Tim Spin's Debate Tournament R1: Vegetarianism

Let's start with the attacks on the negative case and then move on to the affirmative case. She responds to my first contention with the argument that "plants are not sentient beings because they lack central nervous system." There are several flaws with this argument. First, I provided you with a 2005 study by the University of Bonn in the First Plant Symposium on Neurobiology that explicitly states that not only do plants have their own version of a nervous system, or a serial nervous system, but that the "computational and informational capacity of this nervous system based on interconnected parallel units is predicted to be HIGHER THAN that of the diffuse nervous system of LOWER ANIMALS, OR THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM OF HIGHER ANIMALS/humans." This means that plants are, in fact, conscious and may even be MORE CONSCIOUS than many animals. If this is true, by her own standards, you would vote negative because slaughtering plants is morally blameworthy. She offers no response to this other than claiming that plants have no central nervous system and providing a study to back it up. Her source is technically true since plants do not have a central nervous system; rather, they possess a SERIAL nervous system that allows them to feel pain. (Source 1) Additionally, she cannot base her justification on the basis of a CNS, since only bilateral animals have central nervous systems that allow their body cells to relay information to a central biological unit. Since she is claiming that harming all animals, regardless of CNS status is wrong, but then advocates the death of plants because they do not possess central nervous systems, she is contradicting her own analysis. This places the affirmative in a double bind: either harming organisms without a CNS is morally acceptable, meaning that some omnivorous diets are permissible under the affirmative moral standard, or CNS-status is immaterial to the intrinsic moral worth of any biological being, meaning that the crux of her position is undermined. Either way, she has destroyed her own case, so you can vote negative off of this issue. (Source 2). Her next response is that according to evolution, there is no reason for plants to feel pain because they cannot respond to it. THE PROBLEM WITH THIS ANALYSIS IS THAT I PROVIDED PROOF THAT PLANTS DO RESPOND TO PAIN STIMULI ON A CHEMICAL LEVEL. The Jagadish Bose source and the source that revealed that plants create PAINKILLERS to communicate and to respond to distress signals in their own bodies proves that plants do have a reason to feel pain, namely that they require a means to initiate chemical action against stress. This response is not the same as human and animal responses to pain, but that does not mean that it is not a response. Just as she would claim that while different animals have separate means of defending themselves, each defense is morally equal, plant defenses are morally equivalent to animal defenses even if they differ from animal defenses biologically. So, her evolution analysis is flawed because she has failed to objectively evaluate responses to pain. (Sources 3 and 4). She then turns my analysis by claiming that even if suffering occurs, there is more suffering in my world than in hers. This is empirically denied on multiple fronts, so you can turn this analysis back. First, as I explained earlier, the affirmative world would require more organisms to be slaughtered to satisfy human needs, so there is more net suffering on her side of the resolution than on mine. This means that by her own utilitarian standards, you should vote negative because my side promotes the greatest good for the greatest number of creatures. This was not refuted, so you can vote negative off of this turn. Second, since more plants would be consumed, animals would be denied food sources and their habitats (since more farms would be needed to grow plants) and thus would be forced to starve, meaning that NOT ONLY ARE MORE PLANTS DYING IN HER WORLD, BUT ANIMALS ARE CONTINUING TO BE SLAUGHTERED AS WELL. This means that even if you ignore the first turn, you still vote negative BECAUSE SHE IS MAGNIFYING THE AMOUNT OF DEATH AND SUFFERING FOR ALL TYPES OF ORGANISMS BY PROMOTING A VEGETARIAN DIET. That directly contradicts her moral standards, so you negate. Against my second contention, her only response is that "vegetarianism holds that suffering of other conscious beings has value . . . those who cannot feel pain are without value." THE FLAW WITH THIS IS THAT IT IS NONRESPONSIVE. Not only are the multiple species of animals, like sponges, that cannot feel pain, but MANY HUMANS, as demonstrated in the last speech, also cannot feel pain. However, we do not relegate these individuals to a subhuman status and gain the right to cannabalize them simply because they do not have the capacity to suffer; rather, we cherish them because they are alive. If this is true, then there is no moral distinction between life forms based on the ability to feel pain, so EVEN IF plants do not experience pain, slaughtering them is the moral equivalent of murdering animals, meaning an omnivorous diet is no more blameworthy than a vegetarian diet. SHE HAS NO DIRECT RESPONSE TO THIS, so you can extend this analysis and link-turn her entire case to vote negative. Please do not accept any objections to this because she explicitly stated that the reason that we should consume plants and not eat animals is because she believes that they cannot feel pain. Let's go to the affirmative case. Her response to my first rebuttal is that plant suffering does not resemble animal suffering. This is true, but not relevant since plant suffering still is a real phenomenon; just because it does not resemble human suffering does not mean that it is not suffering (see the turn on the Singer analysis; her own evidence relays this fact.) Her other response was that it is absolutely necessary to kill animals before eating them, but it is not necessary to kill plants because we can just eat fruit. First, this contradicts her third contention because eating fruit alone cannot provide one with a healthy diet; fruit is simply a plant ovary that lacks all of the nutritional items necessary for humans to survive. This means that if her position is that we should only eat fruit, then her third contention falls because other plants are needed to supplement one's diet. Second, she mentions that we could eat vegetables, but those consist of entire plants, so we would have to kill them. Finally, this position is ridiculous, so I am going to turn it: eating animals does not necessitate their slaughter because we could simply find animal carcasses (like deer carcasses in the woods) and consume them instead of murdering animals for meat. This would cause no pain and no unnecessary suffering, so omnivorous diets would still be permissible under her standards. I will concede the second premise because it provides no offense for either side of the debate; the other contentions are more important so you can vote negative based on the fact that I outweigh anything that she receives from this premise. Her response to my third rebuttal, that we could simply use methods to do not cause suffering to animals, such as tranquilizing them/giving them painkillers before killing them, to avoid her utilitarian moral standard, was that it harms the population from a broader angle. First, this is not warranted, so there is no reason to accept it. Second, turn this because this "suffering" analysis can be applied to plants even if you accept my opponent's argument that plants cannot feel pain in the traditional sense; you can negate because this argument proves that plants still suffer on a population level when they are killed. Her other response about justifications is not relevant because it only claims that her ethics do not apply to humane forms of slaughter; it does not actually respond to the fact that suffering and death are not the same