Speciesism is an unjustifiable form of discrimination.

Definitions/BOP Extend my 3 definitions – my opponent doesn’t contest these, so he has no basis upon which to contest my interpretation of the topic. Replacing the words in the topic with my definitions from round 1 leaves us with: “there exists no satisfactory explanation for the cognitive process of differentiating ourselves from other species.” I’ll address his second round first because this round goes to heart of what we are even debating about. Contention 1: We are carnivores Justify means to “show a satisfactory reason for something.” I show here that: we are not hard-wired to care about animal suffering because as predators, we often needed to kill animals to eat and worrying about their suffering would be counter-productive to that task, so evolution selected against this trait. This goes unrefuted – my opponent merely restates the (undefined) resolution and appeals to the reader to define the resolution favorably for him. In addition, how can eating meat be immoral, if it is our natural state? Contention 2: Two-tiered morality I’m thoroughly impressed by my opponent’s rhetoric about straw men; unfortunately, the argument I ascribed to him is a demon of his own design. My opponent seems to believe that a two-tiered morality is consistent with a Pro position. I ask the reader to consider a two-tiered morality, where white males are in the top tier, and women and blacks are in the second tier, which deems them less deserving of moral considerations. My opponent would argue that such a system is not a “form of discrimination.” My opponent’s Peter Singer quote is merely an absurd appeal to authority; clearly, a two-tiered morality system that deems animals’ lives as less intrinsically valuable than human lives is still deemed a “form of discrimination,” making it a Con position. I will continue to argue that animals be deemed “morally considerable,” but less so than human beings. Also, it’s made very unclear in his response to my case what my opponent even means by specieism or whether his definition is consistent with Peter Singer’s definition of the term. According to the University of Michigan, specieism includes: eating non-humans and experimenting on non-humans. [1] My opponent never answers my argument that telling certain cultures, which rely on animal meat for survival, that they cannot eat animal meat (because it’s specieism) just introduces a new type of discrimination, namely cultural chauvinism (cultural discrimination) into our new system of morality. C3: I will return to this, after addressing my opponent’s first round. R1: Animals deserve basic moral consideration My opponent and I are in agreement here, but there’s a big different between “basic moral consideration” – the position my opponent takes in round 1 – and “equal moral consideration” – the position my opponent tries to seamlessly transition to in Round 2. “Basic moral consideration” means that animals show up on our moral radar screen. “Equal moral consideration” would mean that all the “blips” on the radar are of equal size – meaning an animal life would be weighted equally to a human life. Con agrees that animals should receive basic moral consideration, but disagrees that they should receive equal moral consideration. R2: “Biological properties have no moral significance” (Singer) If biological properties have NO moral significance, this leads to the absurd conclusion that we must also give equal moral consideration to plants and bacteria. The central nervous system is a biological property; it is also what allows an organism to experience “suffering.” If we cannot consider biological properties when assigning moral significance, then we cannot employ my opponent/Singer’s definition of moral considerability being located in the ability of a species to suffer. In addition, my opponent himself engages in specieism by defining moral considerability through the ability to suffer (the presence of a central nervous system). Insects are an animal species, but they cannot feel pain because they lack nociceptors (pain receptors). [2] My opponent’s suffering-based conception of moral considerability is itself a form of specieism, in refusing to extend moral consideration to insects and other non-pain-experiencing animals. R3: Intellectual acuity ought be irrelevant to morality The intellectual acuity of an animal directly correlates to how morally considerable that animal appears to the average person. Watching a person kill an infant chimpanzee and seeing its mother cradle the infant’s dead body in sorrow is more morally upsetting than watching a person kill a young mouse and seeing its family immediately cannibalize it for food. (note: both animal behaviors are commonplace in the wild) Pro’s morality gives us no method to differentiate between the two killings, even though our emotional reactions to each differ, and thus Pro’s morality fails under a Habermasian ethical discussion because it does not sync up with our emotional responses. While all animals can experience suffering, the degree of suffering they experience is directly correlated to the complexity of their central nervous system (CNS). Biologists use certain species of sea cucumbers that only have 32 neurons to study neurology and while these sea cucumbers do react to “painful” stimuli by moving away from them, it is unclear that they experience anything close to the human or chimpanzee experience of pain. Moral considerations must be able to take the degree of suffering that an animal can experience into account, which relates directly to CNS complexity which correlates to intellectual acuity. My opponent brings up the problematic of babies and the mentally handicapped Babies and (nearly all of) the mentally handicapped would qualify for Tier 1 of Con’s morality because they are rational agents capable of moral judgments. Studies at the Infant Cognition Center at Yale show that even babies know right from wrong. [3] In addition, babies have a future potential to become completely rational agents, so they must be respected for their personhood. The mentally handicapped still know right from wrong (like that killing is wrong); if they are unable to differentiate right from wrong in this regard, they need to be institutionalized as a danger to others, and thus forfeit their right of freedom/self-ownership. In addition, my opponent’s conception of morality is too black and white. Children are treated differently in terms of morality than adults precisely because of their lack of cognitive development. Children are deemed less culpable for crimes, due to their lack of cognitive development, than adults, which is why we have a juvenile justice system. We view a child punching another child at school as less morally reprehensible than an adult man punching another adult man in the face at work. The same applies to the mentally handicapped, which is why we have the insanity defense in criminal law in the United States. C3: Absurdities I'll fully extend reciprocity in the next round, but I explained above how babies and the mentally handicapped can morally reciprocate regarding negative rights (right to life, self-ownership). Lastly, Judith Butler in When Is Life Grievable writes that socially contingent lives, that depend on us for their survival, are treated differently in regards to morality. Domesticated animals (like cows), that could not survive in the wild, would gain their freedom under my opponent’s approach to specieism, but would quickly perish, and must thus be treated differently. Citations [1] http://tinyurl.com... [2] http://tinyurl.com... [3] http://tinyurl.com...