We ought to do and/or not do something(s).

What are "oughts"

Like Con says, an ought is roughly a non-descriptive, prescriptive obligation to do something(s). Ought statements like "John ought not kill others" are a subset of normative statements—statements that are based on values.

Examples of normative statements are statements in the form:

x is good, x is bad, x is right, x is wrong, permissible, impermissible, virtuous, cruel, evil, great, terrible, and so on.

Normative ethics vs meta ethics

There is an important philosophical distinction between normative ethics and meta-ethics. Normative ethics is a "systematic attempt to capture which actions are right and wrong and why, whereas metaethicists usually investigate the meaning of moral terms and the nature of moral judgments and properties." Both are important for this debate. When considering whether we ought to do certain things (and why we ought to do them) we are investigating normative ethics, but it is also helpful to have an idea of the meaning of moral terms, how they behave, and what makes them true or false. Having this allows us to generate predictive expectations for the conditions under which we may have obligations vs not.

What is the right theory of morality?

This is to address the meta-ethical concern. I won't give an all-encompassing explanation of all the relevant moral phenomena, but I will outline several important truths about morality and obligations.

[1] Morals are subjective

There is very good reason to think this.

For one, every other area of normativity is subjective. Take gastro-normativity (normativity about which foods are good or bad). If person A says that ice cream is good and person B says that ice cream is terrible, both people can be correct because statements about the goodness or badness of ice cream are subjective. Same with normativity with what movies are good, what video games are good, what countries are good, what vacation spots are good, what plays a sports team should use etc.

In all these domains, if person A says x is good, or x should happen, and B says x is bad and should not, both can be right, so, we should think that moral statements behave the same way, including statements about obligations.

Morality also appears to be dependent on our goals, desires, and attitudes. The wrongness of certain actions like theft or killing is clearly explained by our desires for people to be happy, to have ownership of property to varying degrees, to experience well-being, not to suffer, etc.

[2] Moral truths are made true by the values of agents

Consider person A who says abortion is wrong and person B says that abortion is morally permissible. Given that morals are subjective, we know that both people can be right, but what makes those statements true as opposed to false? We can once again consider other normative statements.

If person A says that a movie is good and person B says the same move is horrible, plausibly, what makes it the case that A or B is correct about his or her judgment are their values. If the movie is in line with the values of A, the statement is true indexed to A. If the movie is out of accord with the values of B, then the movie is terrible for B. The same analysis generalizes to the other cases of normativity mentioned earlier, so we have extremely good reason to think it applies to moral normativity.

The simple case

We now have very good reason to think that moral statements are subjective, and are dependent on the values of agents. Statements about obligations fit the same build, for person A, it may be true that we are obligated to donate to charity, but false for person B.

First, if we have obligations from at least one person's perspective, we would expect people to have strong psychological affective attitudes towards moral issues. This undeniably is the case. People scream in protest for political and social issues on their respective sides etc.

We would also expect the statements people make about obligations to have a strong correlation with their values if they were true, this we also see. So there is strong evidence in favor of the idea that there at at least some obligations given the nature of obligations themselves.

The prior probability

Statements about obligations are extremely widespread and pervasive throughout speech literature etc. We make these claims very frequently and genuinely believe there are oughts. For con to be right, all these claims must be false or seriously confused in some way. For me, just one of them has to be true. So, con's view is far more immodest than mine and much less likely to be true antecedently.

Rebuttals

Is-ought gap

There is no need to bridge the is-ought gap to show that we ought to do certain things. My case certainly does not require this.

Occam's Razor

Addressed in the prior probability section.

Moral subjectivism and the definition of "ought"
I'm entirely fine with conceding that morals are subjective. I'm even fine with conceding that oughts, in the usual sense, are subjective, and that we use seemingly evaluative terms in many other areas in an almost exclusively subjective way. However oughts are not defined in a way that is compatible with moral subjectivism, at least in the context of the is-ought gap.

This is a problem because the debate description defines ought as:

Thus moral subjectivism does not seem sufficient to tell us anything about "oughts" as the description defines them.

2.
The way Hume describes it practically precludes a moral subjectivist interpretation:

- A Treatise of Human Nature Book 3 part 1 section 1

If Hume was defining "ought" in a way that is compatible with moral subjectivism, it would be painfully obvious that we do observe "oughts". We observe desires, preferences, goals and attitudes. We frequently and clearly observe everything moral subjectivists tend to define "ought" to mean. Clearly, Hume was referring to an objective prescriptive statement, for which it's much less clear if we've observed or even can observe it.

If "ought" wasn't defined in such a way in this context, it's implausible that such a large ratio of people (even among non ethical subjectivists) would take the is-ought gap seriously to any degree, because the solution would be as simple and obvious as "an ought can just be a particular kind of is statement". Yet, any brief search will reveal that it is taken seriously and that there is no nearly unanimous rejection based on such a simple counterargument.

For Pro to be right, all claims against the existence of oughts (as defined in the description) must be false or seriously confused in some way. While for me, only one has to be true. 

So we see that this kind of argument which Pro provided can work both ways, and is thus misleading and uninformative when presented on its own.

While the people who accept some kind of moral obligation far outnumber those who reject it, as argued for above, this debate is only about the existence of a specific kind of ought that all moral nihilists and moral subjectivists reject. This makes the ratio of people who would accept the resolution vs the number who would reject it much less one-sided than Pro insinuated. However I will concede that I'm still taking the side of the minority here.

We evolved to have very strong emotional intuitions about what's right and wrong that heavily influence our behavior, thinking patterns and beliefs.

We also have a part of the brain that gives post hoc explanations for what we do [1][2]. The result is a need to explain these moral intuitions and emotions that so heavily influence our actions, and a belief in oughts (as defined in the description) usually seems to fulfill this need very well compared to other things.

The majority of people are close minded and uncritical when it comes to emotionally-charged topics for which they haven't learned good habits to navigate. Topics such as politics, ethics and religion. The resolution is a claim about ethics.

The seemingly 'bad' people and ideologies associated with rejecting the existence of oughts (as defined in the description) make it very unappealing for most people. And the fact that it's so unappealing makes it very difficult to make it much more appealing to most people.

Think of slavery, why was it accepted and slaves dehumanized by so many for so long? Because of very big illogical ideologies justifying and giving false notions of slaves and slavery. It took a long time to overcome the ideological momentum built up in favor of it.

Until recently, theism was practically unanimously accepted all around the world, and that almost always reinforced an acceptance of moral realism. Lately there have been more atheists and agnostics, but theism is still the dominant ideology, and the most popular forms heavily support accepting the resolution.

I hate to take advantage of Pro's evidently busy schedule, but there are a few factors that lead me to ultimately make the call to continue:

So Pro appears to have had every opportunity to:

So, I extend all of my arguments. 

Pro can attempt to counter all of the crucial points I made in R2 and/or make new arguments.

In the event that Pro attempts to make new arguments, voters should be aware that the voting policy discourages "final round Blitzkriegs", or the bringing up of entirely new arguments in the final round when the other side cannot respond.

Note that I am not providing new arguments here except to justify my argument extensions, remind voters of the unaddressed arguments and warn them of a possible final round Blitzkrieg. Pro should be able to focus entirely on responding to R2 as if this R3 argument doesn't exist, and if my arguments there don't work, that should be able to be sufficient.

While the condescension is appreciated my forfeiture was due to an unexpected technological issue.

My Case

I made a simple case. First I argue for a form of subjectivism as a broadly accurate meta-ethical theory, which con conceded completely.

Next, I show my position has a much higher prior probability and is strongly evidenced by psychological affective attitudes toward moral issues and strong correlations with moral judgments of agents and their indexed values.

Both arguments remain successful.

Prior Probability

Let's talk about this first. Con tries to parody my argument—unsuccessfully.  

This is flat-out wrong. My position is that we ought to do something(s), and is thus compatible with a range of claims against the existence of oughts being true. It only requires that at least one of them is false.

Con's position is that there is nothing we ought to do. To be right, every ought claim would have to be false as explained, so this "rebuttal" is just a misunderstanding of the argument.

Subjectivism

Con claims that my theory does not meet the definition of "oughts." This is completely false as I will show, but con misconstrues various sources to make this point. For one, in the source con used to label my view as "descriptive," his own citation distinguishes:

This is false. Moral subjectivism can maintain that obligations are prescriptive as opposed to descriptive, they are just subjective, viz. they depend on the attitudes of agents. Con gave no argument whatsoever that this feature of the view somehow makes oughts descriptive, this was merely asserted, completely begging the question.

Given that I have proposed a consistent and explanatory theory that has this feature, it stands to reason that my burden has been satisfied on the matter, but con's has not with regards to his claims here.

Con also says that the way Hume defines oughts precludes moral subjectivism, but the quote is seemingly dishonestly used. I provide the full quote, but even in the snip provided it is seen that Hume does not define ought whatsoever—Hume isn't even talking about anything related to oughts being objective or subjective, he is talking about the is/ought gap, arguing that you can't derive oughts from is statements alone an entirely separate issue having to do with the non-ampliative nature of deductive logic, a completely separate issue.

I am beginning to see a pattern here of misrepresented sources, and when con says:

There is serious confusion about why the is-ought gap is a problem. It has nothing to do with whether morality is objective or subjective, but with the fact that ought claims do not deductively follow from purely descriptive premises, a basic result of deductive logic.

This brings us to the end of con's main rebuttals only observing misunderstanding of the argument from probability and a series of misrepresented sources and unsupported assertions. On the other hand, my arguments remain largely unaffected.

Other

Con tries to explain why people believe in obligations in a largely irrelevant but very bizarre way in that he does nothing to show that all of the explanations are defeating in any way.

Evolution if anything bolsters my case, providing a partial causal explanation for our moral behavior, which in no way undermines the truth of ought statements as ideological momentum, explaining why people make ought claims to condemn certain practices, doing nothing to show they are false.

Asserting that the irrational position to believe is contrary to con's view is just begging the question, and Theism is compatible with both realism and anti-realism, and no evidence was provided that Theism is "almost always reinforced an acceptance of moral realism."

Conclusion

Presenting a theory of the oughts, defending it, and showing my view as much more likely via simple probabilistic reasoning easily satisfies my >50% burden that con has not come close to satisfying on their end.