My 150th Debate: Animal Rights

This round is for rebuttals to Pro’s case. I’ll defend my case in R4.JusticePro defines justice as fairness. But justice is sometimes unfair. For example, inheriting a large sum of money is just, though it's unfair that certain people benefit from having rich families while others don't.Fairness requires more than justice, so don't judge the debate under that definition. The agreed-upon definition is "giving each their due," which Aristotle defines as "treating equals equally and treating unequals unequally." Use that standard, not fairness.FairnessIf you apply Pro’s standard for justice, apply Rawls’ contractarian theory of justice. This framework best captures the idea of justice as fairness. Indeed, the idea underlying the original position is to decribe a social contract that is fair to all parties. It accomplishes that through the veil of ignorance, which guarantees impartial judgments, because all the parties are deprived of knowledge about their personal characteristics and social and historical circumstances. Pro's "needless suffering," "law as due," and "marginal cases" arguments approach nothing close to this level of impartiality.Needless sufferingPro isn’t advocating a right against suffering. Not even humans have that right. Pro’s advocacy is limited to a right against needless suffering. Hence, the following problems:(1) Pro’s framework is inconsistent. It justifies human rights as instrumental goods that reduce needless suffering (a utilitarian justification), while justifying animal rights on the basis of a capacity to experience suffering (a deontological justification). The “kettle” criticism actually applies to Pro's argument much more than my independent advocacies. [Note: the notion of "needless suffering" inherently implicates utilitarianism, because it requires a weighing of competing interests.](2) Pro offers no evidence that animal rights will reduce overall suffering, so the utilitarian justification has no force in the context of animals. In fact, my utilitarian analysis suggests that overall suffering will increase if we recognize animal rights (more on this in R4).(3) Pro's utilitarian framework conflicts with his fairness framework. Utilitarianism produces famously unfair results (e.g. the organ harvest case).(4) Pro must show that justice requires animal rights, not merely that justice allows animal rights. But Pro hasn't shown (or even argued) that human rights (let alone animal rights) are necessary to reduce needless suffering. Nor has Pro shown that justice as fairness requires that humans reduce needless suffering (i.e. fairness requires impartiality/neutrality, not subjective utilitarian calculations about suffering). Why can't humans reduce needless suffering through legal prohibitions instead of rights?(5) Pro’s argument is humancentric. When is suffering needless? Humans decide. What’s the standard? Humans decide. Pro takes the status of humans as a starting point, asking whether animals resemble humans enough to grant them rights. This reinforces my Aristotelian definition of justice rather than Pro's fairness standard. And it suggests that humanness is the relevant factor in justifying rights.(6) Animals can't experience needless suffering. Needlessness is a moral concept that only humans experience and understand. So why should we give animals a right against needless suffering? Why are animals due a humancentric, human-imposed, category of understanding that animals neither experience nor understand?(7) Pro’s advocacy lacks a limiting principle. What if we program a computer to experience suffering whenever we use it – will that computer then have rights? And if a computer has rights, what about other non-living objects? Where do you draw the line? What happens when you apply Pro's "marginal cases" logic here?(8) Pro's advocacy is vague. Who measures the suffering? How is it measured? Who decides if it's needless? No objective mechanism exists for distinguishing needless suffering from reasonable suffering. So if the person enforcing this right believes all suffering is reasonable, the right is meaningless. But if the enforcer believes all suffering is needless, it reduces to a right against all suffering, which is absurd, unenforceable, unjust, and unfair.(9) Given how vague a needless suffering right is, it would inevitably lead to different results for similarly situated individuals, based on the biases of the specific judge in each case. But justice and fairness both require similar results for similarly situated individuals. So leaving this much discretion to the person measuring/weighing the suffering is neither just nor fair.(10) Just because animals experience pain doesn't mean they suffer. Animals are ruled purely by instinct. True, some animals are self-conscious. But that doesn't mean they suffer the same way humans do. And even if animals suffer in the exact same way as humans, who cares? Suffering is just another way that an animal's life could go badly, along with having or lacking food, having or lacking disease, and so on. From an animal's perspective, all suffering is the same. So what is special about animal suffering that somehow justifies distinguishing needless from reasonable suffering?(11) Animal suffering (or pain) is necessary. It is the result of evolution, an adaptation. It motivates animals. It helps them avoid harmful situations. In fact, we still don't know all the ways that pain potentially benefits animals. How can justice require that we artificially mess with the processes of evolution, especially in the absence of conclusive knowledge about what we're messing with?Law as duePro's argument fails for three reasons:(1) The law is a social contract from which animals are inherently excluded. That means the law only promises things to other humans, not animals. Humans agree to certain restrictions and responsibilities, for which they receive certain protections and rights. In contrast, animals don't agree to anything. They can't enter contracts. They can't be put in jail. And they can't be sued. The law doesn't hold animals accountable in any way. And it therefore promises them nothing.(2) Justice only requires that we keep promises when (a) someone has relied on the promise, or (b) there was consideration (i.e. a contract). If there is no reliance or consideration, there is no harm to breaking the promise. In fact, it might even be harmful to keep a promise (e.g. when there is an efficient breach of contract). Animals neither rely on promises nor do they offer consideration. So even if the law promises animals anything, there is no need to keep those promises. There may even be an obligation to break those promises if the costs of keeping them outweigh the benefits.(3) This debate is about what justice requires, not what the law says. You can't just say justice requires X because the law promises X. That merely conflates justice with the law. Consider: the law in some places treats women as their husband's property. Under Pro's logic, justice requires that we give men the right of ownership over their wives, because that is what the law promises. Of course, that logic is absurd. The requirements of the law are distinct from the requirements of justice. The status quo tells us nothing about the requirements of justice or the justification for human rights (or animal rights).Marginal casesAgain, this debate is about what justice requires, not what the law says. Yes, the status quo gives severely retarded infants rights. But that doesn't mean justice requires that we do so. Indeed, nothing Pro argued suggests that justice requires universal human rights. Under Pro's "needless suffering" framework, for example, humans unable to experience suffering, or humans who experience suffering as pleasure, wouldn't have rights. Moreover, Pro's framework distinguishes between humans and animals, because humans decide when suffering is needless, not animals (remember, Pro's argument is inherently humancentric).Pro's argument also lacks a limiting principle. Why not extend rights to everything, including plants and non-living objects, if all that matters is whether something is similar to a potential human? Of course, extending rights to everything would completely degrade the value of having rights, just as inflation devalues money. In effect, rights wouldn't be rights at all. Without a limiting principle, then, any justification for rights would collapse.So don't hold me to arguing for universal human rights. That said, I would argue that membership in the human species is a relevant criterion for rights, because only the human species has the capacity for justification, only the human species enters the social contract, and only the human species is granted rights by God. Think about it: we owe our family more than other families, our community more than other communities, our country more than other countries. Why not extend that logic to the species? Just as membership in our family or country ir relevant to justice, membership in a species is relevant.Underview.Pro assumes that depriving animals of their dues is more unjust than depriving humans of their dues. This assumption is uncalled for.Recognizing animal rights means humans no longer have the right of ownership or stewardship over animals. So rather than presume that animals have rights, presume that animals don’t have rights, because giving animals rights means taking away rights from humans. In a choice between human rights or animal rights, human rights should always outweigh. Even Pro’s argument is humancentric. Notice that every single reason Pro gives for extending rights to animals starts from the premise that humans have rights, and then asks whether animals are similar to humans in relevant ways. Humanness is relevant to justifying rights, animalness is not. Plus, remember all the reasons in R2 for putting the burden on Pro (more on this in R4). So presume human rights over animal rights.