Speciesism is unjustified given a preference utilitarian framework

===Marginal Cases=== My opponent argues that ethical paralysis is the outcome of not being able to determine which preferences outweigh others, thus a meta-principle favoring humans is necessary. My opponent attempts to substantiate this point by arguing that utilitarianism is only concerned with what is common place as far as moral dilemmas are concerned. This is a mistaken view. The reality of PU is that it DOES provide a calculus for us to begin with, that stating that actions that result in the most preferences being satisfied is the action which is moral. One is not stumped into paralysis without adopting another view, one is just as capable of weighing whether or not one ought to save a chimpanzee over a brain-dead orphan (if not more capable since pre-established biases are removed which could cloud preference calculus) as if a meta-preference for humans were made beforehand. Even common place ethical dilemmas which my opponent continues to bring up do not require meta-preference for humans. Consider whether it is acceptable to take someone off of life support. Prima facie only humans are involved in this decision. Therefore a meta-preference for humans clouds relevant preference calculus and is not even always useful, while pure preference calculation is. ===Hierarchies=== My opponent here makes the argument that ethical paralysis obviously must occur even in the marginal cases which I use to disprove his arguments in favor of speciesism. He takes the example of the dolphin and the brain-dead loner and points to the fact that it may be impossible or at least impractical to take into account all of the facts of the two's lives in order to determine which to save. Therefore, my opponent argues that making a pro-human generalization "works" in that it allows the bystander to make a quick decision. However, where does my opponent see this approach working? The bystander has clearly made the wrong choice (within a PU framework) and chosen the one with the lesser number of possible preference satisfactions over the one with more. This has bee my point. That adding prejudices clouds actual preference calculation which is the entire point of PU. The argument that a hierarchy of interests (in generalized cases) is therefore needed ignores completely the fact that by adopting such an approach, one is necessarily throwing out preference calculation as the primary motivation for moral actions. When one adds in biases in favor of humans over animals irrespective of whether or not the specific case involves a situation in which the animal possesses a higher degree of preferences than the human, one is clearly not adhering to the PU framework. My opponent's point that utilitarianism only deals with relatively general cases is false, PU deals with adherence to the principle of preference maximization. The PPM holds to a higher degree than biases added on WITHIN a PPM framework. One cannot adopt speciesist prejudices without abandoning PU entirely. ===Preference Violation=== My opponent argues that my argument against speciesism is that it violates (in itself as a belief or opinion) animal preferences. But since this is obviously not true, speciesism does not inherently do any such thing and so is not incompatible with PU as a moral system dealing with actions. However, this view continues to mistake the actual meaning of the resolution and is clear semantics (a rule violation as per my R1 framework for the debate). The resolution clearly means that the concept of speciesism is incompatible with the concept of PU. This is what my opponent and I have argued throughout this entire debate (my opponent has argued on the assumption on every other point) and the argument posited here is a rule violation on the prohibition of semantics. ===Lack of Pain=== In his defense of this contention, my opponent points out that the existence of species which cannot possibly hold pain owes to their species specifically and thus argues that his point successfully molds PU and speciesism together, rather than the two being incompatible. This point fails though in that it provides no warrant for why this molds the points, rather than simply upholds PU over speciesism. Consider the agreed definition of speciesism, that of discriminating against members of a species "purely" on the basis of their species membership. This means killing a sponge because it is a sponge, not because it doesn't feel pain. On my opponent's attempted refutation of the need for a rational rule for preference calculation, my opponent has two rebuttals, both of which are insufficient to upholding it though. On the first, my opponent argues that people won't usually be in a dilemma in which a preference conflict needs to be resolved between a higher preference animal and a human. Thus my opponent argues that since it's usually easy to determine this, a rational rule is not needed and will not lead to more net preference violations. The argument is flawed in that it totally ignores (A) situations which may arise between high preference animals and humans and (B) the fact that this not only applies to species but to humans as well. This means that even among humans there are dilemmas in which preference differences aren't intuitively calculated. And since inter-personal conflicts are common (adhering to my opponent's own argument against marginal cases), a rational rule is still needed for net preference maximization. My opponent's second attempted refutation of my point argues that if scientists have to deal with high preference animals in moral dilemmas, they will be more familiar with the relative preferences of the animal and thus better equipped to make a decision regarding the appropriate action. However not only does this not account for non-scientists interacting with high preference animals, but it fails to appreciate that the scientists in the scenario are still using preference calculation, albeit more intuitively than abstractly.