My 150th Debate: Animal Rights

Thanks, FT! Onto Con's case:BURDENS1. The Status quo is not self-justifying. There are at least 2 worlds in a debate. Without any reason to believe that the status quo is better than an alternative, there is no good reason to believe it is the path we should pick. It would be as random as flipping a coin, because either world could be better.2. Many societies do recognize, to varying degrees, animal rights and the need to protect animal welfare. [14] So, it's dubious to assume that the "status quo" really is a world without animal rights.3. Usually, the purpose of giving one side the BOP is because it is unfair to ask the other side to prove a negative. For example, it is unfair to ask you to prove unicorns don't exist, because they always could, somewhere. In normative topics, however, it is possible to prove a negative. For example, I can uphold "redistribution is not right" by arguing libertarianism. This topic is normative, and so there is no reason Con shouldn't share the BOP; in fact, convention would indicate it should be joint.4. Con's making an affirmative claim. The current status quo grants all humans rights, and various national and international legal documents affirm this fact. [10, 15, 16, 17] Yet, Con's explanations for the origins of rights would deny all human beings have rights, since not all human beings can enter contracts, not all religions will grant rights to nonbelievers, and not all people can formulate justifications for their actions. Given this, Con is making, implicitly, the affirmative claim that not all humans should have rights, and so he is not defending the status quo. Con thus has a BOP, meaning: (a) Con must justify denying some people rights, and (b) Con fails to provide any real support for this theories, and so they are, as yet, bare assertions.RIGHTSOverviewCon is using "kettle logic," a "fallacy wherein one uses multiple arguments to defend a point, but the arguments are inconsistent with each other." [18] Religion invalidates contractarianism and justification because it denies that either consent or justification is necessary for rights. Merely being created in God's image or being vested with God's authority is sufficient. Contractarianism also conflicts with justification, because the former requires active volition (actively agreeing to and debating a contract), whereas the latter merely requires the capacity to offer justifications. Moreover, justification seems to require a lower threshold than contractarianism. A 10 year old can justify his actions on a moral level, but he cannot rationally/legally consent to a contract. Utility also contradicts these theories. The point of all this being that Con's arguments (a) refute each other, (b) create an unclear and unstable advocacy (what's his threshold for rights?)1. Religion(a) Not all religions reject rights for animals. Consider the concept of "ahimsa" (nonviolence, including re: animals) found in Buddhism, Jainism, and Hinduism, and Hinduism's reverence of cows. [19] The faith embraces the idea that animals have rights against cruel treatment. Hence, the concept of God giving dominion over animals to humans is particular to some faiths. It is arbitrary to exclude some faiths but not others in building a rights paradigm. Con is also being ethnocentric.(b) Religion is an inadequate source of rights. Not all faiths will grant all people rights, reserving them instead just for the faithful. And, different faiths are going to support different sets of rights (e.g. Islam would not give people the right to make religious images, but Christianity would).2. Contractarianism(a) Rawl's theory justifies cruelty to animals. "Rawls's view is inconsistent...because of the conjunction of its exclusion of animals and its commitment to political liberalism...The liberal principle of moral pluralism holds, roughly, that the state must protect individuals' liberty to pursue their reasonable conceptions of the good, where a conception of the good is considered unreasonable only if its pursuit would be inconsistent with a commitment to the principles of justice. Since, on Rawls's view, animals are not owed anything as a matter of justice, it appears that he is committed to rejecting state interference with the pursuit of conceptions of the good that involve, for example, inflicting even severe suffering on animals for religious reasons, or in the course of engaging in valued activities such as hunting." [20] This is a contradiction in Con's case, since he himself argues for limiting animal suffering.(b) The Original Position fails. It provides participants too little information to make any choice, let alone a rational one. "For how can we make any rational choice without knowing our primary ends, or fundamental values and commitments?" [21] Also, different people will reach different conclusions due to unique thought-processes. Thus, it could easily be that parties in a original position choose to extend animals rights.3. Justification(a) Justification is a failed criterion. It seems that anything could be justified; Hitler could justify the Holocaust. You and I may not find the justification compelling, but many do and did. On face, then, it seems as if justification is a meaningless criterion for determining acceptable action. The only way to rescue it is to identify a variety of pre-justification values (e.g. kindness, justice) that one can appeal to in order to justify an action, since justification itself isn't sufficient. But, even this fails because: (a) it's infinitely regressive (for me to justify action X with value Y, I must justify value Y with claim Z, which I must then justify with...), (b) the values can be contorted to serve any purpose (e.g. still Hitler), and (c) it's circular (justice arises from justification, but justice must also justify justification/unjustifiable action is unjust, but justice must also be used to justify actions). (b) Con's vague. There are a lot of details lacking here, and we should reject the argument because of it. Crucial questions like, "what constitutes 'adequate' justification," and "why must justification be a reciprocal enterprise" are left unanswered.(c) Why can't animals justify their actions through emotions and body language? It seems plausible that they could.UTILITYOverview1. Granting animals rights is not granting them equal rights to humans. Rather, it is giving animals their due(s). Con makes a lot of arguments based on assumptions that animals will get sweeping new rights, yet, my C1 (for example) would merely grant animals a right against needless suffering.2. Con pretends to consider utility, but only by applying preferences, etc., equally can we truly evaluate utility fairly.UtilityA Rights SystemIt recognizes that moral agents have unique capacities for suffering, happiness/pleasure, interests, or preferences. At bottom, then, this view posits a single, fundamental right—the right to equal consideration of feelings/interests/preferences. This means that an animal has a right to have their interests measured against a humans' when making decisions. 1. Testing isn't a big issue (a) It's ineffective: "According to a 2004 study...more than 4,000 studies report efficacy of more than 700 treatments of stroke in animal models. Yet none of the approximately 150 of these treatments tested in humans showed clinical benefit...A 2004 study from the [FDA] found that 92 percent of drugs entering clinical trials following animal testing fail to be approved. Of those approved, half are withdrawn or relabeled due to severe or lethal adverse effects not detected during animal tests." [22] (b) If we grant animals a right against needless suffering, they could still participate in humane treatment regimes. Rules regarding humane testing are already in place in the U.S. (c) There are alternatives: "It is now possible to create organs in laboratories and to test chemicals on those organs instead of on actual organisms." [23] "EpiDerm, derived from cultured human skin cells, is more accurate than animal tests in identifying skin irritants." [22] 2. This is a slippery slope fallacy, “in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any rational argument or demonstrable mechanism for the inevitability of the event in question.” [24] Humans have already learned the dangers of treating themselves as property, and so this whole fear is overblown. Furthermore, giving oppressed blacks more rights didn't cause whites to treat themselves more like oppressed blacks. 3. This implies our court systems couldn't adapt, fails to consider that the money spent/earned in court may be an economic positive, and erroneously concludes that animals would get sweeping new rights. In fact, animals already have many legal protections in the status quo that our governments have coped with.4+5. Cross apply my overview here re: the vegetarian remark. Also, I don't see how indulging ourselves outweighs protecting animals legitimate interest. The hunting = closer to animals remark is also unsubstantiated; if you kill it, you probably view it as less worthy of good treatment.6. Cross apply my overview here re: the idea that captive breeding couldn't occur. Moreover, animal rights would empower governments to protect wild space which would only benefit conservation.RespectCon says he doesn't want animals harmed for utilitarian reasons, but also calls for animal testing and other harmful things to benefit humans. Con's assurances to animals ring hollow.SOURCES14 - http://tinyurl.com...15 - http://tinyurl.com...16 - http://tinyurl.com...17 - http://tinyurl.com...18 - http://tinyurl.com...19 - http://tinyurl.com...20 - http://tinyurl.com...21 - http://tinyurl.com...22 - http://tinyurl.com...23 - http://tinyurl.com...24 - http://tinyurl.com...