Animal Rights

First, I'd like to say with absolutely no animosity or ill-meaning, that I hope my opponent expresses more interest in the straight forward debate on whether or not animals have rights, rather than dancing around invisible walls he or she created to serve no reason other than to immunize his argument from its own weaknesses (example, you make an argument against specieism while deciding as a rule that we can only discuss certain species. This is blatantly disingenuous). There is a difference between trying to disqualify an argument that is perfectly valid to the topic, and defining words and establishing provisions to explain what the intention of the debate is and keep it on topic when the one-sentence title might be short and vague. I will work through them with my best judgement, to not violate any provisions that are reasonably fair, on topic, or valid. Moving on to more pressing matters! OV1 - I don't see that I've dropped it, 'to make a claim' is tantamount to 'qualified for a right', or is otherwise a very ambiguous term. OV2 - You're correct so-far as it's understood that by 'rational agent', I specifically mean a being that A.) can explicitly communicate an agreement, and B.) possesses will, as opposed to instinctive desire or mechanization. In this context at least, will would be defined as the conscious order of the brain being able to evaluate and relate ideas and thoughts to one another, and for this reason pursuit particular actions and goals. It may sound like 'interests', but differs in this way: as you use it, an interest would be any natural response that tends to favor or causes a particular behavior, regardless of what mental state brought about that action. Example, an animal 'needing' food is considered its interest, because of its biological implications rather than that the animal actually considered the value of eating food, the consequences, and consciously determined at any point that eating food would make it closer to its goals and personal, existential purpose. OV3 - Indeed it ultimately is. However, a just government must conditionally discriminate and be intolerant too. It must be discriminate on the basis of sex, for military service or health care provisions, on race for affirmative action, on mental and physical capacity so special accommodations can be assured, and even too of criminals, so they are treated differently than non-criminals. Similarly, it must be intolerant of criminals. That "undue pain and harm is not due to any agent" is completely tautological. I'd ask you clarify. Counter-objections: 1-1. This is the only place I will not be able to fully abide by one of your definitions. You may declare "See, he admits it! Allow him no votes for he broke the rules!" I'm not here for votes, I'm here for an honest debate, and the fact is, this is where a vital semantic and substantial delineation between two terms needs to occur for this debate to progress (intellectually, anyway). A positive right can only be held by one consenting to the system. This is a contract. A contract is an exchange, and requires consent. Parties that cannot consent, may be protected by the body of law, because those composed of the body have determined it their desire. This is means in respect to the system, non-consenting agents are powerless to change it, powerless to negotiate. To say they have a 'right' by being protected seems innocuous at first without thinking too hard about it, but when you consider how utterly devalued the word becomes when you describe it for anything that might be protected by law, the absurdity becomes obvious. To say a mountain, a river, my house or a steam ship have 'rights' is at best, an extreme semantical misstep, and at worst, disingenuous. If an agent has no power what-so-ever to alter, dissolve or reinforce its rights, then it doesn't have any. It has a protection. No one has ever argued that all human behavior toward any animal, under any circumstance is permittable. How long have humans been farming, and don't you believe that it's basically a universal law through that entire time that one person cannot steal or kill another's livestock? Is that an animal having rights, or the farmer having rights over his possessions? 1-2. As per the above description, it does preclude them. They cannot consent, and therefor have no claim to rights. They can be protected however and for whatever reason *we* decide to consent upon, but this only effects our behavior, as we are the only ones able to modify our behavior on these grounds. The unconsenting animal is being protected, but not as per its will, and with no power to express or negotiate the terms of behavior of those establishing the contract, it is without power and without any rights. 1-3. "But, if the mentally ill are protected by law, they have a claim to just treatment and a claim against maltreatment." This is your flawed premise. Well, its actually a full syllogism on its own. Protection by law is not necessarily based on a claim of their own to just treatment. As explained above, protection necessarily revolves around the consent of the participants alone, as it does nothing but establish an agreement to behavior. Consent is the only way to a claim of any sort in positive law, because its entirety and literally defined as just that, "man-made laws", laws constructed or 'posited'. 2. The only thing that wouldn't be redundant to add in respect to the next section, is that I am only discrediting natural in-so-far as it has any relation to the points you are making, which I am addressing one by one. Objections: 1. You must have misunderstood what I meant. When I stated that the system *treats* certain agents as though they have rights, I did not mean to imply that they actually do. A proxy is no good in representing the will of an agent it cannot communicate with, which makes it a farce and false-labeling. I would have worded it a little more clearly if I would have anticipated the degree semantics were going to play a role in your response. And the remainder of this portion is wrapped up in all of the previous discussion about our difference in opinion of what precisely a right is. 2. I either accidentally skipped it or read it and only responded to the sub-points as they are contingent elaborations of C2. 2A. I apologize for misconstruing the statement, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt in my mind as it seems granting rights over having the simplest of biological needs seems rather indefensible. But if you insist: Biological functions, including pain, are inherently meaningless. Only conscious evaluation separates pain, a mere chemical reaction, from suffering. There is no meaningful difference in recognizing pain, hunger, or any other biochemical reaction as something signifying a claim to anything anymore than an oxidizing iron chunk. We see the way animals react to pain, and inaccurately project our own suffering unto it. But without conscious evaluation occurring, your seeing nothing more than a chemical reaction occurring in a cluster of carbon based fatty-tissue. 2B. Purposeless harm is practically an empty term. Even the harasser has a purpose in doing so. My girlfriend could leave me if she wanted to for no reason other than pure sadism, cruelty or spite. And it would still be perfectly legal. It could cause a crippling and devastating emotional toll on me, but there is a reason it isn't harassment even if it were intentions to do so on me. You certainly nailed it too, she has the right to not be with me. It has nothing to do with protecting one from being emotionally harmed by someone else. Harassment laws are meant to be employed to protect people from border-line or virtual physical interference, actual discrimination (work place especially) or threats. [1] "Generally, criminal harassment entails intentionally targeting someone else with behavior that is meant to alarm, annoy, torment or terrorize them. Not all petty annoyances constitute harassment. Instead, most state laws require that the behavior cause a credible threat to the person's safety or their family's safety." That said, even harassment laws are perfectly objectionable. One could argue that their right to free-speech is violated at some point, and I don't see any consistency in that point being "emotional damages caused". 3. The debate is limited to vertebrates as far as your position is required to defend as having any rights. I'm mentioning sponges, trees or inanimate objects as analogies, to test the consistency and practicality of your position. Or are analogies against the rules too? I'm not asking to provide any statement or evidence that a sponge or a rock has rights, I'm asking you why they don't, yet the (vertebrate) animal does when they meet the same qualifications of this particular argument? The 2nd through 3rd statements are rewordings of the same baseless, subjective conjecture, just as in the original source and C3 argument. The experience of disgust in seeing an abused animal comes from our projections, and recognizing it as such denies animals moral considerations, and therefor rights in this regard. 4. "clearly be better off", is again baseless conjecture. How do you know what they want? Do you know that they even "want" anything, as in they will it? Or do they "want" it the same way a balloon "wants" to touch the ceiling? If we are evaluating animals on par with humans, we'd be begging the question. As a result, that argument folds. Finally, Specieism isn't bad because it's a necessary and universally observed truth. The best way I can explain this by discussing species that may not be vertebrates, but are indeed species, which I'm evidently barred from doing. http://criminal.findlaw.com...