April Gauntlet Tower: Trial by Fire

So the biggest problem in my opponent’s last round is that he vastly undercovers and miscovers the K. He picks out specific sentences from taglines to reply to without actually responding to the warrants coming from my arguments and, therefore, doesn’t actually end up replying to my arguments. But first, let’s go for a little substance debate. Time for refutations! Let’s start on this idea that there’s no real differences between humans and animals. This is true in a lot of situations, but not true in the most important way that pertains to rights -- only humans can engage in moral reasoning. Cohen writes: 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. “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” And this is critical because the bestowing of rights isn’t based on things like being able to feel or communicate, but rather on an ability to grasp ethical premises. Since animals are incapable of doing that, they are unworthy of rights. Cohen continues: “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, …” But let’s go to his suffering argument, being that because animals can suffer and that suffering is wrong, that they ought to have a right to not pointlessly suffer. To begin with, my opponent never makes any attempt to define what “needless” is. How exactly can we define what needless is? If I need to put animals through the cruelest and most horrible slaughterhouses in order to ensure the continued survival of the human race, would the suffering of the animals really be needless? Or would there be a need for their suffering? The only way to possibly weigh this argument would be under some sort of utilitarian framework. But this framework is wrought with problems, specifically problems that negatively affect animals. For one, adopting a utilitarian mindset opens the possibility for animals to be ignored, even as utilitarians call for their suffering to end. Nussbaum explains: The Moral Status of Animals. By: Nussbaum, Martha C [Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago],., 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. …” Because of this, it’s really hard to look at needless suffering as a reason to recognize rights. And, these arguments are sufficient to negate because the Aff has no contentional offense to extend out as a reason to affirm the resolution. Not only is the K still sufficiently refuting his case and turning offense for the negative, but I’m turning offense off of Nussbaum showing how the Aff’s call for the reduction of animal suffering only opens animals up to further exploitation. This means that even if the K debate went over your head and you just have no idea what to do about it, you can still negate off of Nussbaum and the lack of offense coming from the affirmative. But let’s look at the K debate again. I’ll make it crystal clear exactly what the K is talking about. The links say desire is traditionally understood as wanting a real object, in this case it’s wanting rights for animals. This is is perpetuated by the aff’s mindset of requirement, meaning that, according to his case, our societies are required and ought to recognize animal’s rights, which perpetuates this understanding of desire. This is a problematic understanding of desire because we become empty vessels only chasing after each and every desire, before going on to the next desire, and the next desire, and then the next indefinitely. This wanting of desire makes people controlled in our actions and our wants and human potential is destroyed, which invalidates what makes us human, thus invalidating the value to life. This has two impacts a) the aff negates value in life by vaccoulizing people and b) they create the very problems that they attempt to “solve” and allow fascism to replicate itself, meaning that our actions and wants become controlled in our attempt to continually chase after desire. The alternative is to reunderstand desire through what the K calls schizoanalysis. Under this paradigm we choose desire as the creation of experiences and reinvest desire not in what we want to have but in what we can create and experience. The biggest problems in my opponent’s refutations is that he never really actually addresses the warrants coming out of my arguments. All he really does is reiterate the same points from his case that my case rejects without ever really addressing the K. The K has nothing to do with rejecting inherent human rights, rather says that our desire to reify rights in animals is a chasing of desiring something we lack, which perpetuates the harms of the K. The only way out of this is to reunderstand desire via schizoanalysis. All of this goes through without a response. This makes the debate really simple to understand. The K rejects his desire for a lack of animal rights, and isn’t responded to in anything close to a sufficient manner. You can negate off of it. Even if you don’t like the K, though, you can look to the substance responses against the affirmative and negate off of the turn to his suffering argument. He doesn’t have any kind of offense because animals aren’t the same as humans in understanding moral principles and grasping ethical premises, meaning that we can’t extend to them rights. Considering their suffering as a reason to afford them rights opens themselves up to even more persecution via the very utilitarian system it tries to utilize.