Justice Requires the Recognition of Animal Rights

Thanks to Zaradi for instigating this debate! Due to the complete lack of clarifications or definitions provided by Con, I will go ahead and present a few myself. Given the wordings of the resolution, it is fair to assume that humans do have rights in some form; because I'm not expecting Con to contest this notion, I will only defend it if he actually does so. As for definitions, there are two key words in the resolution: 'rights' and 'justice'. Rights, in their most basic form, are simply entitlements to protection from certain acts-- if I have the rights to life, liberty, and the ownership of private property, then it implies that others ought not to kill me, enslave me, or steal my rightfully-acquired property. If an animal has rights, it just means that there are some things which we should not do to that animal; this can be as simple as 'the right to not be tortured for fun' or 'the right not to be killed without reason'. Defending the existence of animal rights does not require showing that all animals have rights, and most certainly does not require showing that animals have rights to the same extent that humans do. The other key word in the resolution is justice, which generally refers to upholding a society's ethical values; my burden of proof in this debate is to show that in order to properly uphold ethical values, we must recognize the existence of animals rights, as described previously. When we take a look at the justifications for the existence of human rights, we see that all of them also apply to non-human animals to some extent-- there is no way to justify human rights without inadvertently conceding that animals also have some rights. I will be focusing on what I believe is the most effective of those justifications: the ability to experience meaningful suffering. It is a scientific fact that animals can experience suffering in the same way that we humans do. There is quite a large body of evidence supporting this notion: "Nearly all the external signs that lead us to infer pain in other humans can be seen in other species, especially the species most closely related to us--the species of mammals and birds. The behavioral signs include writhing, facial contortions, moaning, yelping or other forms of calling, attempts to avoid the source of the pain, appearance of fear at the prospect of its repetition, and so on. In addition, we know that these animals have nervous systems very like ours... Although human beings have a more developed cerebral cortex than other animals, this part of the brain is concerned with thinking functions rather than with basic impulses, emotions, and feelings. These impulses, emotions, and feelings are located in the diencephalon, which is well developed in many other species of animals, especially mammals and birds. We also know that the nervous systems of other animals were not artificially constructed--as a robot might be artificially constructed--to mimic the pain behavior of humans. The nervous systems of animals evolved as our own did, and in fact the evolutionary history of human beings and other animals, especially mammals, did not diverge until the central features of our nervous systems were already in existence. A capacity to feel pain obviously enhances a species' prospects for survival, since it causes members of the species to avoid sources of injury. It is surely unreasonable to suppose that nervous systems that are virtually identical physiologically, have a common origin and a common evolutionary function, and result in similar forms of behavior in similar circumstances should actually operate in an entirely different manner on the level of subjective feelings." - Peter Singer [1] Moreover, many species of mammals have even been reported to engage in clear displays of emotion [2]. Given all of that, it becomes completely absurd to deny that many animals have the capability to experience physical suffering and its psychological/emotional repercussions in the same way humans do. With that established, we can move on to its ethical implications. Suffering is an intrinsically negative feeling; this proposition is almost self-evident, as there is a universal aversion to it among all conscious beings-- there is no ethically relevant being which does not have some sort of active interest in avoiding suffering. Justice, rights, and ethics in general exist in order to preserve those interests; there is no other viable way to explain their existence. Thus, it becomes unjust to inflict suffering upon any ethically relevant being unless doing so reduces the suffering of another. Since it has been shown that many animals are, indeed, ethically relevant, this logic leads us to an affirmation of the resolution: justice requires us to recognize that there are some things which we should not do to animals, such as needlessly torturing or killing them-- animals have a right protecting their interest in avoiding gratuitous suffering. As of now, the resolution is affirmed. In order to negate the resolution, Con must show that animals are not ethically relevant, either by defending a different justification for the existence of rights, or by showing that my own justification somehow doesn't apply to animals.... or he could run a kritik. In any case, I look forward to reading my opponent's opening round! [1] http://www.animal-rights-library.com... [2] http://news.discovery.com...