Resolved: It is immoral not to extend rights to living animals.

Definitions: Immoral: Contrary to established moral principles. [1] Rights: I will be defining rights in a limited sense: the right to life. This encompasses, in short, ‘the right of innocents to be free from violent force which brings about death or pain’. The definition of this term is further explored in my second contention. Living animals: Non-human animals possessing self-sustaining biological processes which function. My standard is the morality of the extension of human rights. This is implicit in the resolution and gives both sides room to make their arguments. My plan is to show that the nature of legal rights make it impossible for animals to hold them. 1. No viable code of morality demands the impossible of its adherents. 2. It is impossible to extend the right to life to animals. 3. Therefore, no viable code of morality extends rights to animals. The pro burden is to prove that, due to the nature of the philosophical foundation of natural rights, it is impossible to extend them to non-human animals. The con burden is to prove that there is some legitimate manner in which the concept of rights can be applied to non-human animals. First Contention: A viable code of morality cannot demand the impossible of its adherents. During this argument, I will use the following definition: Code of morality: The term “morality” can be used either descriptively to refer to some codes of conduct put forward by a society or, some other group, such as a religion, or accepted by an individual for her own behavior or normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons. [2] Any of these definitions involve the governing of conduct. Conduct refers to voluntary action. In any moral code, actions which are moral are demanded or encouraged while those which are immoral are prohibited or discouraged. Otherwise a would-be system of morality would be unable to influence conduct and would therefore not meet the above definition. I argue that to demand that one practices the impossible strips any moral code of its viability as it becomes impossible to live without breaking the dictums of that code. If everyone is deemed immoral then the code loses its ability to differentiate between the moral and immoral and therefore to encourage and discourage behavior. To encourage that one practices the impossible is a futile request since it cannot be fulfilled and therefore serves no legitimate conduct-modifying purpose. Thus I hold that a moral code which demands the impossible is not viable, and any dictum which encourages the impossible is futile and can thus be excised from said moral code without doing violence to the system as a whole. Second Contention: Rights stand on a logical framework which precludes their extension to non-human animals. What are rights? For the sake of my argument I have restricted the definition to the right to life. This is usually what is being discussed when one addresses the idea of animal rights. After all, it would be patently absurd to extend to them many of the other rights (free speech, of which they are incapable. A trial by a jury of their peers, which is fun to imagine but would be a rather messy, chaotic, and unproductive affair in practice) which humans enjoy. The right to life is a natural right. The concept of natural rights was developed largely by Hobbes, who took the older theories of natural law and radically transformed them. Hobbes argued against a society governed by natural law alone. Natural law, or ius naturale, was a Roman concept which diversified over the years. Simply put it referred to a set of laws which was common to all men because it was derived from the laws of nature via reason. Hobbes argued that a return to complete natural law would result in terrible anarchy, chaos, and suffering. He stated that certain freedoms guaranteed by natural law must be surrendered to the state in order that the state might universally secure other more crucial freedoms amongst the citizenry; namely to secure their lives. This was the beginning of social contract theory in the enlightenment era. [3][4] But the concept continued to evolve from there. Locke in particular expanded upon Hobbes’s work. He held, as Hobbes did, that the State of Nature was not desirable. But instead of holding that it was synonymous with a state of war Locke simply held that it could easily disintegrate into war over property disputes. It is primarily for the preservation of their personal property (the combination of labor and resources), Locke argued, that people form governments, not out of the fear of death, as Hobbes argues. Locke points out that in the State of Nature people live not as individuals roaming the wilds but as communal units who join together to raise children. He points out that it is due to the fear of losing both life and property to invaders that these communities band together into political units. In doing this they instill a common government with the power to deliver retribution to aggressors, both internal and external, who threaten the rights of the people to life, liberty, and property. These rights were later adapted by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, wherein he expands the right to property to ‘the pursuit of Happiness’. Conclusion In conclusion, I argue that extending rights to animals ignores the entire historical and philosophical foundation on which the concept is built. An animal is not capable of entering into a social contract with a human. Even advanced primates like chimpanzees live in the State of Nature, banding together to raise their young while viciously fighting neighboring communities. Since the entire concept of rights is based on the idea of giving up certain freedoms granted under natural law, and since no animal species has shown itself to be capable of understanding such an abstract agreement, I argue that the idea of individual rights cannot apply to animals. What is impossible to do cannot be considered immoral, therefore it cannot be immoral not to extend rights to living animals. Thus, I deny. 1. http://www.merriam-webster.com... 2. http://plato.stanford.edu... 3. http://www.nlnrac.org... 4. http://www.law.northwestern.edu... 5. http://www.iep.utm.edu...