Zaradi's Prized Tournament: Animal Rights

Horizon broadening time. Observations I agree with the observations, as the definitions are vague enough for his observations to be true. I was dumb and didn’t contest them before the debate, so I am forced to accept these. Ob1: Agreed Ob2: Correct Ob3: Yep Ob4: Indeed R1) Needless suffering I actually agree with many parts of this. Many animals have feelings. But I don’t see how being able to perceive pain is sufficient for something to be immoral and require animal rights. Pain is necessary, but it is not sufficient, in order to gain rights. Bsh’s first point under the section is merely saying the majority of people agree with his statement. This isn’t necessarily how justice should be applied. If 90% of the world supported murder, it wouldn’t necessarily make it just. Bsh also argues the moral community--one of my arguments--would see needless suffering as bad. And this is only half true. Suffering is necessary for rights, but it is not sufficient. Bsh finalizes his sub contention saying justice itself requires the end to needless suffering. I will expand as to why this basic thesis really isn’t true. Essentially, to refute this, I must demonstrate that needless suffering alone is not sufficient for granting rights to animals. There is a difference between harm and moral harm. What is it about pain which makes it a moral harm? This is something which bsh has not established. An animal’s welfare in and of itself does not warrant a moral response. A plant without sunlight or carbon dioxide will die. But no one would say plants have rights. Bsh may argue he has proven elephants can have emotion and thus be aware of their pain, a plant has no such capacity. This is correct, but the objection falls short. There is a difference between being a psychological subject--being able to feel pain--and being a moral subject worthy of rights. Animals being able to feel pain makes their welfare conditions more complex, but it does not “add anything beyond a new set of welfare conditions. Even though it does intuitively seem as if consciousness of a certain kind is relevant to moral status, consciousness as such is not what confers moral status. There needs to be a further fact that conceptually links the two together.” [1. http://www.academia.edu...] Harming animals is also not the reason animal abuse is wrong, as animals have no rights. The reason it is wrong is because harming animals in such a way hurts the human. Acts of cruelty harm then “in the real sense”, but it is the person who is morally harmed, not the animal. Abuse may harm the animal, but it is the moral harm the human incurs which makes it ‘wrong’. “[T]he harm dealt to animals is a necessary — but not sufficient — feature of what grounds the wrongness of animal cruelty.” [1] Thus, animals have no rights. Any ‘rights’ given to them is because humans have rights, not because animals do. Immanuel Kant argues “[a]ny action whereby we may torment animals, or let them suffer distress, or otherwise treat them without love, is demeaning to ourselves.” [2. http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu...] Inflicting pain onto animals is not immoral because an animal has a right to not be put into pain, but because it harms the person. So infringement upon human rights is the reason why causing animals pain is immoral, not because animals have rights. My C2 further serves as a rebuttal to all of this. An animal may have emotions, but that does not make them rational. In order to be a ‘rational being’ one must have the capacity for reason. An animal can do something moral but it is unable to know why it is moral. In order to be rational and thus qualify for rights, you have to understand what right and wrong is--not just what pain is and what pain isn’t. A moral community does encounter many issues such as arguing how goodness should be pursued. But this proves that those in the community are able to act for those moral reasons. “The moral community is thus a community of rational and free beings. … From this we can conclude that the capacity for rational agency is both necessary and sufficient for having moral status” [1]. Rationality is what is required in order to have rights, not the ability to feel pain. R2) Give and take I would argue treating animals as property and using them is an effective way to protect them. So taking from them is actually in their best interest (and, therefore, a just society would not support animal rights). Property rights have been seen as a solution to many environmental issues as people do not like their property being misused. Making animals property, then, actually increases an animal’s welfare. From an animal rightist viewpoint, keeping them subjugated and taking from them is best way to protect animals. Kant argues, “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means.” According to Kant, you cannot treat a rational being as merely a means but also an ends. When it comes to animals, who are irrational, we needn’t give them credit. Thus, using them as a means is not immoral. In the words of Kant himself on animal rights, “Animals are not self-conscious and are there merely as a means to an end. The end is man”. R3) Emotions and rights I don’t see how being able to empathize with things gives them rights. Being able to cause emotion isn’t really indicative of moral worth. The fact that we, as humans, can have an emotional connection with an animal does not give the animal rights--it is because *we* are the rational being. This has nothing to do with the animal, it has to do with how we, as humans, are and react to different situations. R4) Animals have legal rights a) Inheritance In the scenario provided the animals should receive the care the deceased human wishes. But this has nothing to do with animal rights. It is the right of the human who can grant his/her possessions to the animals and ask other people to care for the animals after his/her passing. This has to do with the right of the human to have control over their belongings, not because the animals are entitled to the belongings. In the current legal system, if the owner had said nothing, the animals (who are considered property) and the belongings would transfer to the closest relative who is a person (or some animal housing facility). So if we are basing ‘rights’ off of the legal code, this scenario shows that animals by default have no claim to inheritance. They only get it if said by the owner--and even then, it is the right of the owner, not the animals’, which gives them the possessions. b) The law as due What laws promise animals anything? The constitution of the United States grants rights to people, not animals. I don’t think there is any legal code which gives any significant rights to animals. The only rights given are under the framework that people have rights. And the reason animal cruelty is immoral is because of the moral harm it inflicts upon the person, not the animal. Now bsh gives us an interesting scenario about giving animals promises, but this argument fails to convince. Animals can’t even rationalize the promise. Regardless, even assuming this is true, animals are not part of the moral community. To not follow up on the promise would be a moral harm to the person, not the animal. Any ‘rights’ given to animals are not animal rights, but rather human rights (which, by definition, is animal rights). R5) Animals and humans have no difference P2 is where we fundamentally disagree. And pointing to infants or the disabled does not refute the fact that animals are not part of the moral community. Both newborns and the disabled have the capacity to reason. Although infants lack the ability to reason immediately, they “they nevertheless — in virtue of being a member of a certain natural kind — possess a root capacity for rational agency” [1], and it is the potential for rationality which forms the basis of moral status. In fact, people who are sleeping or drugged lack the capacity for reason but they are still given moral worth. Kind membership matters, and merely being of humankind gives you the capacity to be a rational being, regardless of whether or not you can exercise it. Indeed, in the abortion debate, it is the “capacity for self-awareness” which “is necessary for full personhood.” [3. http://socrates.berkeley.edu...] The capacity to rationalize and simply being a human is what gives you rights. This means people with alzheimers and newborns still have rights even though they cannot exercise said rights immediately. Animals have no such capacity.