Justice Requires the Recognition of Animal Rights

I value morality as justice is based in decisions of right or wrong. Morality isn’t truth functional with independently competing truth claims but is instead based in rules of interaction that guide our decisions. Our decisions come from self-interest and intending to recognize desired ends. Mercer: MARK MERCER. IN DEFENCE OF WEAK PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM. Erkenntnis 55: 217–237, 2001. “To understand what another has done is … to have a … description of the action he has performed, one that reveals it to be intentional … to know an agent’s reason for performing … action involves understanding his motivation in doing it. … It is not enough, … to understand what a person who intentionally sips from a saucer of mud has done … An interpreter has also to comprehend what in desiring to sip from a saucer of mud was attractive to him. … One way is to connect that piece of behaviour to one or more of the strange agent’s self-regarding ends. If we can see in sipping from a saucer of mud a way of maintaining self-respect, or even a way to delight in the taste of mud, we can understand the desire the agent had to sip from a saucer of mud. We need not connect his self-regarding end to an intention to realize that end in or through his action; we need only … connect it to an expectation of realizing it.” And, this lays the basis of normative egoism. Mercer 2: “weak … egoism is the doctrine that all actions are performed in expectation of realizing self-regarding ends. … egoism is the doctrine that behind any action whatever that an agent performs intentionally, ultimately there lies the agent’s expectation of realizing one or more of her self-regarding ends, an expectation without which the agent would not have performed the action. … if an agent does not expect to forestall his own unhappiness or to promote his self-image, …, in … performing an action … then that agent will not intentionally perform an action of that type. … some other self-regarding end, not as a consequence … but directly as part of engaging in that activity, … To enjoy tennis is to take pleasure in playing tennis, and not, … to attain experiences of pleasure through playing tennis.)” So, we are moral in intending to further our own self-interest. I don’t deny that there are decisions that are to benefit those external to the self but we are motivated to take those acts in trying to recognize self-benefiting ends. Thus my criterion is realizing self-regarding ends. Contention 1: We aren’t required to respect animal rights under egoism. There are two reasons: First: People aren’t required to respect the rights of animals because we can choose if we want to respect rights but we aren’t required or obligated. Kalin: Jesse Kalin. Two Kinds of Moral Reasoning: Ethical Egoism as a Moral Theory. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Nov., 1975), pp. 323-356 “If I' can be established, then so can I since a person's self-interest consists in those wants and desires most important to him as deter-mined by his own informed preferential valuation. There is no restric-tion on what a person can want or have an interest in. His wants may be selfish, confined to his own pleasure and advancement, or they may be nonselfish, directed toward the pleasure and well-being of another, … The ethical egoist may have an interest in the welfare of others, but if he does, it is only because that other has some special connection with his wants and desires, such as being loved. Only in virtue of this connec-tion can another's wants and desires provide reasons for acting a…” Winning we respect animals for net-utility gains isn’t requiring us to respect their rights because that recognizes animals only instrumentally. Second: Animals don’t pose a threat that would compel us to respect their rights. I.e my dog doesn’t threaten me if I don’t respect it and thus doesn’t harm my self-interest. Navreson: Jan Narveson. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Mar., 1977), pp. 161-178 “Consider the non-[human] … beings. Their behavior will, … affect the interests of many rational beings they might be threats, or sources of food, for instance. … one cannot usefully predict their behavior on the basis of one's results in such deliberations. But consider rational beings. Figuring out what it would be rational for them to do is useful, … there is a pretty significant probability that they will do what it is rational for them to do. … this, … drives … a set of restrictions on our behavior which are not just reactions to immediate threat or prospect of short-term obvious gain, … These commitments are, … the product of self-interest and are very like … agreements. … To talk of "rights" … is to talk of the basis of claims which we have self-interested reason to make and do make, in varying ways; and the reason for others to concede these rights to us is that they have an interest in our respecting them in their case, … No … basis … is, … available for beings which cannot make this kind of claims and commitments, … beings which, whatever interest they may have in coming in for these benefits, simply do not have the sort of rational equipment which would enable them to pose the right kind of threat if we don't, …”Now, lets look at the aff case.First thing to notice is that he offers no framework of his own under which to evaluate arguments. Because he doesn't you instantly default to evaluating the resolution under an egoistic framework. This literally means you can scroll down to the bottom of the page and skip the rest of the debate and just vote neg because it's literally impossible to affirm the resolution if we're evaluating things under an egoistic framework. But let's look at his sole argument that because animals suffer and display emotions that we are required to recognize their rights.First, he's not actually giving you a reason as to why this means we have to recognize their rights. Even if he's winning that animal suffering means we shouldn't make them suffer, that doesn't give us a reason to have to respect their rights. Humans suffer a lot as well, but if that meant we had to respect human rights then human rights violations wouldn't be a thing. Secondly, cross-apply my egoism argument that shows that justice doesn't actually require us to recognize rights. We can if we feel like it, but there's no reason to be forced to do it if it's against our own self-regarding ends. Third, turn his own argument against him here. Singer’s focus on aggregation and the suffering of animals allows animals to be harmed and their suffering be ignored. Nussbaum: The Moral Status of Animals. By: Nussbaum, Martha C,., Chronicle of Higher Education, 00095982, 2/3/2006, Vol. 52, Issue 22“One … problem concerns the Utilitarian commitment to aggregation: that is, to summing together all pleasures and pains. The choice maker is instructed to produce the largest total … pleasure. That can allow results in which a small number of creatures have very miserable lives, so long as their miseries are compensated for by a great deal of pleasure elsewhere. … It remains unclear whether such a view can really rule out the cruel treatment of at least some animals, which undoubtedly causes great pleasure to a very large number of meat eaters, or the infliction of pain on small numbers of animals in laboratory testing in order to provide benefits for many humans. …” Fourth, turn his own argument against him here again. The utilitarian focus on pain and pleasure is harmful to animals. Nussbaum 2: “Utilitarians consider together diverse aspects of lives, reducing them all to experienced pain and pleasure. … a good life, for an animal as for a human, has many different aspects: movement, affection, health, community, dignity, bodily integrity, … Animals, … often don't miss what they don't know, and it is hard to believe that animals cramped in small cages all their lives can dream of the free movement that is denied them. … Even a comfortable immobility would be wrong for a horse, an elephant, or a gorilla. Those creatures characteristically live a life full of movement, space, and complex social interaction. To deprive them of those things is to give them a distorted and impoverished existence.”Fifth, It’s not about intellectual ability but rather grasping ethical premises. Cohen: Cohen, Carl. "The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research", New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 315, issue 14, October 1986, pp. 865–870. "Patterns of conduct are not at issue. Animals do … exhibit remarkable behavior at times. Conditioning, fear, instinct, and intelligence all contribute to species survival. Membership in a community of moral agents nevertheless remains impossible for them. Actors subject to moral judgment must be capable of grasping the generality of an ethical premise in a practical syllogism. Humans act immorally often enough, but only they … can discern, by applying some moral rule to the facts of a case, that a given act ought or ought not to he performed. The moral restraints imposed by humans on themselves are thus highly abstract and are often in conflict with the self-interest of the agent. Communal behavior among animals, … does not approach autonomous morality in this fundamental sense. Genuinely moral acts have an internal as well as an .external dimension. Thus, in law, an act can be criminal only when the guilty deed, … is done with a guilty mind, …"and, Only humans can engage in moral reasoning. Cohen 2: "Between species… humans on the one hand and cats or rats on the other--the morally relevant differences are enormous, and almost universally appreciated. Humans engage in moral reflection; … are morally autonomous; … are members of moral communities, recognizing just claims against their own interest. Human beings do have rights; theirs is a moral status very different from that of cats or rats ..."This means that because animals are incapable of moral reasoning, they aren't deserving of rights.