Justice Requires the Recognition of Animal Rights

Introduction I plan to argue that justice is a participatory concept, requiring not just an individual’s moral agency, but his consent to both a social contract and a government that maintains that contract. My opponent has attacked my position’s core epistemology, but I want to define key terms and concepts first, lay out my arguments, and only after that, defend rationalism and attack the feminist critique - the reverse of my opponent’s structure. I. Defining “Rights” and “Justice” What is a right? “Rights are entitlements (not) to perform certain actions, or (not) to be in certain states; or entitlements that others (not) …[do the same]”Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy How are rights acquired? Rights do not merely “involve moral notions that grow out of respect for the individual,” as Pro suggests, because they must be constructed, codified, and enforced. An institution or individual grants rights, and this remains primarily important because outside granted rights, we can only get natural rights, which depends upon an individual’s strength and power to be protected - the law of nature so to speak. Rights are not abstract propositions; without enforcement and consent, those so-called rights are only a person’s opinion and purely fiction. The social contract - an agreement amongst free individuals to form a government that protects constructed and enumerated rights - undergirds most modern civil societies. The Bill of Rights would be a good example, as other laws. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau remarked in The Social Contract: “The social pact, far from destroying natural equality, substitutes, on the contrary, a moral and lawful equality for whatever physical inequality that nature may have imposed on mankind; so that however unequal in strength and intelligence, men become equal by covenant and by right.” What is justice? Justice is both the individual and government abiding by the social contract, and if either party terminates the agreed terms - like breaking the law - this in turn breaks the contract. Tyrannical governments lose the right to govern and enforce laws and should face revolution, while individuals who break the social contract face criminal sanction. Justice must also be blind, for without equal protection and enforcement, the contract is broken. II. Justice Does Not require Animal Rights A. The Normative Epistemology First, on face, of course animals cannot consent to the social contract, but my reasoning is more complicated than that. Consent is not just agreement but the act of a moral agent - an individual agreeing to take on certain responsibilities in exchange for certain privileges and rights. For example, I agree to pay my taxes and follow the law; in exchange, the police department or other agencies acting on behalf of the government will defend my property and person. If I broke the law by not paying taxes, then I could lose certain rights, like the right to my freedom or property. This means that justice is a two-way street, a participatory system requiring not just an institution granting rights but a person taking on certain burdens and responsibilities. Animals cannot be a part of this system because they lack moral agency; they do not and cannot have responsibilities. Second, extending rights to animals makes the concept of rights meaningless and makes affirming the resolution a contradiction in its own right. Helena Silverstein, Professor, Lafayette College of Government and law, Unleashing Rights, p. 49 “The multiplication of rights…trivializes the concept and it underlying values. Hence, to suggest that rights apply not only to humans but also to animals undermines the notion and meaning of human rights…Do plants have rights? …Does the planet have rights? The slippery slope onto which we fall when rights are extended too far diminishes the power and utility of rights, for if we extend rights to everything then rights become meaningless.” Third, discourse on animal rights engenders dangerous political ramifications. Even if it elevates animals, ultimately, it denigrates rationalism and human suffering as a special category, engendering anti-humanism and justifying harm. This contradicts even the most basic notion of justice. Peter Staudenmeir, “THE AMBIGUITIES OF ANIMAL RIGHTS”, March 2003 "Rightly rejecting the inherited dualism of humanity and non-human nature, animal rights philosophers wrongly collapse the two into one undifferentiated whole, thus substituting monism for dualism…But regressive dreams of purity and oneness carry no emancipatory potential; their political ramifications range from trite to dangerous… ‘speciesism’ yields liberation for neither people nor animals, but merely the same rancid antihumanism that has always turned radical hopes into their reactionary opposite.” Lastly, membership to the human species is a morally relevant factor for deciding this debate. The circular logic of human superiority does not preclude the truth of that proposition Dr. Thomas Dorman, “Species are Distinct”, Paracelsus corporation, November 1999 volume 4 issue 11 “To a careful observer, it is evident that all species have distinct characteristics … People have a rational mind… Once one started investigating this matter, one found hundreds nay thousands of serious thinkers who have drawn the same conclusion from a broader perspective with deep analysis covering all aspects of morphogenetics, of evolution..the anatomical and probably the personality characteristics of species cannot be explained mechanistically… I draw from this the conclusion that animals are not on a par with humans… we as a species are different and have a responsibility to other members of our species that exceeds that to animals; hence the modern idea of speciesism is specious.” B. The relationship of animal rights, compassion, and justice Despite some well-crafted opening observations, Pro has equivocated and obfuscated critical components of this debate. First, his source, Katrina Albright, alleges that “compassion is the basis of rights…and animal rights.” However, this does not mean that Pro’s approach actually gives animal rights because this confuses necessary and sufficient conditions. More simply, rights may require compassion, but compassion cannot be the only factor in deciding whether rights should be granted. I may feel sorry for a criminal, but still deny his freedom. Thus, Pro has not established why compassion is a sufficient condition to grant animal rights. Second, and more importantly, what does this have to do with justice? Nowhere in his first constructive did Pro actually define justice. So, we cannot know if his feminist approach fulfills the obligations of the resolution. III. Rationalism is best; “the ethics of care” as a political or social epistemology is inherently dangerous First, post-rational feminism collapses under its own contradictions because rationalism remains necessary to make distinctions, weigh arguments, and construct social/political narratives, which feminism embraces. You cannot escape the fact that in order to critique logic, you must use it. But post-rational feminism goes even beyond this because it wants to exclude certain epistemologies, especially normative ones. This wonderful piece of illogic sounds like this: “This ought to be rejected because the only way to ensure we are making valid epistemic claims is to be inclusive…only accept normative arguments that are based on this epistemology.” Second, Pro relies on exclusionary, patriarchal logic in asserting the feminist hierarchy: Tom Regan, Defending Animal Rights, p. 57-8 “Yet the implied claim to superiority on behalf of these feminine qualities appears highly paradoxical, first, because celebrating the “feminine’ set of qualities over the masculine is to engage in the very sort of dualistic, hierarchical thinking alleged to be characteristic of the male mind.” Third, rationalism is not inherently patriarchal because competing epistemologies make for good debate. Evaluating all possible perspectives for a course of action makes sense. This very debate on DDO proves that rationalism does not inherently exclude but wishes to weigh alternatives. Fourth, rationalism is key to thoughtful discussion - excluding rationalism destroys the feminist epistemology’s chance for solvency Michael Williams, “The Realist Tradition and the Limits of International Relations,” Cambridge University Press “Postmodern positions have often been guilty of a corresponding myopia toward the realist tradition…Defining the issue this way has not only contributed to the general misrecognition of rationalism’s status as an historically constituted theoretical practice…it has reduced substantial discussion and engagement to a series of caricatures. Claims to to rediscover the problematic of subjectivity…the crucial question of identity…are all important in context of rationalists reifications of all these factors.” And finally, even if compassion and the “ethics of care” recognize animal rights, this mode of thinking must be rejected as a political epistemology. Why? By inserting the discourse of rights into the debate, Pro has demanded the politicization of compassion - whether or not Pro advocates for legal rights is irrelevant because we are still thinking in terms of social conduct and policy, our primary means of relating to the other. Compassion, at least as reified by Pro, makes no distinctions, provides no barriers or means to discriminate between those who deserve our compassion and those who earn our contempt. Rationalism is necessary to form identity and exclusionary logic - like labeling someone an enemy or terrorist - and this remains necessary to our survival as a community. Compassion as a political narrative is the equivalent of pacifism, and pacifism is the equivalent of collective suicide in the face of those who wish to do harm to us.