue of a corporeal quality” (ibid). This means that all things which possess a vegetative soul (e.g. plants or fungi) operate on a fully material level. That’s not to say they do not have form, but that their interaction with the world is fully material, and they cannot sense or experience the world in any way.

Animals possess not only vegetative powers, but also the animal powers: sentience, appetite, and locomotion. These powers are distinct from and irreducible to the vegetative powers. For our purposes, the most important is sentience, but any sentient animal has the other two powers to some degree (Feser 227). Sentience can be thought of as the ability to sense and have the sensation of sensing—essentially, consciousness. Animals have differing degrees of sentience, but each one has the experience of qualia (Feser 230). These include “hot and cold, wet and dry” and every other sense (ST I q. 78 a. 1). The exact number of qualia is not important. The most important idea for our purposes is that qualia cannot be adequately accounted for from a reductionist point of view.

Thomas Nagel gives a more modern perspective in his essay, What Is It Like to Be a Bat? He comes to the conclusion that the subjective experience of being a bat is unknowable with a reductionist perspective on mind. He conducts a thought experiment by imagining he was a bat:

In so far as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat (Nagel 439).

This issue has come to be known as “the hard problem of consciousness,” a phrase originating from David Chalmers’ seminal work, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness. In it, he posits that many of the so-called problems of consciousness are relatively easy to explain, but the hard problem is “how it is that these systems are subjects of experience” (Chalmers 201). While being quite difficult to account for through reduction to underlying processes, it fits nicely into the Thomistic-Aristotelian context, where part of the definition of animality is having qualia. Thousands of pages have been written on this topic, but since the absolutely necessary parts of the animal soul have been covered, we ought to move on to an exploration of the rational soul.

If sentience is non-unique to human beings, what makes us distinct from animals? While we ought not beg the question and assume we are qualitatively different from animals, there are excellent philosophical arguments to substantiate this. Central to this idea is the third, highest genus of soul: the rational soul. Thomas writes that “there is yet another genus in the powers of the soul, which genus regards a still more universal object—namely, not only the sensible body, but all being in universal” (ST I q. 78 a. 1). What he means here is that not only can a being with a rational soul sense objects that can be hot or cold or red or blue, it can understand intellectually the concept of “hot” or “blue.” It can comprehend universal concepts, including those of math and logic, that aren’t tied to specific, sensible objects. While the human substance is composed of body and soul, the intellect is fully incorporeal (Van Dyke 190).

This can be shown true by evaluating the nature of thoughts. One of the stronger arguments for the immateriality of the intellect is James Ross’s argument from the indeterminacy of the physical, here articulated by Feser:

1. Formal thought processes can have an exact or unambiguous conceptual content.

2. Nothing material can have an exact or unambiguous conceptual content.

3. So, formal thought processes are not material (Feser 308).

Premise one can be explained like this: Whenever one uses addition, one can be completely confident that the result will be a valid result, as long as one does the math right. We can also assume that formal logic will always be valid. For example, if all men are mortal, and Socrates is a man, we can conclude with complete certainty that Socrates is mortal. While the individual premises could be wrong, the structure of the argument will always be valid. To say otherwise is to claim that formal thought processes are not determinate. Denying the determinacy of math and logic undermines essentially all systematized knowledge, or at the very least philosophy and science. Like many skeptical arguments, the argument against Ross’s first premise is self-defeating; to deny that math and logic are determinate assumes that there is something real that can be denied. Moreover, the act of denial is an act of logic (Feser 314-15). The most the skeptic can do is cast doubt on the argument, they cannot refute it logically.

Premise two is also relatively straightforward. As was just explored, math and logic have determinate conceptual content. The second premise claims that for this to be true, these concepts cannot be defined or carried out materially. If we attempt to use something material to define addition, we cannot know with certainty that we are actually referring to addition and not something else. It may be helpful to consider the inverse. If the human thought process was fully material, would we be able to define or access these universal concepts unambiguously? Premise two says no.

Imagine an adding machine. If it functions correctly, it will be doing what we call adding when two addends are inputted. However, we cannot assume it really is adding, rather than something else—“quadding.” Quadding would be indistinguishable from adding, except that when one of the addends reaches a certain magnitude, the result is 57, even when this would not be the answer using addition (Harris 845). The number 57 and the magnitude of the addend is irrelevant. The point is that there always exists some addend which would produce an answer that would show that one had not been adding but instead quadding. It is impossible to know which operation is being carried out unless one is looking at that machine in light of a determinate concept of addition. In the same way, it would be impossible to tell whether a fully material human mind is adding or quadding, even for the mind itself. This means that no concept could be determinate for that mind, leading to the issues discussed under the first premise.

Another instance proving this point is the written or spoken word. Consider the word “music” (the specific word is not important). The organization of letters on the page means something not because the letters themselves have determinate conceptual content, but because it is the agreed upon way to communicate the determinate concept of music. What is fundamental are the concepts of addition and music, as anything material can only represent the concepts, not define them unambiguously. To summarize, nothing material can possess truly determinate conceptual content.

These two premises are brought together in the conclusion. If we cannot be certain that a material machine is adding and not quadding, it does not have determinate conceptual content. The human mind possesses determinate conceptual content (e.g. it can be certain it is adding or reasoning validly; it knows what “music” is). Therefore, the human mind is not a material machine. There are several other arguments for the immateriality of the rational soul, but the argument from the indeterminacy of the physical is especially apt for a discussion of artificial intelligence.

While the Aristotelian-Thomistic conception of the soul seems most reasonable, there are plenty of competing theories. One objection from Christians is that Christian definitions and beliefs should not be tied to a theory formed outside the faith. This is a reasonable objection insofar as it is true that, looking purely at Aristotle, we do not find reference to the image of God or human purpose as image bearers. However, just as non-Christians can do excellent science, so can unbelievers do great philosophy. As Thomas writes, philosophy is the handmaiden of theology (ST I q. 1 a. 5). Truth is not contradictory. Thus, anything true grasped by Aristotle will be in accordance with Biblical truth, and may be used to gain a fuller understanding of the universe. As always, there is much more that could be said, but two main theories of the soul deserve refutation: Cartesian Dualism and denial of the soul altogether.

Cartesian Dualism (or Substance Dualism) holds that the body and mind are two separate substances (Robinson). According to René Descartes, the fully immaterial mind puppeteers the fully material body through the pineal gland in the brain (Robinson). Descartes was influenced by the increasingly mechanistic philosophy and science of his day, and sought to affirm the uniqueness of humanity by focusing on epistemology rather than metaphysics (Blum). While this is a worthy goal, dualism is deeply flawed. It alienates the mind from the world, meaning there is no valid mechanism by which we are able to trust our experiences and perception (Feser 262). Why should our perception of the world be intelligible when there is no reason for our mental image of “a car” to be tied to an actual car? On the contrary, if a person is made up of form and matter as soul and body, this removes that causal gap. As has been covered, soul and body are two necessary aspects of a single substance, not two separate substances that are linked together in some way (e.g. through the pineal gland). This view allows for the world to be knowable because the self is directly interfacing with reality and because perception of reality is tied—causally—to reality.

There are many routes the denier of the soul can take, but the most common view is that of reductionism, which denies hylomorphism and claims that the functions of the soul can be fully explained by material processes. It has already been shown that human rationality is only possible with an incorporeal soul, meaning rationality without such a soul is impossible. This means that the reductionist ought only trust their reasoning because it seems to have worked in the past rather than because it is exercising formal logic or entertaining determinate concepts. They thus have no business making arguments against the existence of the soul that advocate for stances beyond agnosticism on the issue. Even if the reductionist accepts this, the issues do not end there. Because reductionism holds that the processes of the mind are reducible to the transeunt causal processes of molecules within the brain, they must hold that there is no qualitative difference between what happens in a living, thinking human being and what happens in the water flowing down a stream. This entails no free will or moral responsibility, and is contrary to the conscious human experience. The issue of potentiality and actuality that hylomorphism puts to rest then needs to be answered in another way as well. Now that the rationality and animality of the human and immateriality of the soul has been established, we have everything needed to establish the impossibility of artificial rational animals and a material intellect.

The Impossibility of Artificial Souls

It is not only improbable for an artificial agent to possess a soul, but impossible under the framework established above. I do not mean to establish a tautology or frame AI out of the picture as a way to establish the impossibility of an artificial soul. It would be illogical to use Thomistic philosophy only because it best disproves artificial personhood. I am making the inverse argument. Thomistic philosophy best explains the soul, especially human rationality, so the same principles ought to be applied to AI. These principles show that an artificial soul and intellect are impossible.

One does not simply create an artificial soul. Remember that a soul exhibits immanent causation and is part of a substance as the form of the matter that makes up the substance. The animating principle of every living thing is the soul, so to create an ensouled artificial intelligence requires both creating a man-made object with substantial form and that the created object be alive.

Any AI system is an artifact, and so cannot have substantial form. In this context, an artifact is the combination of multiple substantial forms into an object with accidental form (Feser 182). A car is a great example of an artifact. Everything about it is reducible to the causal powers of the individual substances within it (the wheels, the tires, the gas). With few exceptions, everything man-made falls under the category of artifact (Feser 182).

While it may be possible to create an object with substantial form, it would be impossible to engineer an ensouled computer. First, anything with substantial form cannot be made up of parts fastened together. The form has priority, in that it “comes first” and actualizes the matter (Goyette 787). One cannot assemble independent substances together and expect that a single substance will emerge. In the same way that Frankenstein’s monster is science fiction, so is the idea that combining parts can yield something with substantial form. It is true that living things have parts. However, “the form does not result from assembling the parts” in the case of living beings (Goyette 787). Secondly, any living being by nature possesses immanent causation and thus has the ability to “self-perfect.” In this way, any part within it will be ordered by the form and does not on its own possess substantial form (Rooney 1). The form causes the parts to function together as one being, not like the transeunt causation of a computer where each function the computer performs is mechanistic and caused by what came before it (quantum computers are a bit different, but the same principle applies). To put it very simply: we cannot combine distinct, substantial parts and expect that thing to become self-perfecting. This is contrary to Thomistic metaphysics as well as the human experience. There is a difference between a live person and a dead body, even though all the parts remain. Something went wrong within the person such that the matter that made them up could not sustain a soul any longer. Every living being begins with the causal powers and organization of a soul, so we cannot put parts together and expect that it will then have a soul.

Suppose we try to bypass this issue and jump straight to the creation of an artificial intellect or a machine that truly thinks—the issues do not get easier. As was shown earlier, an artificial intelligence that would threaten human uniqueness would be one that does not appear rational, but is rational. Like stated above, rationality is a function of the soul, and so would not be possible for something that exhibits only transeunt causation. Feser gives three issues that any theory of artificial intellect must account for: “grasping concepts, putting concepts together into propositions, and reasoning logically from one proposition to another” (403). These three propositions build on each other, so we ought to begin with the first one.

We have no reason to assume an artificial intelligence can grasp concepts for the same reason I do not believe my laptop understands the words I am currently typing. While Large Language Models and other machine learning models work slightly differently from the typical computer, critiques of computational intelligence apply to them as well. A computer follows a series of if-then algorithmic rules using electrical signals. Take a calculator, for example. It is possible to run a complicated program to find the derivative of a polynomial, but that does not entail that the calculator following the algorithm understands derivation (Feser 406). In fact, AI is unintelligent to the degree that not only does it not understand what the program is doing, but it also cannot understand that it is running a program in the first place (Feser 407). If a human is asked to follow a series of steps, they may not understand where the steps are leading, but at the very least they understand the steps themselves and exercise their will to carry them out. A computer does not understand the steps and certainly does not have a will. It follows them passively and transeuntly. No matter how powerful the processor in the computer becomes, it will not suddenly begin “thinking” rather than “processing” once it reaches a certain threshold. Remember also quadding and adding. A computer is fully material, and nothing material can possess determinate conceptual content. Thus AI cannot possess an intellect for the same reason that our intellects must be immaterial.

In its hardware and software (and certainly in its perception), AI is distinct from the traditional computer. LLMs operate using neural nets, which look to simulate the processing of neurons in the brain and operate in parallel rather than serially (Feser 412). They are also trained on “large-scale datasets of text” in order to predict what ought to come next when writing a sentence or paragraph (Feuerriegel et al. 114). This sort of AI is impressive. It can generate incredibly plausible and often true responses to anything a user may ask. However, they operate through prediction rather than logical reasoning, meaning they are not truly “thinking.” This issue is not one that may improve with time, especially with LLMs (Feuerriegel et al. 117). Generative AI is probabilistic by nature, and so, just like any program, will not “become rational” once it reaches a certain size.

These issues raised are not novel. Professor Geoffrey Jefferson presciently addresses this AI optimism, which was prevalent even in 1949:

It is not enough, therefore, to build a machine that could use words (if that were possible), it would have to be able to create concepts and to find for itself suitable words in which to express additions to knowledge that it brought about. Otherwise it would be no more than a cleverer parrot, an improvement on the typewriting monkeys which would accidentally in the course of centuries write Hamlet (1110).

Although we live in a world where a fully AI generated paper can pass a peer-review process, said AI cannot and will not create concepts (Sakana AI). Jefferson continues, noting that even AI in 1949 needed “very intelligent staffs to feed them with the right problems,” predicting modern AI prompt engineering (1110). The reason truly intelligent machines have not appeared since Jefferson was writing is that it is not a technological issue preventing their creation, but an ontological one.

Because LLMs are not living substances, they cannot be sentient. Therefore, the question of whether an AI can be rational is shown invalid even before it can be raised, as substantive being is a prerequisite for rationality. If, for the sake of the argument, we allow for an intellect without this prerequisite, machine rationality can still be shown impossible through the fact that LLMs are material and predictive.

The argument could be made that these proofs claiming that an artificial intellect could not exist overstep the proper bounds of philosophical knowledge. This counter-argument aims to dismiss rather than refute the arguments raised. Turing’s analysis addressed earlier falls in this vein (442). He says in response to Jefferson's argument, which Turing names The Argument from Consciousness, that he “does not think these mysteries [of consciousness] necessarily need to be solved before we can answer the question” of whether machines can think (447). Turing claims that the only way we know anyone is conscious is by the fact that they appear conscious, framing Jefferson’s position as solipsistic. While Turing’s framing is a bit uncharitable and defensive, a softened version of Turing’s pragmatic view is quite common among AI optimists.

We have already seen the issues with this. A calculator simulates the behavior of the human intellect, yet it will never know what a number is. The alternative to Turing’s view, therefore, is not to be a solipsist as Turing claims. It is to see philosophy and logic as a valid source of knowledge. Turing and others make the assumption that someday the philosophical claims will be proven wrong, while at the same time leaving them largely unaddressed. As Feser explains, current quantum physics, biology, and neuroscience all support a Thomistic worldview, for reasons that go beyond the scope of this paper. Thomistic philosophical framework has proved strikingly resilient against past threats, so it is only logical to apply it to present and future concerns as well. However, if AI-personhood empiricists demand Cartesian certainty before they concede that AI cannot be a person, they will be disappointed. Every argument is by nature dubitable, so to require absolute certainty will only lead to radical skepticism. In light of this, the arguments presented ought to be enough to hold the view that AI cannot be a person.

Subscribe now

Implications for Christianity

The central conclusion that can be drawn from this paper is that the proper Christian conception of the soul remains safe from philosophical and empirical threats. That is not to say that Christians should dismiss radical ideas about AI personhood out of hand. Turing presents an intense critique of an argument he names The Theological Objection (443). He summarizes the objection as follows:

Thinking is a function of man’s immortal soul. God has given an immortal soul to every man and woman, but not to any other animal or to machines. Hence no animal or machine can think (443).

This objection seems to be framed in a Cartesian Dualistic way. Turing responds by saying that if a soul is something God implants into a being, there seems to be no issue with God giving a machine a soul if he saw fit. This is an issue for the Cartesian, but not for the Thomist. If the soul is viewed as an intrinsic animating principle and the form of the body rather than as the self implanted into a body-puppet, Turing’s analysis is invalid.

Later on, Turing appeals to the failure of theological proof-texting to refute Copernican theory (444). While he is correct to critique that sort of refutation, the position of the Catholic Church at the time of Galileo is hardly the paragon of the Christian relationship to scientific advancement. Galileo himself offers a lengthy rebuttal to the Church’s exegesis in his letter to Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany. He first affirms “that the holy Bible can never speak untruth—whenever its true meaning is understood,” but that “if one were always to confine oneself to the unadorned grammatical meaning, one might fall into error” (Galilei). He continues by explaining that the Bible speaks in such a way, when describing the physical world, that was familiar to the common people of the time, so that they would not be turned from theological truth by anachronistic explanations of the natural world (Galilei). The central thrust of Galileo’s argument is that truth in one field will not contradict truth in another. This is as true for the development of AI, philosophy, and theology as it was for heliocentrism and theology. Although mysteries of faith ought not be minimized, the existence and nature of the soul is not a mystery, and thus can and ought to be defended by more than proof texts.

The current view among Christian denominations is relatively consistent with this paper. While many do not frame human personhood in the Thomistic way, each affirms human uniqueness. The Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission issued a statement in which they “affirm that God created each human being in His image with intrinsic and equal worth, dignity, and moral agency, distinct from all creation” (ERLC). They claim to be representative of evangelicals generally, and they do seem to be. The ecumenical World Council of Churches’ statement on AI focuses on the ethical implications of AI use rather than the nature of the technology itself, yet still implicitly affirms the dignity of humanity (WCC). As one might expect, the most comprehensive ecclesiastical defense of the Thomistic position on AI is that of the Catholic Church. It affirms that human beings are called to be rational, embodied, relational, truth-seeking stewards of the world, which includes rightly defining and managing AI (Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Culture and Education). Each ecclesiastical view is generally consistent with Biblical truth and the principles presented here. So long as Christians do not repeat the errors of the Galileo Affair, a healthy dialogue between the sciences and theology is not only possible but probable.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the supposed threat of AI on the proper understanding of human uniqueness does not stand under scrutiny. AI ought not be minimized altogether. It has and will certainly continue to carry out tasks we once believed only humans could do. We live in a world in which people prefer artificially generated poems to those of human greats (Porter & Machery). It is probable that AI will become increasingly entrenched in our daily lives. We may reach a day where it is seriously difficult to affirm the uniqueness of human rationality. And yet, that rationality itself urges us to do so. But just as a many sided polygon will never be a circle, so too will AI never be truly human (Feser 216). We were created in the image of God, so the danger is not that machines may compromise that fact by rising to meet us at the throne of God, but that humanity may be dragged away from the foot of the cross. We must recognize that “the danger is not in the multiplication of machines, but in the ever-increasing number of men accustomed from their childhood to desire only what machines can give” (Bernanos 829). Like any groundbreaking technology, it may augment humans, replace humans, or even alter humans, but it will never be human.

Some may say this leaves humanity in a place of unsteadiness. The reductionist would affirm that this is just as well, that the believer in Imago Dei has been deluded and is finally being proven wrong beyond a doubt. This is a hyperbolic framing. But just as the stock market occasionally goes through a correction, some of the current Christian unease can be attributed to a correction on human uniqueness from a point of pride to a more reasonable place. The point of this essay is not to encourage humanity to puff up its chest and deny that AI could threaten human ability. Human uniqueness ought not be equated to ability. If human worth was best measured by ability, social darwinism would be the norm. If one is not prepared to accept social darwinism, one ought not worry about humanity’s worth. AI itself does not even threaten to surpass the worth of an acorn. No matter how often or emphatically the alchemist boasts of his ability, he will never truly succeed in changing lead to gold, nor circuitry to a soul.

Works Cited

“The AI Scientist Generates Its First Peer-Reviewed Scientific Publication.” Sakana AI, 12 Mar. 2025, sakana.ai/ai-scientist-first-publication/.

Amodei, Dario. "Machines of Loving Grace." Oct. 2024, http://darioamodei.com/machines-of-loving-grace. Accessed 23 Mar. 2025.

Aristotle, and H. Rackham. Aristotle in 23 Volumes. Vol 19, the Nicomachean Ethics. Harvard University Press, 1934, http://data.perseus.org/citations/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0086.tlg010.perseus-eng1:6. Accessed 21 Mar. 2025.

Bernanos, Georges. "La révolution de la liberté." Le Chemin de la Croix-des-Âmes, Rocher, 1987, p. 829.

Bjork, Russell C. "Artificial intelligence and the soul." Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, vol. 60, no. 2, June 2008, pp. 95+. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A179693744/AONE?u=anon~afed192d&sid=googleScholar&xid=31f8ec7e. Accessed 23 Jan. 2025.

Blum, Paul Richard. "Substance dualism in Descartes." Introduction to philosophy: Philosophy of mind, Rebus Press, 2019, https://press.rebus.community/intro-to-phil-of-mind/chapter/substance-dualism-in-descartes-2/.

Boylan, Michael. “Aristotle: Biology.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://iep.utm.edu/aristotle-biology/#H5. Accessed 4 Mar. 2025.

Carroll, William. “The Limits of Life: Biology and the Philosophy of Nature.” Public Discourse, The Witherspoon Institute, 26 Feb. 2014, www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2014/02/12102/.

Chalmers, David J. "Facing up to the problem of consciousness." Journal of consciousness studies 2.3 (1995): 200-219.

Chisholm, Roderick M. "Human freedom and the self." The Lindley Lecture. University of Kansas Philosophy Department, 1964.

Colombatto, Clara, and Stephen M. Fleming. "Folk psychological attributions of consciousness to large language models." Neuroscience of Consciousness 2024.1 (2024): niae013.

Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and Dicastery for Culture and Education. "Antiqua et Nova: Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence." Vatican: The Holy See. 28 Jan. 2025, www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20250128_antiqua-et-nova_en.html. Accessed 24 Mar. 2025.

Eberl, Jason T. "Aquinas on the nature of human beings." The Review of Metaphysics (2004): 333-365.

ERLC Staff. “Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles.” The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, 11 Apr. 2019, https://erlc.com/policy-content/artificial-intelligence-an-evangelical-statement-of-principles/.

Feser, Edward. Immortal Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature. Editiones Scholasticae, 2024.

Feuerriegel, Stefan, et al. "Generative ai." Business & Information Systems Engineering 66.1 (2024): 111-126.

Galilei, Galileo. “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, 1615 .” Received by Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham University, 15 Feb. 2025, https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/galileo-tuscany.asp. Accessed 24 Mar. 2025.

Goyette, John. "St. Thomas on the Unity of Substantial Form." Nova et Vetera (English Edition) 7.4 (2009).

Harris, Joshua Lee. "Indeterminacy and the Immateriality of Thought." Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia vol. 80, Fasc. 3, 2024, pp. 841-862.

Hochschild, Joshua. "Form, Essence, Soul: Distinguishing Principles of Thomistic Metaphysics." Distinctions of Being: Philosophical Approaches to Reality. American Maritain Association, 2012, pp. 21-35.

Jones, Cameron R. and Benjamin K. Bergen. "Large Language Models Pass the Turing Test." arXiv, 31 Mar. 2025, doi:10.48550/arXiv.2503.23674. Accessed 7 Apr. 2025.

Manning, Christopher. Artificial Intelligence Definitions. Stanford University Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, September 2020, https://hai.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/2020-09/AI-Definitions-HAI.pdf.

Nagel, Thomas. "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" The Philosophical Review, vol. 83, no. 4, Oct., 1974, pp. 435-450, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2183914. Accessed 23 Jan. 2025.

Porter, Brian, and Edouard Machery. "AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably." Scientific Reports 14.1 (2024): 26133.

Robinson, Howard. “Dualism.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2023/entries/dualism/.

Sproul, R. C. The Consequences of Ideas. Crossway, 2000.

Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981.

Turing, A.M. “Computing machinery and intelligence.” Mind, vol. 59, no. 236, 1950, pp. 433-460.

Van Dyke, Christina. "Not properly a person: The rational soul and ‘thomistic substance dualism’." Faith and philosophy 26.2 (2009): 186-204.

WCC Central Committee. "Statement on the Unregulated Development of Artificial Intelligence." World Council of Churches, 24 Mar. 2025, www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents/statement-on-the-unregulated-development-of-artificial-intelligence#_ftnref6. Accessed 24 Mar. 2025.

Our resolution for nationals a timely topic, although law enforcement is getting much less media attention than it was a couple of years ago. The resolution gets to the root of what it looks like to enforce justice and balance the protection of the innocent with the apprehension and punishment of the guilty.

Resolved: In U.S. law enforcement, accountability ought to be prioritized over effectiveness.

Full disclaimer, these are my preliminary thoughts, so I may change my opinion in a few weeks, just like I will probably rewrite my case. However, these thoughts should be a good starting place before we get into the heat of NITOC prep.

To begin, let’s look at some of the main issues I saw come up at the first tournament with this resolution (some of which weren’t hard to foresee). Mainly, circularity/definitional issues and priority. Then finally, we’ll look at next steps and I’ll make some predictions.

Circularity

I believe that the crux of this resolution will be on what the actual conflict between accountability and effectiveness is. It is so incredibly easy to get caught up in muddy definitions debates where both debaters and the judge get stuck in the muck. Neither debater should want this to be the case. Even the negative! Although on a theory level the negative ought to win if the debate is a wash and the affirmative fails their burden, this doesn’t mean the judge will see it that way. Contra many speech intros, definition debates should be avoided mainly because they add confusion, not because they’re boring. Now to the terms themselves. I won’t give specific dictionary definitions, but rather some overarching principles.

Accountability

I’ve seen accountability defined most often as the regulations by which we hold officers accountable. This is a decent definition and one that the negative should really agree too, because I think it actually favors the negative side, if only a bit.

Another sort of definition is one that includes “ethical conduct.” This one is works well if you can get away with it, because it makes the affirmative the ethical side. Be careful, though. When affirmative frames the the round as “ethics vs utilitarian crime reduction at all costs,” it creates a sort of straw man that is no fun to debate at all.

What’s even more frustrating is when the affirmative defines accountability as “the law” and effectiveness as breaking it. I can see why this is an appealing definition. It provides an incredibly clear standard of conflict, and an incredibly aff weighted one at that (I may or may not have lost to this on a 4-3 in Escalade finals). The reason I dislike it is primarily because it is an all-or-nothing framing. In reality, priority on effectiveness only looks like this in the very slim minority of cases. It does happen; I’m not denying that. However, if we’re actually looking to accountability properly defined, it mainly focuses on regulations on officers or agency level policies that aim to promote responsibly, ethical conduct, and/or transparency and trust.

I also saw a definition that is not law enforcement specific—accepting responsibility for one’s actions. This seems only to apply to court cases and qualified immunity, but I’ve seen people stretch the definition to encompass a fuller picture of accountability. Just use another definition if you feel the need to do this. There’s plenty out there.

One aspect that I haven’t seen talked about much is the idea that accountability implies an accountability to someone or something. Are we keeping cops accountable to the letter of the law? To the spirit? To the good of the citizens around them? To justice? It seems like an interesting opportunity to impact out the affirmative side.

Subscribe now

Effectiveness

As long as the negative doesn’t get caught arguing for corruption and reducing crime rates at all costs, they should be fine. There’s less variation on the effectiveness definitions than there are for accountability definitions, but I’ve seen two main ways of framing it.

One definition essentially equates effectiveness with being a good police officer. This actually does make sense, but is difficult to debate, especially if your description of a good officer is a just one and your value is justice. It’s tautological, and it can get mushy once the negative tries to avoid the tautology.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, some negatives actually do define effectiveness as reducing crime, which I believe helps the affirmative. Of course this is a good thing to do, but when it actually gets down to priority, aff wins on rule of law type arguments.

The solution seems to be to split the difference here—to recognize that effectiveness is more than crime statistics but is also not synonymous with justice. Effectiveness, defined most clearly (and effectively, if you will), is the successful achievement of a police agency’s concrete goals. This may seem very broad, but here’s why it makes sense: It is much more tenable and tangible than effectiveness as justice, but it also goes beyond statistics. This does beg the question of what an agency’s goal actually are, and whether they include accountability. I won’t get into what the goals are, you should be able to find those with some quick research. As for whether it includes accountability, the answer is sort of. Let’s explore that by looking at priority.

Priority

One of the most difficult aspects of this resolution is defining priority in a clear, debatable way when the terms seem to overlap.

One way to add clarity—this should be the absolute baseline—is by emphasizing that having accountability or effectiveness is distinct from prioritizing one or the other. Often a priority on accountability can lead to effectiveness, and vise versa. This means that neither the affirmative side nor the negative side needs to prove that their side is the purpose of law enforcement. That’s what the value is for. You shouldn’t get caught defending your side as an ends, whichever side you are on (unless you’re neg and purposefully frame the round that way).

For priority with regard to “effectiveness encompassing accountability,” it seems that there really is very little conflict under this framing. Only the negative will use this framing, as the argument for effectiveness being subsumed by accountability is much harder to make. If the neg frames it this way, the only valid definition of priority they could use is something like “purpose.” While this is fine, the aff should be able to win by pressing “when in conflict” analysis and appealing to the real world.

Next Steps

I look forward to seeing the development of the META before Nationals. This resolution can be debated much more naturally than our previous resolutions this year. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s a better resolution, but it should be clearer and more open to a wider range of arguments. While it initially looked like this would be a heavily aff biased resolution, after a few tournaments it doesn’t look to be.

If you have a specific question you’d like me to answer on this resolution, let me know and I’ll do my best to answer. Thanks for reading.

Acta et Verba

Recently, the British parliament passed a bill by a margin of 330-275 allowing physician assisted suicide. Of course, the measures contained in the bill are strict, and they only allow for assisted suicide when the patient has a terminal illness and is expected to pass away in the next six months. Former Prime Minister and current Member of Parliament Rishi Sunak writes that this bill will “enable those who are going to die imminently to do so in a manner of their own choosing. That is why, I believe, this is a compassionate change to the law.”

Is aiding and abetting innocent death morally acceptable? Do rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness apply when one’s death is involved? I believe that the fundamental question being asked is whether an individual has a right to self-destruction. I don’t believe this to be the case. That’s not to say I am unsympathetic to the “pro-death” side, which could be charitably framed as the “anti-suffering” side. They make a plausible argument: Death will happen whether suicide takes place or not. Less suffering will occur for the patient and those around them if they commit assisted suicide. Therefore, assisted suicide is acceptable.

The (often unstated) premise, one I take issue with, is that an individual’s right to freedom and self-determination extends to the point of death. The second contentious issue is more readily apparent and is one of impact calculus: whether suicide is morally justified to eliminate suffering.

Let’s address the second issue first. The answer is no.

From a Christian perspective, an act of suicide violates the commandments to not kill and not steal. Philosophically, suicide is stealing what is God’s rejecting God’s sovereignty over the human life. These ideas were first developed by St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. Even the call to “love your neighbor as yourself” can be used in this case. If it is truly loving to end ones life due to suffering, we then ought to end the lives of those suffering around us. This is clearly contrary to Christian principles of Human Dignity and respect for life.1 Yes, the argument is often made that it is more “dignified” to commit suicide, and suicide is therefore more in line with Human Dignity, but this is an equivocation on the word “dignity.” I won’t give the full argument here. Suicide and assisting someone’s suicide is decidedly counter-biblical.

What about from a non-Christian perspective. Can suicide be justified based on the elimination of suffering? Not well, but let’s start at the beginning to give context.

Plato and Aristotle both address “self-killing.” Plato writes that suicide is unacceptable and one who kills himself is “merely inflicting upon himself this iniquitous penalty owing to sloth and unmanly cowardice” (Laws IX 873c). However, he does provide several caveats, one of which is a compulsion to do so “by the occurrence of some intolerable and inevitable misfortune…” (ibid) e.g. terminal illness. Aristotle holds similar views. Neither one views suicide generally as an infraction against the self. They each tend to view it as a violation of the order of society and of body and life as a gift from the gods. The Stoics hold similar views.

In the Enlightenment, pro-suicide views based on individual autonomy emerged. David Hume argues that suicide is within one’s rights, and in certain cases may not only be “innocent, but laudable” when one’s continued living is a burden to others. The rhetoric currently used in Britain (and Canada) is very Humean. The philosophical answer then seems to be that suicide is preferable to continued suffering—if one takes a Humean utilitarian view. If we are simply trying to reduce the amount of suffering in the world, assisted suicide is highly logical.

This can then be refuted by following the logical path. If suicide in the case of a terminal illness is acceptable, why not in the case of a chronic, non-terminal illness?2 Why only when death seems to be six months away and not a year or five years away? Why only for physical illness when mental illness can cause pain as well? Why not open up the option to those who are healthy but are a hindrance to a functional society? Death happens either way! As one allows for more and more justifications for assisted suicide, a bleak picture emerges.

Instead of being built up from first principles like other rights, a new right emerges. This one is created by beginning with the right to freedom and melting away the restraints—sanctity of life, duty to neighbor and society, rational analysis of appetite and feelings. This golden calf is a right to self destruction. It is easy to create once society makes individual autonomy and self-expression its telos.

So does the right to freedom extend to the point of death? It should be clear at this point how I would answer this question. No.

It’s been said that the right to swing one’s fist ends where the other man's nose begins, and the same is true when the other man is oneself. One does not have a right to self-harm, especially when harm is the intended result. Some expressions of freedom (getting drunk, procrastinating, choosing vice over virtue, etc.) harm an individual, but that harm is not the intention. Thus, suicide is not only different in degree from other instances of minor self-destruction but also different in kind. I believe that this is why it is possible to maintain a right to freedom while also condemning acts of intentional self-destruction.

Even if the ultimate end is the alleviation of a person’s suffering, the means is the suicide of an innocent person, an act which can only be justified through a right to self-destruction (apart from a utilitarian framework).

I believe that the proponents of assisted suicide have the burden of proof to prove it morally acceptable. Several prominent 20th century philosophers, including Thomas Nagel and John Rawls, argue for the contrary in an amici curiae brief for the US Supreme Court:

Denying that opportunity to terminally ill patients who are in agonizing pain or otherwise doomed to an existence they regard as intolerable could only be justified on the basis of a religious or ethical conviction about the value or meaning of life itself.3

They are assuming that suicide is acceptable and that the burden of proof is on the pro-life side.4 I take issue with this, but their conclusion is correct in a sense. Even from a Christian perspective (maybe especially from a Christian perspective), death is preferable to continued suffering. But death is distinct from suicide. This is where the amici brief gets it right: to deny assisted suicide is to affirm the intrinsic worth of a human life, over and above the experience of pain or pleasure.

Once a human life is considered conditionally valuable, and the individual is given the ability to determine the value of their life and destroy it based on utilitarian considerations, we’ve our current situation. Again, I’m not unsympathetic with those enduring immense suffering and those watching loved ones endure pain. However, assisted suicide is still immoral for the same reasons that any individual deciding to commit suicide is wrong, even if individual pain and societal burdens are considered.

What now?

I find myself struggling to give an answer. It’s hard to believe that an individual’s ability to commit assisted suicide will not be expanded in Canada and the UK. I believe that the US Supreme Court will hear another case on assisted suicide and decide in favor of it, maybe in the next ten years, maybe by the time I’m in my 80s with a terminal illness.

That said, don’t despair! Live life well. Be the reason someone chooses life. This may seem like a false optimism, but I believe that the beliefs and actions of motivated individuals can be even more powerful that parliamentary votes. I’ll end this with a quote from William Burke:

Acta et Verba

Subscribe now

This is a sort of false dichotomy. It is entirely possible to love to learn, while simultaneously steering clear of the vice of Curiositas. In fact, a true truth-lover will be temperate when it comes to the acquisition of knowledge, because they know how to order their desires on the road to understanding.

Let’s define a few things. In the world of Aquinas and Augustine (and, I would argue, in reality), virtue and vice are part of a scale. At the center is the Aristotelian golden mean, or virtue. The vices are the extremes to either side—excess and deficiency. If you’re unfamiliar, this article gives a good overview. Under this framework, our acquisition of knowledge can be evaluated through the lens of temperance. In philosophy-speak, the excess and deficiency of temperance are Licentiousness, and Insensibility, respectively. In layman’s terms, they are Over-indulgence and a sort of lack of indulgence that deprives you of good. This idea of temperance applies to the entirety of the human life, but has specific implications when applied to our relationship with knowledge.

This is where Curiositas returns, as the vice of excess when it comes to knowledge. Imagine over-indulgence in food or sleep, but in the realm of knowledge. If that is the excess, than what are the mean (the virtuous state) and the vice of deficiency? The mean is known as Studiositas, the idea of learning with all the qualifications of virtue, as Aristotle writes in Nicomachean Ethics.

… to be thus affected at the right times, and on the right occasions, and towards the right persons, and with the right object, and in the right fashion, is the mean course and the best course, and these are characteristics of virtue. And in the same way our outward acts also admit of excess and deficiency, and the mean or due amount. (II. 6, 12)

Virtue has to do both with one’s actions and state of character that accompanies the act. This means that the exact manifestation of Studiositas will depend on the circumstances, but will always be the virtuous state of character and action in that instance.

The vice of deficiency in this instance is Negligence, “the tendency to avoid the mental work necessary to grasp knowledge.” Negligence is in opposition to Curiositas. If Curiositas is seeking more knowledge than is right, Negligence is seeking less.

It’s clear now what my dad meant, but how does this actually work? Surely seeking truth cannot be a bad thing?

Aquinas has thoughts. In his Summa Theologica, he addresses the issue of Curiositas, something that has bearing on life generally, and the LD resolution.

For the knowledge of truth, strictly speaking, is good, but it may be evil accidentally, by reason of some result, either because one takes pride in knowing the truth, according to 1 Corinthians 8:1, "Knowledge puffeth up," or because one uses the knowledge of truth in order to sin. (II-II, q. 167, a. 1)

Here, accidentally means the way in which a specific case presents itself, rather than the core nature of knowledge. Knowledge Acquisition from this perspective, then, is conditionally good, depending on whether the acquirer is acting in a virtuous way. This makes a lot of sense to me from an Aristotelian/Christian point of view. It presents Learning as something good, but whose particular goodness is affected by the state of the morally inconsistent learner.

I believe that we are motivated more by Curiositas than we care to admit. In my protestant evangelical experience, it’s a core idea that is missing when it comes to conversations about gossip, social media, education, and science, among other things. We have to recognize that our desire to know is a good thing, but that since the beginning of time, we have eaten from the tree of curiosity.

Our current attention-hoarding economy capitalizes on this regularly and frequently. You may scroll social media simply to see whether or not there is some “new thing” that you’re currently missing out on. The social media problem cannot be boiled down to a desire for entertainment. That certainly is a part, but if one simply wanted entertainment, there are many other (albeit slightly more difficult) ways to stay entertained. What other methods of entertainment don’t offer is a quick, painless way to take in an overload of information. Catchy, but unmemorable information. Don’t get me wrong, YouTube is an excellent source for learning, if used with Studiositas. But when it comes to short-form content, the amount of useful information retained is incredibly low—most social media is the junk food not only of entertainment, but of information.

The second major issue with our Christian presentation of learning is with education. We emphasize the necessity of Bible study, with good reason. But we ought not overlook the importance of seeking truth in General Revelation, rather than just Specific. In extreme cases, the relationship between the two can be presented as a conflict, rather than as two mutually edifying spheres of knowledge. To be informed about the workings of the world is secondary to growing in biblical truth, yes, but it is a nearer second than some make it out to be.

I know this is a bit of a sober tone to leave off on, but it’s an issue I wanted to speak on. Thanks for reading, if you’d like me to write more about something I covered today, let me know! Now, here’s some words from Ruben Blades:

Acta et Verba

What is Intrinsic Good?

Throughout human history, philosophers have been seeking that which is truly good. The question, then, is what is truly good. According to Richard Kraut,

It is eminently sensible to suppose that there must be some things that are good for us quite apart from their instrumental value. No respectable philosopher, to my knowledge, has ever denied this.

He also makes a distinction—there exist things that are intrinsically good for us, but nothing intrinsically good in itself (Not sure I fully agree, but it is worth considering). That which is intrinsically valuable is valuable in itself, without having to appeal to something else. Take virtue, for example. One should be virtuous not because it makes one happy, content, or well liked, but because being virtuous is good in itself. A list of basic goods I heard recently from Dr. RJ Snell includes these: Life, Play, Knowledge, Marriage, Aesthetic Harmony, Religion, and Practical Reason. He explained that exactly what should make it on the list is debated—Justice, for instance, is not on RJ’s list. He contests that Justice is a method by which we better achieve these other goods. I believe that giving each their due is a basic good, and that, even though it begs the question of what exactly is due, the action of carrying out justice is itself good, so I disagree with him.

You may be wondering how exactly one decides on a list of basic goods. A major hindrance to the process is that it is impossible to derive what we ought to be seeking from what exists. This is known as the is-ought problem. Because of this, Snell (among others) suggests that we must take these basic goods like we do the law of non-contradiction (LNC). You ask, “well why can’t something be x and -x at the same time in the same regard?” and I cannot give you a logical reason without using the LNC to prove my point. We simply have to accept it. The same is true of the basic goods. When someone says they want to stay alive, we don’t ask them why, we accept that living is good in itself. Life is easy to accept as a basic good, but the others can be more contentious.

To clarify, it is entirely possible that a basic good will lead to other goods. However, this does not make it an instrumental good. Look at marriage—It is intrinsically good, but valuing marriage highly leads to all sorts of benefits for individuals, families, and societies.

How Can It Be Debated?

You may have noticed something above that has the potential to make this resolution incredibly difficult to debate. That is, if one has to take the basic goods as fundamental, like the LNC, it is logically impossible to prove some good is intrinsically valuable. It is possible to show that something is instrumentally valuable, but to show it is intrinsically valuable requires proving that, even if something has instrumental value, it is worth seeking without those side benefits.

This also means that the value debate will be different. It will not be possible to argue that knowledge is good because it reaches the value (congrats, you’ve just shown instrumental value). The value will have to be some measure of what it means to be valuable. Human flourishing could be a good value, but even then it seems that you would be valuing knowledge because it produces human flourishing, and you as the affirmative therefore fail your burden. A value of wisdom might work, because acquiring knowledge and being wise are distinct but tightly linked. The wording of the resolution is a bit frustrating, but it is a very philosophical rez with the potential to be a rich debate.

On negative, a straight neg might be interesting, particularly because of the weaknesses of the affirmative pointed out above. However, a regular neg case could also work, as all one has to do to win the round is show how acquiring knowledge can be worthless and show that the benefit of valuable knowledge is instrumental.

That’s all for this post. Thanks for reading; I’ll leave you with some words from Socrates:

Acta et Verba

A conundrum for every debater, but also the benefactors of seemingly undeserved wins, judges have a huge impact on every debate round. They can quite literally make or break a tournament for any debater. In this post we’ll look at the subjectivity of debate, judging philosophy, judge bias, and reading the judge. Even though all of this is influenced by perception, it is definitely still possible to communicate something true, like an impressionist art piece. My hope is that you find some insight on how to have a better round with any judge after reading this.

Debate is inherently subjective

I’ve had arguments with other debaters on this, but I believe that it’s impossible to escape the fact that debate is subjective. There is one objective winner, but who wins is determined by subjective attributes of the debater, their case, and the judge. Even if one debater is objectively better at some things than the other, the weight that a judge gives those skills depends on subjective ideas. This subjectivity is most clear in prelim rounds, which clearly have a larger margin of error in the decision than rounds with 3+ judges.

The most important thing to remember when dealing with judges is that you cannot control every aspect of the debate round, and so no matter how you debate you will lose a round every once and a while. I personally find that comforting to some extent, in that a loss doesn’t mean you have to beat yourself up about it. This is not an excuse for lazy prep or debating, but a necessary realization for your well-being as a debater. Remember also in your frustration that the judge probably had good intentions and, at the very least, sacrificed a few hours of their time for you and your opponent. It might be cold comfort, but it’s true.

What the best debaters do is maximize their chance to win and by proxy minimize their chance of losing. The best way to do this is first through case writing, argumentation, and rhetoric, but judge appeal can also help. 

The start of the round and the judge

As soon as you first walk into the room, the round starts. The judge begins judging how you carry yourself and how you treat your opponent. The best way to “win” the part of the round before the debate is to simply be genuine. Don’t try and put on a persona, just be an authentic (albeit professional) version of yourself, and judges will appreciate it. I know this from ballots I’ve received and also from hearing parent judges talk outside rounds. 

• Judging Philosophy

When asking for JP, it’s great to frame your question as a mutually beneficial one, because it really is. It gives you insight into what the judge is looking for and gives you an opportunity to cater the round to the judge. It’s best to tailor your question to the judge, whether they’re community or have been judging for a while. One question that I saw someone ask, and that I started asking is this: “How would you make a decision in a close round?” or “What would your decision come down to in a close round?” I really like this one because it gets to the essence of what all the JP questions are getting at: How do I best appeal to you (the judge) when there isn’t much to distinguish my opponent and I? As harsh as that might sound, it’s the reality. Because if you are a lot better or a lot worse than your opponent, JP really shouldn’t matter very much because the skill gap is so great. However, when the round is tight, that is when JP becomes most important. (edit: As I’ve been asking this question in particular, it almost catches the judges off guard. If they don’t have a satisfactory answer to this question in particular, using the rest of their answer to your question about their background can be helpful.)

Subscribe now

Judge Bias

We all know it exists. There’s no use complaining about it, because it’s an inevitable part of debate and, more broadly, the human condition. There are no “views from nowhere.” Like I keep reiterating, the best way to counteract a bad judge or a biased one is by just being a high quality debater. I say “just” not because it is easy, but because winning a judge doesn’t always require changing your debate style to fit what you think the judge will like. Hone your skills to a point where judge bias becomes less and less a factor in your rounds. However, playing off judge bias can definitely win rounds. You can generally assume that judges will be politically conservative/libertarian and Christians (speaking from TX/OK/AR experience). There’s probably a general vibe of the judges in your area, so it’s best to know what goes and what doesn’t. In LD specifically, it probably means that value structures focusing on utility won’t fly, and neither will arguments that go against conservative beliefs. That being said, it is possible to make those sorts of arguments in a tourney round, as long as you’ve tested them in practice rounds and are sure they’ll hold up. It might be naive, but I like to believe that most judges will be persuaded by genuinely good arguments, even if the arguments don’t 100% line up with their bias. But by making an argument that the judge gets defensive about, you are now not only debating your opponent, but also the judge’s preconceptions, which decreases your chances of winning. On the flip side, it’s not a good idea to base your entire case around the bias, like constantly saying America is the greatest country on earth. Overall, use your best judgment when it comes to judge bias.

Reading the judge

Depending on the look of your judge, how they answer your JP question, and their non-verbals, you can tailor your speeches to them. Yes, this is stereotyping, but it can be effective. If it’s a middle aged woman, more pathos and a softer speaking style might help. If it’s a grandpa, patriotism and, depending on your gender and that of your opponent, a more intense speaking style could be beneficial. It takes practice to take all of these factors into account and speak naturally, so just keep it in the back of your mind if you’re new. 

A last word on judges breaking the rules

If a judge is new, or if they are experienced but decide the rules don’t apply to them, they may start talking with you after the round and want to have a conversation about the round or give you pointers. I find that when judges want to talk after the round, it’s much more common that they are purposefully disregarding their instruction, rather than just being new and confused. Anyway—I take the same policy here that Nancy Reagan took with drugs. Just say no. Know what you're going to do if the judge talks to you after the round so that you aren’t left flustered and unsure of what to do. The best thing to do is kindly remind the judge of the rule, and explain that it would be better if neither your opponent nor you were DQed. That’s all for this post, today I’ll leave you with some words from theologian Desmond Tutu (or his father, rather):

Acta et Verba

This post will look at what the best course of action is when you have not prepped an application and it’s too late to do so. I believe this will be especially applicable with the current resolution, because there are so many court cases and hypothetical examples that it is almost impossible to prep them all. There’s a few strategies you may have heard before, but I’ll also provide some further LD-specific analysis.

Three Strategies for Refutation

Attack the Link

This means making the case that the application really doesn’t fit with your opponent’s side and may even work for your side. The link I’m talking about here is mainly the link between the application and their contention, although if you want to refute it by de-linking the application from their value or case as a whole, that also works occasionally. This is probably my favorite way to respond to an application.

For example, an application that this response can be used against is the Aff application of Dred Scott. They basically make the case that if we had just followed the letter, there would have been no right to persons as property, and that following the spirit fosters racism and bad decisions. With this strategy, that’s how you find the link; you ask, “why does my opponent say that this application supports their case?” and “is that a valid reason?” Then, you attack that reason. While the content of the application is important, this strategy looks to what your opponent said about the application. When it comes to Dred Scott, there are a couple responses that can be used with this in mind. One- bad decisions and racism are non-unique. Two- there is not a clear priority on the spirit, or the letter was actually the one being prioritized. I have used both of these responses to this app, but similar responses can be used against any application.

Subscribe now

Attack the Generality

Another way to refute an application is by showing that application to be insignificant in the context of the round. Saying that the application doesn’t meet the general rule or is outweighed by your side are the common ways that this is run. I am not a huge fan of this method on its own, but it can be helpful when paired with the strategy above.

If we again look to Dred Scott, we can use generality to show that most of the conflict between the two sides doesn’t occur like it does in that decision. Most judges aren’t like Chief Justice Taney, whose racism is hard to overstate. Additionally, most decisions are made about more regular issues, with more typical consequences. That being said, be careful when making this sort of argument because sometimes the idea that “we should just not use applications because they are inherently specific” can be implicit in the strategy. This can be avoided by comparing their applications to your own (hopefully more general) applications. Make sure that you can defend the idea that your applications do generalize to prove the point of your contentions and case.

Attack the Evidence

I will be completely honest. I don’t like this strategy in LD, especially when you haven’t prepped the application. Here’s why. Pressing on the specifics of the evidence (spec pressing) in LD is not only harder to do because of the time constraints, but it is also less persuasive than in TP because of the difference in Aff and Neg burdens. This is my point of view, and I know different strategies work for different people, but it’s rare to see someone run a spec press well against an unprepped piece of evidence.

If you tried to spec press someone about the Dred Scott application it might go something like this: You ask in CX about all the specifics they know about the evidence and what they know about the app. You ask for their evidence and use some of your prep time checking said evidence. Yet, when you get up to speak, you are unprepared to refute not only the evidence, but their case as a whole. Why is this?

First off, you used valuable CX time asking about one specific application details rather than the principles that their case is based on. Rather than focusing on who wrote the article, spend time on ideas like the fact that racism is non-unique and what priority actually looks like. Then, once you’re in prep time, you don’t need to skim the evidence looking for inconsistencies because you already have a few responses that have been semi-developed in CX. This is especially helpful because it can help you avoid looking uninformed in your next speech, as it is likely that you may misunderstand part of the evidence, or that there is more context that you did not have time to read. Trust me, this is based on experience. Lastly, using this approach allows you to focus on refuting their main ideas, rather than whatever hyper-specific app they brought up.

One last thought on this strategy—If you have prepped the evidence before hand, feel free to use this method. This is because most of the disadvantages I mentioned earlier are gone. You won’t have to spend as much time in CX, because you know the answers you want to the questions you’re asking. You can spend more of your prep time on the more important parts of their case, because you already know how you will refute that evidence. Even then, don’t get bogged down in specifics. Because even if you can show that their evidence is faulty, but you haven’t shown an alternative that is more persuasive, the judge will probably side with their ideas.

Remember the Purpose

In all of this, remember why you are trying to refute their application. To prove your side right and theirs wrong. Of course, this is common sense. Much too often, people refute for the sake of refutation itself. Any argument should tie back to your side and should hopefully tie back to your value. This is where impact calculus comes in. More important than refuting specifics is making sure that your thesis stands at the end of the round. If (and when) you have to respond more briefly to an application than you’d like, remember that your goal is not to demolish each of their arguments, but show more generally why the judge should vote for your side.

That’s all for this post, good luck to everyone on NITOC prep! As always, feel free to reach out to me with any questions. When it comes to applications, keep in mind the words of Agatha Christie:

Acta et Verba.

Resolved: The letter of the law ought to have priority over the spirit of the law.

In this post, we’ll be looking at what this resolution means and some cursory analysis for both aff and neg. For purposes of concision, I’ll be referring to the “letter of the law” as LoL and “spirit of the law” as SoL. Let’s get into it.

Resolutional Analysis

The reason I’m starting with RA is (1) I’m currently at Escalade and don’t have time to research and (2) Resolutional Analyses and framing are incredibly important for understanding any resolution, this one in particular.

Scope

What sort of law is this resolution talking about? Is it focused on all law, civil law, criminal law, or corporate law? The federal or state level? I don’t know which answers will become the META, but my best guess is that it will tend toward broader answers to these questions.

Actor

Because of the word “priority,” there must be an actor, or a person or group doing the prioritizing. This could be lawyers or judges, although I believe that the judges interpretation will be the favorite.

Conflict

Which goes beyond which? Does something become morally wrong before it violates the letter of the law if it violates the spirit? What about if it violates the letter but not the spirit? One will always be violated before the other. Therefore putting SoL first can mean either restricting or broadening the LoL, maybe even both depending on the context. The ability to debate clearly about this will be a huge advantage.

Priority

Everyone’s favorite LD word, priority, makes its return. Defining it in terms of “When In Conflict” would be a clear way to look at the rez. I really can’t think of a more apt interpretation of priority for this context.

I believe, that, unlike the current resolution, this next one will be weighted towards the aff side, and it may even delve into similar territory as last year when it comes to the idea of just punishment. Samuel J. Levine sums it up excellently:

The lawyer’s duties as fiduciary, as agent, and as zealous advocate, responsible for representing the best interests of the client, preclude the lawyer from focusing on the spirit and purpose of the law rather than on the aims of the client that can be achieved within the letter of the law.

Basically, it is in the interest of the client that the Lawyer argue the case from a LoL point of view. This is focused on the point of view of a lawyer, but it demonstrates couple main strengths of the aff side: consistency and practicality. To have a functional legal system, it must be consistently applied, and a justice system that changes regularly based on what we current believe the SoL to be. (One response to this might be that we can know the SoL based on contemporary non-legal documents)

All that being said, I strongly encourage you to do a few hours of research before you write up a case outline. Of course, make notes along the way, but don’t determine your case strategy before you are well acquainted with the content of the rez. Or, get on a call with a group of LDers and debate informally (not a practice round, just an old-fashioned civil argument). I have found this to be one of the most helpful and fun ways to get to know a resolution. That’s it for this post, hopefully I’ll write one that is more closely related to contentions and applications in the near future. Until then,

Acta et Verba.

If you are like most people, you would probably lie. I believe this is defensible, but for the strict Deontologist, this is inexcusable. Today, we are evaluating Deontology. The last philosophical school of thought I covered was Consequentialism, which is almost the direct opposite of Deontology. In the rest of this post, we will be looking at what exactly the theory is and how it can be applied in-round. This post will be a little shorter than usual.

Acting out of Duty

Deontology is a word derived from the Greek words for duty (deon) and science (or study) of (logos). You put that together, and the result is the study of duty or obligation, of which philosopher Immanuel Kant is the “founder.” For more in-depth info on him, check out this article. Britannica explains Deontology like this:

In deontological ethics an action is considered morally good because of some characteristic of the action itself, not because the product of the action is good. Deontological ethics holds that at least some acts are morally obligatory regardless of their consequences for human welfare.

Basically, no matter what happens as a result, one ought take a specific course of action simply because it is the morally right one, not because of what it may lead to. You may see the flaw in this—It doesn’t tell you which actions are moral or immoral; it only tells you that you should only and always take those actions that do fit moral guidelines. This means that it requires an outside source to be a complete system of morality. Another flaw with strict Deontology stems from the Nazi example in the intro. It is very inflexible. (To clarify, I believe that objective morality exists, but that Deontology proper may not be the best way to implement it.)

There are a few subsets of Deontology. One is focused on the agent and says that because certain things are mine, I ought to treat them differently than other versions of similar things. For example, if you can save either your child or two other children from drowning, you ought to save your child. Stanford sums it up like this:

Our categorical obligations are not to focus on how our actions cause or enable other agents to do evil; the focus of our categorical obligations is to keep our own agency free of moral taint.

Under this agent-focused view, “sins of omission” are not moral failures, nor are enabling someone else to commit immorality or accelerating someone else’s wrongdoing. (In the trolley problem, this actually allows for an agent to redirect the trolley to kill the one, because the agent is not causing the trolley to kill the one, but is redirecting something inevitable.)

The other subsets focus on the patient, or the person being affected by the agent. This form is relatively simple. Britannica, again:

All patient-centered deontological theories are properly characterized as theories premised on people’s rights. An illustrative version posits, as its core right, the right against being used only as means for producing good consequences without one’s consent.

Essentially, because other people have rights, your duty is to not harm their rights. Their central right, in this theory, is the right to not be used as a means for an end. The last main theory is that our duty lies with following the accepted norms of society and is called the contractualist theory. This is an incredibly brief overview of the three main sub-theories, but it should be an adequate primer.

Subscribe now

Use in Debate Rounds

The most obvious reason to bring up Deontology in a round is that your opponent brought up consequentialist support for their case. If they bring up general welfare as their value (or any other value that basically equates to net benefits), you can bring up justice (or any deontological value like human rights) and use that to refute their case. I already covered how to refute consequentialist/utilitarianism in an earlier post, but deontological reasoning can be a welcome addition.

As for how to refute deontological ideas, I believe they are generally more difficult to refute than utilitarian ones, specifically because judges are probably biased towards it. However, it can be helpful to press your opponent in cross-ex until their view breaks down. Yes, the Nazi example can be helpful, but it is almost so extreme that it hurts your credibility. Because of this, if you can come up with a similar example that relates to the resolution, that would be the better choice. Then, you may be able to show that, in this context, your philosophical ideas better fit the debate.

That’s all for today. As always, thanks for reading. I’ll leave you with a quote from Kant himself:

Acta et Verba

Intros and conclusions are possibly the most important rhetorical parts of any speech. Of course the content is most important, but from a rhetorical point of view they have the most impact out of any point in your speech. Intros give the judge an idea of who you are as a debater and where you are trying to take the round. Are you more winsome or logical? Are you a Swiftie? What do you see as important in the round? All of these questions can and should be answered in your intro. Conversely, conclusions should be a culmination of everything you have argued in your speech and in the round overall. Through that summary and impact, the judge should be on your side at the end of every speech. That should go without saying, but a good conclusion can help pull together a speech that may not have been as cohesive or convincing as you would hope it to be. This goes for debates as well as any public speeches you may give throughout your life.

In the rest of this post we’ll look at the three types of intros and some specific ideas for Rez 2 this year.

Three Types of Intros

This is my own categorization, but I think it covers the main groups of intros that can be used in LD and debate in general. 

1. Quotes 

These are probably the easiest intros, but they can be very impactful as well. 

Pros

• Quick and Easy

• Authority is on your side

• Can be humorous 

Cons

• Can seem low-effort

• Everyone uses them

Quotes normally have very good word economy and are convincing to the judge, particularly when the judge is familiar with the writer (think C. S. Lewis or a founding father). However, because everyone uses them, judges may be tired of hearing the similar things thrown at them and they may tune them out as a result. In order to differentiate yourself, it can be tempting to use a joke quote, or something similar. Personally I enjoy these, as long as they are tied back to your case well. That being said, I know that some judges don’t enjoy them, so be careful with balancing credibility with winsomeness. Humor is excellent, silliness is not.

One of my beefs with quotes is when people say “It’s because I agree with <famous history person> that I stand resolved…” No. The reason you are arguing for your side is because you (theoretically) believe in your case. You may agree with famous history person, but that’s not why you're advocating for your side. Something I like to say in place is “I think <famous history person> would agree with me, and the aff/neg side that <resolution>.” 

Altogether, quotes are short and sweet, and can be used in any speech as long as they aren’t overdone.

2. Analogies

When done right these can be amazing, but they are a lot riskier than quotes. 

Pros

• Shows adaptability

• Can make the round more relatable to a layman

• Impactful when done right

Cons

• Can be turned relatively easily

• Can get out of hand or just be super weird 

• Often longer than other intros

I love a great analogy. However, analogies often don’t work as well as you might intend. In my opinion the best speech to use an analogy in is the 1NR. (In the original release of this post, I recommended using analogies in your 2AR as well, but I don’t know that I was thinking— you should be devoting your limited 2AR time to responses, but if you can turn an analogy your opponent made, go for it.) The reason I recommend the last two speeches are because analogies can be turned, and you end up debating the meaning of an analogy that might now have bearing as an argument and on who wins the round, but was as never intended to be an argument. If you use it in the 1NR the aff most likely won’t respond, then of course in the 2AR the neg can’t respond. 

Also make sure the analogy is thought out and cohesive with your case. If you use it in a practice round you should get a sense as to if it’s effective or not, so trial and error are a big part of developing an excellent analogy intro. You can even tie back to your intro in a subpoint or application that displays best why the two things are analogous. Even one sentence mid-speech can bring cohesion. 

Analogies are high-risk high-reward, so use them tastefully.

Subscribe now

3. Evidence with Pathos

I don’t use these often, but they are another great option. 

Pros

• Ready-made impact

• Essentially a mini-argument

• Includes Pathos and Ethos 

Cons

• Might not catch the judge’s attention like the others

• Could seem low-effort

If there is a particularly impactful statistic, like millions of deaths or something along those lines, it can be used as an intro. It’s essentially starting (as opposed to ending) a speech with an impact, which can help the judge see exactly why your side is important and how it contrasts with your opponent. However, if you stay deep in the arguments for the entire round, the judge can get bored with the round. Part of this is why I like other intros, because it makes you look like the one on the judge’s side, the one who wants to make things better and easier for the judge. These intros can work in any speech. 

The second type of Evidence with Pathos is an anecdote. Using a personal story from someone who went through an experience relating to the round can help bring the judge into the mindset of someone affected significantly by the resolution. This can definitely take longer to explain than the other intros, so I’d recommend using them in either the 1ac, 1nc, or 1nr. 

Res 2 intro ideas

Aff

Quotes:

• “The Price Of Freedom Is High. It Always Has Been. And It's A Price I'm Willing To Pay.” — Captain America

• "We must protect the very things that make America so special - most certainly including our civil liberties. But we cannot do so without strong national security and a thoughtful and informed discourse.” — Mike Pompeo (Former United States Secretary of State)

Analogies and evidence with pathos: (these are just off the top of my head and are more examples than they are round-ready analogies, but feel free to use them):

• Just like a parent will put their child’s safety above their self determination, so too must the government put security first.

• Often limiting our rights for safety can be a good thing. X number of people die every year because of speeding. In the same way, we must limit some rights for national security

Neg

Quotes:

• “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.” - Alexander Hamilton

• “A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, (or by any other name indicating his true character,) or by millions, calling themselves a government.” — Lysander Spooner (American abolitionist, entrepreneur, lawyer, essayist, natural rights legal theorist, pamphletist, political philosopher)

Analogies and evidence with pathos:

• Just like trying to win a war at all costs may often hurt what you are trying to protect, so does putting national security above rights.

• In X years, the government illegally looked at Y American’s data—and no good came from it. This is what happens on the aff side.

Share

One last note is that often there aren’t hard lines between the categories of intros. The most important factors in your intros are catching the judges attention and keeping them on your side (aka lowering cognitive dissonance, but that deserves its own post). The best way to get better at choosing and delivering intros is to practice them in-round. Yes, theory is super important, and I assume you believe that, seeing as you’ve read this far—but theory is no substitute for practice. Go debate, you’ve got it.

Acta et Verba

In this post, I’ll be looking at Utilitarianism (UT) and Consequentialism (CSQ), the two overlapping philosophies behind this idea, explaining what they really mean, and looking at how they can be applied in-round.

What are CSQ and UT?

You’ve probably heard of the trolley problem, a thought experiment where you have to pick whether to pull a lever in order to save five people and kill one person in the process, or do nothing and let the five people die. While it is more nuanced than this, the CSQ approach says that you ought to pull the lever because less people die overall. The IEP defines Plain Consequentialism as:

Plain Consequentialism: Of all the things a person might do at any given moment, the morally right action is the one with the best overall consequences.

This is the simplest form of CSQ. It simply says that morality is determined by the outcomes of actions. However, this has some obvious faults. If a person intends to do good and donates to a charity, but the charity turns out to be a fraud, Plain CSQ says donating is the morally wrong action. An adapted version is Reasonable Consequentialism, again from the IEP:

Reasonable Consequentialism: An action is morally right if and only if it has the best reasonably expected consequences.

This makes practicing the philosophy of CSQ a bit easier, but it leaves a glaring question: what are “the best overall consequences?” This leads to the main sub-philosophy of CSQ, Utilitarianism. UT, according the Britannica, is the idea that

an action (or type of action) is right if it tends to promote happiness or pleasure and wrong if it tends to produce unhappiness or pain—not just for the performer of the action but also for everyone else affected by it.

This is still somewhat subjective, because happiness and pain are subjective to an extent, but it’s a much more concrete way to be CSQist. The philosophers John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham are the founders of UT, and they believed that it was essentially possible to calculate how many units of pain or pleasure any one action would take, weigh that against other actions, and then pick the best option. In the rest of this post, I’ll mainly be referring to UT instead of CSQ because UT is by far the most common form of CSQ in debate rounds. If you want to do more research on what these philosophies are, check out the links, but for now let’s look at some analysis of how these philosophies come up in debate rounds.

Subscribe now

In-Round UT

Like I said at the beginning of this post, UT gets used and abused in debate rounds across Stoa. It’s used to respond to values like General Welfare and Quality of Life. It’s often a crutch for real philosophical debate. Okay, that might be a little harsh. But, to say essentially “UT bad therefore I win the argument” is pretty shallow. I don’t believe that UT is always immoral or wrong. On its own, yes, it’s pretty bad. However, if you’re presented with two choices that have essentially the same morality, I see no issue with using UT to decide which path to take. This brings me back to the in-round issue.

When is it a justified response?

If your opponent is truly arguing that it is okay to take whatever action necessary to promote the common good, than yes, they are being UT with their argument, and pointing out the immorality of that is a good thing. Make sure to impact it out. Saying that they are being UT is not an impact in itself and doesn’t explain why the argument matters or why your non-UT philosophy is any better. An interesting argument, depending on the context of the round, is that of lying. If, every time someone asked you a question, you thought about whether it would be overall better to lie or to tell the truth and responded accordingly, this would lead to distrust and (maybe) the breakdown of society.

Be careful. The argument that it’s morally acceptable for some people to be hurt for the benefit of the majority is not necessarily UT. For example, if a medicine company accidentally hurts people on a trial run of a drug that ends up saving even more people, this doesn’t mean that the company is UT. These sorts of things happen, and accidents are a part of any drug development, criminal justice case, or geopolitical issue. That being said, if the medicine company in question turned out to not be asking the test subjects for informed consent, and a debater is saying this is a good thing, by all means call them out on it.

This brings up an important point. Because of Stoa’s demographics, I believe that there are very few people purposefully running UT ethics in a debate round. Even if they are running it, they are probably going to be using a “Reasonable CSQ/UT” idea of UT. This doesn’t mean there aren’t a few people running UT in a way that says we can commit any atrocity for the benefit of the majority, but be careful before accusing people of this stance. It’s good sportsmanship.

How to defend yourself

Like I said earlier, most people have run into this argument. And, almost inevitably, your response was “I’m not being UT” rather than “I’m being UT and that’s morally acceptable.”

Most often, the first response is the right response because it’s true. The best arguments are true arguments. If you can explain concisely and clearly how you are not, in fact, a moral monster who wants to kill people, you should be able to win the argument. This is especially true if your opponent did not impact their argument, because, as long as you impact your argument, it should have more weight in the judge’s mind.

The second response is interesting as well. I haven’t experimented with it very much, but it could be a quality response to a debate about, say, warfare. Every time a nation goes to war, it is being UT. It’s putting a few people in high-risk scenarios for the benefit of the majority. This isn’t inherently wrong (therefore UT isn’t inherently wrong). If you clarify that in whatever scenario you are debating each option is relatively similar on a moral level, you should be able to use UT.

In sum, UT and CSQ on their own are generally misguided philosophies, but they can be beneficial when used in tandem with other philosophies. I hope this post has given you a bit more clarity on what these two ideas are, and how they can be applied. Until next time, here’s a quote from John Stuart Mill himself.

Acta et Verba

Hello! This is the first post for the Oligarchy of Oratorical Operations that I decided to post in newsletter format. It's somewhat of a trial run, and maybe in the future we will have multiple newsletters here for other types of debate and speeches. But for now, Lincoln Douglas is the main focus for this newsletter, although it should be helpful for anyone!

I will be posting several of the older posts here in the future, in order to have them both on here and on google docs. Aside from that, I'll also be starting to focus on some specific philosophical ideas that are separate from in-round tactics, but that should also be helpful for you all both in debate and in life. I’m pretty busy, but I’ll do my best to get a post out every two weeks.

If you're new, here is a link to the discord server, where we have posts on various debate topics and occasionally lectures too: https://discord.gg/vmwmEJtjVd

That’s all for now.

Acta et Verba

Share Isaiah’s Substack

Leave a comment