July beginner's Tournament. Animals don't deserve rights.

Thanks clashnboom! I hope this is an enjoyable debate. I accept the terms and conditions. I'll give a single argument (only one to preserve time and space) as to why Animals should not receive rights. Argument From Reciprocity The argument runs thusly: Premiss 1. Only those who respect the rights of others deserve rights. Premiss 2. Animals do not, and indeed, cannot, respect the rights of others. Premiss 3. Animals do not deserve rights. The argument is deductive, valid by modus tollens (P-->Q, -P, --> -Q). Defence of the premises Premiss 1. This assumption is central to the way we live our everyday moral lives - and indeed, run society and the criminal justice system. Think about murderers and paedophiles, who do not respect the rights of their victims. What do we do? We strip them of their rights, by putting them in jail, corporal punishment or other punitive means. In simple terms, we apply our ethics according to premiss one: we deny rights to those who deny it of others. This indeed appears to be a universal norm, across all societies. This is based on the principles of Scanlon's contractionalism, i.e., the idea that "morality is based on contract or agreement" [1]. Since animals cannot adhere to this contract, they deserve no moral treatment. This principle (contractionalism) is evident by the very fact that ethics is not an altruism: not everyone simply deserves ethical treatment for no cause - there must be a reason why one deserves to be treated morally. If we deny this, then ethics would be merely a brute fact, which makes little sense when one considers the relativism of ethical truths (hence this very debate). As a result, we must transcend individualistic theories of ethics. Indeed, for the sake of the argument, we need only to accept a weaker underlying principle that ethics is (a) an interaction involving two (or more) people, and (b) is a rational process - both hopefully rather evident: (a) because ethics is by definition the moral treatment of others, and (b) because ethics requires moral deliberation (e.g. deliberating whether or not to steal). Premiss 2. This premiss seems undebatable. Clearly, animals are not rational beings. Consequently, they cannot cognitively register the receipt of ethical rights. As Kant states: "Beings whose existence depends not on our will but on nature have, nevertheless, if they are not rational beings, only a relative value as means and are therefore called things. On the other hand, rational beings are called persons inasmuch as their nature already marks them out as ends in themselves". [2] In other words, Kant draws upon a straightforward distinction between us and animals: we exist in an end of ourselves, owing to our rational and free actions. However, animals have neither rational nor free thought (i.e., higher consciousness). If this is the case, though, then they cannot possibly respect the rights of others as they have no comprehension of rights. Thus, lions care only for food when they tear apart a deer and have no guilty conscience. It is clear from their behaviour that animals do not act in a moral way for the sake of morality. Indeed, ethical truths necessarily require rational explication. Since animals cannot do this, one must reject the idea that animals can act ethically as an end of itself, and a fortiori, respect the rights of others. [3] Even animals such as dogs (or higher animals such as gorillas) do not recognise these rights - indeed, the way they act is simply in accordance to a stimulus-response and a Darwinian-esque survival instinct, with no rational choice in relation to moral behaviour (choice to do right or wrong is central to moral behaviour). If we respect animals, they accept it only as a benefit of survival - not on purely ethical principle, in stark contrast to humans. We should, therefore, never expect animals to respect principles of moral rights. They have no moral consciousness in the way that rational beings (i.e. humans) do. Premiss 3. A moral obligation to animals, therefore, is unnecessary. Morally, rights can be given only those who both a) comprehend rights and b) respect the rights of others. Since animals can do neither of these things, they do not deserve rights. The argument follows from the first two premises by modus tollens. Over to you, Con. Sources: [1] http://plato.stanford.edu... [2] http://plato.stanford.edu... [3] Ibidem