Dog fighting (See initial argument)

I do really appreciate the opportunity to debate this, and the depth of Pro's arguments throughout this debate. It's been a pleasure. I'm going to spend most of this getting into summation and concluding remarks, as I feel much of what I have to say in rebuttal will be repetitious with them, though I will first go through the rebuttals of my opponent. Pro argues that I am still looking at the issue from a personal standpoint, and that from a purely humanist standpoint, I should be fine with it. He's wrong in two ways. The first is that humans are indirectly affected, and I think I made that very clear with my argument on desensitization of children. The second problem is that word, "humanist. " The subject of most of this debate hasn't been human. That's an anthropacentric viewpoint, which has allowed for the extinction of more wild species than we'll ever know and the mass slaughter of countless domesticated animals for our food. From here, he moves back into hypocrisy. I find myself wondering why this matters. Why should I have to protest similar activities to find fault in this one? If I am acting hypocritically, can I not be acting morally? Or, if morally isn't right, can I not act in defense of animals who suffer cruelty under my neighbor? From the outset, this hasn't been just a question of morality. Pro took 2 separate burdens from the start: he has to prove that dog fighting is both "NOT immoral" and that it doesn't result in cruelty to animals. I'm going to provide an extensive explanation of where I see the morality portion, but if I prove that cruelty to animals does result, it doesn't matter whether morality is at issue. I'll get into his responses on the moral end of the spectrum near the end of this post, but I do want to mention something about consent, as that is a major issue in this debate. I think my opponent mishandles this argument. All of his examples emphasize the hypocrisy of a world like ours not allowing dog fighting. But this doesn't address my point. When we agree from the start of the debate, and my opponent did agree, that life and its quality are objective values, then their degradation should be considered immoral. However, this isn't just about morality. This is also about cruelty. Consent suffices as the sole way to determine whether that loss or degradation of life was the result of an autonomous choice or something outside of their control. We cannot prevent individuals from making those choices for themselves; it's their life, their quality, they can modify it as they please so long as it does no harm to others. It's not cruelty, as cruelty is inflicted on others. But since we value these two principles, by necessity, we must defend them for those who have no choice in the matter. Now, Pro can talk about the hypocrisy of how some laws don't respect autonomy. Pro can talk about how consent can lead to choices that are immoral from the standpoint of others viewing that consent as harmful. He can talk about how we cause harm to animals in other ways against their will. None of that matters, nor does it change this situation. It might toss the moral issue into uncertainty, but not the cruelty issue. Hypocrisy doesn't make the non-autonomous loss of life or its quality less cruel. Pro posed another odd point. "I don't see how you admit that prohibition of activities is a failure, but expect it to succeed with dog fighting. " I made very specific arguments explaining how the prohibition of alcohol was a failure for separate reasons in my last post. I also argued how legalization causes more harms, and brought up the specific instance of horse racing as proof that dogs will still be euthanized following permanent and debilitating injury. And as more people, as my opponent admits, will be going out to watch these events, they will invariably increase in size. We can argue about the amount of increase, but any increase means more dogs subjected to this brutal practice. That means more dogs put at risk of imminent death and almost certain injury. And I'll repeat what I've said before: no amount of security personnel and officials will make this safe. Pro keeps stating that it will be safer, yet all along, he's never given a route to change beyond ending the fights earlier. That's up to the judges, who are likely to be influenced by the criminal element that controls the entire sport. It's just a more blatant show of the exact same thing. I'm rather confused that Pro has asked the question "how do you define dog fighting? " this late into his own debate about dog fighting. We didn't come right out and say it, but dog fighting is a sport where two dogs are thrown together in a ring and fight it out until one or the other submits. The fact that dogs fight sometimes outside the ring is, again, moving outside of the realm of non-consent. Pro also states that the dogs can be trained to fight "safely. " No one should buy this. Even if we assume such safe fighting is possible, owners won't change the system from what works. Removing the viciousness of the dogs in the ring will debilitate the sport, losing them customers and thus earnings. Officials will be the ones purportedly making it "safer," but as I stated, they won't do it. They'll want this to remain popular as well. Overall, I think Pro means well, but he's asking us to believe in an idyllic world. He tells a great story: That dog fighting only needs is legalization to stop or minimize the animal cruelty That bait animals won't be utilized to test their strength That the criminal groups that currently run dog fights will be replaced with law abiding trainers That fewer dogs are going to die, and fewer injuries be doled out to the dogs in the ring That after they're out of the ring, these dogs will be treated well None of these have citations, nor could they. Dog fighting has never been legalized in this country, so how could any of us know what will happen and how it will be regulated? They're all just inference, with Pro purporting similarities between dog fighting and certain sports or drugs. The reality is that there's not a lot we know about the outcomes of these dogs right now, either. Neither of us have that data. But we do know that both dogs cannot leave that ring uninjured. We do know that many horses who can longer race are euthanized. We do know that there are other sports where underachieving animals are mistreated or euthanized. And we can expect far worse in a sport that makes animal cruelty its headline. Lastly, I'd like to hit at the issue of morality because I think if my opponent's case is shaky anywhere, it's here. Getting into morality, and I think this is key, we're having a fundamental disagreement as to what Pro needs to do to satisfy this burden. He's spent a lot of time arguing that morality is relative, and therefore we cannot accept that anything is moral or immoral, thus proving that dog fighting is not immoral. But let's say I accept this. One can only conclude one of two things from this; we must either view the world through a lens of relative morality, or we must discard morality as a notion for assessing anything. In either case, Pro loses the debate with this argument alone. Bear with me here. Let's say we have a world where we view everything through relative morality. In that case, some people will view it as morally harmful based on societal norms, and some won't. Dog fighting, and all other concepts as well, would exist in a space between moral and immoral. That's bad for him, because he's stating unequivocally that it is "NOT immoral". That's an absolute, and absolutes don't exist in this world. If he can't prove that absolute, he loses this round. How about the world without morality? Well, if morality doesn't exist, neither does immorality. We cannot distinguish between. As such, Pro cannot affirm that dog fighting is "NOT immoral" because neither of us can make that assessment. We can't assess morality in its absence. So this nihilistic view would lose Pro the debate as well. So what have I brought forward here? I've made a case for how legalization only adds to animal cruelty concerns. I've argued that it's going to lead to mass desensitization and more criminality among the human population. And I've even taken my opponent's arguments about morality and turned them around on him, revealing that his own perception of morality is damning to his case. I deeply respect my opponent for taking on a difficult issue here, and I feel he's done an incredible job considering the side he took in this debate, but when it comes to a vote, siding with me is easy. If you believe that morality is objective in any sense, you vote for me, as I've made the most specific and well-elucidated arguments regarding it. If you believe that it's subjective, you will still vote for me due to Pro's failure to meet his own burdens.