Zaradi's Prized Tournament: Animal Rights

Thanks, 16K, for a fabulous debate thus far! Now, rebuttal time!PRO's CASEC1: PragmatismOverviews: Utilitarianism fails to affirm.OV1. Rights exist distinct from ends-based concerns. Pro seems to imply that humans have a right to life; yet, it is often utilitarian or pragmatic to kill humans. This suggests that the existence of particular rights is not pegged to the outcomes of those rights. My right to my life exists in spite, and sometimes in defiance, of pragmatic considerations. Conflating the two fundamentally misunderstands what rights are and wherefrom they emerge.OV2. Justice and utilitarianism are not compatible; utilitarianism is a bad way to assess the round. Suppose I won a competition and earned $100 in prize money (this is my due). Instead of awarding me the money, the event organizers decide to donate it to a foodbank where the money has greater net utility. I am denied my due; it also seems unfair and unreasonable to cheat me of something that I fairly earned. Clearly, utilitarianism is thus fundamentally at odds with justice.OV3. Even if you don't buy into the previous OVs, utilitarianism is a bad means to assess the round because it is anti-rights. Using Pro's logic, any right that subverts pragmatic interests shouldn't be recognized as a right. But every right will, at times, be contrary to utilitarian interests. If the government can kill someone to save 5 others, that would be pragmatic, but that 1 person's right to life stymies pragmatic action. This line of reasoning would lead us to conclude that no rights at all should be recognized--that's an implicit "kritik" of the topic (as it denies the existence of rights), which is prohibited by rule 6. Moreover, it would lead Pro to contradict himself, since he begins his round by acknowledging the existence of rights.OV4. Rights are a balancing act; the existence of animal rights does not lead to the impacts Pro says they will. We balance rights all the time: does my right to a speedy trial outweigh the right of the public to gather evidence, does my right to my property outweigh your right to freedom of movement, etc. We can recognize that animals have rights, for example, but still recognize that killing 1 animal (possibly violating its rights) to save 10 people from death by hunger (impacting their right to life) is an acceptable trade-off. We do not deny that the animal had rights, but when rights come into conflict, we have to balance them. So, saying that animal rights inherently preclude all testing or hunting is incorrect. OV5. Pro is begging the question. He writes: "Many things done to animals during these tests would be illegal and immoral to do to humans." He is viewing the issue through a utilitarian lens, but he seems to imply that we should only factor in the suffering and wellbeing of humans into utilitarian considerations. Of course if he excludes animals from utilitarian calculations, he is going to reach the conclusions he does, so his conclusion is, essentially, built into his premise. He needs to first explain why animal suffering is not something that should be evaluated under utilitarianism, esp. since he present utilitarianism and the moral community as separate arguments.SCA. Animal Testinga) Animal testing is not reliable. "A 2004 study from the [FDA] found that 92 percent of drugs entering clinical trials following animal testing fail to be approved. Of those approved, half are withdrawn or relabeled due to severe or lethal adverse effects not detected during animal tests...A 2008 study in the journal Alternatives to Laboratory Animals showed that more than 80 HIV/AIDS vaccines successful in nonhuman primates failed in human trials...According to a 2004 study... more than 4,000 studies report efficacy of more than 700 treatments of stroke in animal models. Yet none of the approximately 150 of these treatments tested in humans showed clinical benefit...Drugs intended to reduce inflammation in critically ill patients, previously tested in mice, failed in nearly 150 human critical trials according to a 2013 study." [1]b) Animal rights are not necessarily a barrier to animal testing for two reasons:b1) If animals have a right to humane treatment, we can use humane means of testing rather than not testing at all. For example, "Under the Animal Welfare Act, the USDA issues and enforces regulations regarding humane care, handling, treatment and transportation...in addition to general husbandry standards related to housing, separation of species, cleanliness, feeding, quarantine procedures, and veterinary care. The law also contains provisions for the use of anesthesia or pain-killing drugs for potentially painful procedures and for the post-operative care of laboratory animals." [2]b2) There are effective alternatives to animal testing. It is now possible to create organs in laboratories and to test chemicals on those organs instead of on actual organisms. [3] To cite a specific instance of this: "EpiDerm, derived from cultured human skin cells, is more accurate than animal tests in identifying skin irritants. In a study...it correctly detected chemicals that irritate human skin, while tests on rabbits were wrong 40 percent of the time." [1]SCB. Sustenancea) There are alternatives to eating meat. There are viable, human dietary supplements for meat. [4] Moreover, there are enough plant-based products available in the world to feed everyone on Earth. [5] b) Eating bushmeat is not utilitarian; it leads to ecological collapse. "Unsustainable use of wild meat also has negative long-term implications for maintenance of forest biodiversity. The radical depletion of forest animal species, known as 'the empty forest syndrome,' is increasingly prevalent, afflicting even protected areas...Since forest animals play important roles in ecological processes such as herbivory, predation, pollination, seed dispersal and germination, the loss of forest animal species will eventually be followed by the loss of the plant species that depend on them in one way or the other." [6]C2. Moral Community (MC)Overviews: Theory FailuresOV1. The rationality discourse ignores the role of sy/empathy in morality. "[R]ational argumentation fails to capture those features of moral experience that allow us to really see why treating animals badly is wrong. The point...is that members of our communities, however we conceive of them, pull on us and it is in virtue of this indescribable pull that we recognize what is wrong with cruelty." [7]OV2. The rationality discourse fails to truly reflect justice. Justice is about fairness and reasonableness. It is perfectly possible for a rational agent to unfairly or unreasonably treat non-rational agents. So, the focus on only rational agents fails to capture the full scope of justice.OV3. The MC only deals with moral rights, not legal rights. To say otherwise would be to conflate the realms of the legal and the moral, which are clearly not the same. Not all legal rights are moral rights and vice versa.Argumentsa) What is Morality? Pro writes, "Morality, simply defined, is 'good'. So in order to be part of a MC, you must promote (or accept) things which are loosely defined as 'good'." Why must you be able to pursue good to be a part of the MC? Firstly, I think merely having a good/interest of your own would be sufficient. According to Pro, babies (as humans) have rights, but they are not rational and cannot accept/promote the good; the same is true of other groups of humans. Secondly, morality is a lot more than just pursuing good or accepting it, it is also about not infringing on the good of others, and so we have to take that into consideration. "Many of the higher animals at least have appetites, conative urges, and rudimentary purposes, the integrated satisfaction of which constitutes their welfare or good." [8] Thirdly, Merriam Webster defines morality as a set of principles, not any kind of action. [9] Clearly, a MC could set principles such as, "don't cause suffering," which would give animals rights.b) Rationality is not strictly necessary to pursue moral concepts; animals can develop the basics of moral senses. Consider the case of elephants. Their advanced emotional capacities allow them to empathize and feel sadness and joy, arguably the rudiments of right and wrong. Their emotions can direct them to pursue basic morality. c) Pro contradicts himself multiple times. He is unable to simultaneously affirm that "all humans have rights" while also asserting that no animals have rights:c1) Pro writes, "You must identify with the Catholic Church in order to be part of a Catholic community." Yet, some humans are incapable of identifying with the MC, and would thus be excluded.c2) Pro talks a lot about the role of rationality. Again, some people aren't rational, and are unable to pursue goodness. This excludes them from Pro's MC.c3) Pro states, "Bearers of rights must have the capacity to understand and exercise the rights they have been given." Yet again, certain groups of humans cannot understand or exercise their rights, excluding them from the MC. Plus, Pro commits an ipse dixit fallacy there.d) It is just false that legal structures are made by humans for humans. Humans enact laws or even adopt social or religious rules (e.g. ahimsa in Hinduism) that protect animals. It seems that even if animals don't have inherent rights, humans can still choose to give them rights by extending their laws to protect animals, as they have done. So, the fact that animals aren't part of the MC would not necessarily be an obstacle to animal rightsSOURCES1 - http://tinyurl.com...2 - http://tinyurl.com...3 - http://tinyurl.com...4 - http://tinyurl.com...5 - http://tinyurl.com...6 - http://tinyurl.com...7 - http://tinyurl.com...8 - R2, Source 79 - http://tinyurl.com...Thanks! Over to Pro...