animal rights

Affirmative Cases: a philosophical approach to defining animal rights. One of the single biggest issues in rounds so far for the Sept/Oct topic has been the definition of what animal rights would look like "in the real world". Defining precisely what animal rights we're talking about has been a source of great confusion and a number of rounds have been greatly muddled by squabbling over definitions. Specifically for the affirmative, defining animal rights has been a particularly troublesome problem when the negative pressures for an admission that affirming means an end to eating meat or important medical testing. However, there are a number of ways to frame the resolution in a more fair and convincing way. In the majority of our affirmative cases, we defined animal rights in a very abstract and broad sense. Rather than saying animals have a right to life or to roam free, we adopted a philosophical definition of rights as the manifestation of intrinsic worth. For the "animals have intrinsic worth" case, the framework went something like this: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains that a being can only have rights if: "…there is a moral claim that this being has on those who can recognize such claims. A morally considerable being is a being who can be wronged in a morally relevant sense." Thus, rather than debating about a list of arbitrary rights that animals should possess, the affirmative's task is more fundamental: to prove that animals possess intrinsic worth and deserve to be treated a certain way…Insofar as this intrinsic worth is the source of all rights, if I can prove that animals deserve to be treated a certain way, it logically follows that they must have some rights and I win the debate. This definition takes the phrase "recognition of animal rights" and defines it as a single term from an abstract point of view. Under this premise, the debate is no longer about the consequences of a world where everyone is a vegetarian and medical testing on animals is banned, but instead focuses on whether or not animals are worthy of moral consideration. Do animals have intrinsic worth that merits recognition of their rights? Or are they mindless automatons at our disposal to use however we wish? If the affirmative proves that animals possess intrinsic worth, then it must follow that they have some form of rights. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, having rights means you can lay moral claim on the actions of moral agents (beings who can make moral choices: humans). Thus, in our framework, all the affirmative needs to do is prove that animals can be wronged, and they have shown that justice requires the recognition of animal rights. So what does this approach look like in an actual debate round? The benefit of this framework is clear: the affirmative is able to sidestep any nasty definition war in which both sides start listing arbitrary animal rights. Instead, the affirmative immediately establishes a clear question: do animals possess intrinsic worth (if they do, affirm), or do they not deserve any sort of moral consideration (if so negate)? As soon as the negative begins to argue in the context of this question, then he/she is debating on affirmative ground and the chances of an aff ballot are much greater. What about negatives that don't take the bait and keep pushing for concrete impacts? In this case, it's not detrimental to concede that affirming would mean an end to factory farming (there's plenty of examples of hideous practices in the meat industry that could be used to counter any negative arguments against vegetarianism). The other major potential negative argument is animal testing. This is a much trickier issue since it's a fact that animal testing has saved countless human lives. But it's still a relatively simple matter to maintain the position that animals have intrinsic worth, without conceding that they have a categorical right to life. Going along with our framework, one potential counter might be that the recognition that animals have inherent value (and therefore have rights in some shape or form), doesn't mean we can't harm them in any way (we take rights away from humans on a regular basis). Instead, the recognition of animal rights simply means that we only harm them when absolutely necessary (in order to save human lives). Even still, animal testing does not always have to end in the termination of an animal's life. Testing could be adapted to better respect the rights of animals, for instance, reducing pain felt by animals during testing. Ultimately, the abstract "inherent worth" approach to defining recognition of animal rights is a highly nuanced framework. But used properly, it can allow affirmatives to control the ground of the debate and sidestep a primitive but significant negative argument.