Tim Spin's Debate Tournament R1: Vegetarianism

I'll start with the negative case before moving on to the affirmative case and Key Voting Issues. We both provide sources that lead to opposite conclusions on the issue of plant pain, but you are going to accept my sources because they are from objective individuals, such as MSNBC and the University of Bonn, while her sources are from animal rights websites and pro-vegetarian organizations, which are against the notion of plant pain because they want condemn omnivorous diets as morally blameworthy. (Ex. vegan3counties.org.uk, and animal-rights-library.com). Since my sources have no inherent stake in this debate, while her sources do, you prefer mine because the evidence is less likely to be fabricated and evaluated through a proper scientific lens. In addition, her own Singer evidence contradicts her claim that morality is determined by an individual's ability to relate to the suffering of other beings. Her only condemnation of the evidence is that "It is precisely that we are able to relate to the phenomenon that we are able to label it as immoral." According to her analysis, individuals can only deem actions immoral if they can relate to the suffering that another individual feels. That means that moral principles are derived on a subjective basis rather than an objective one. For example, if she saw a Sikh being harassed because he is wearing a turban, she would not feel that the harassment is immoral because she cannot relate to the stigma of sporting religious headwear in a Christian society. However, almost any moral standard would claim that the harassment is immoral because morality is an objective standard that is not merely derived from an individual's ability to relate to the suffering of another person. If we accept that morality is universal, then according to her concession, the suffering of animals would be deemed equal to the suffering of plants, and you would vote negative. However, she claims that morality is subjective. Unfortunately, you would vote negative even if you agree with her on this point because she would be permitting individuals to determine whether or not they can relate to animal suffering; if some decide that they cannot, then for them an omnivorous diet would be equally moral to a vegetarian one. Moreover, since the resolution asks us to prove a universal standard however, and she concedes that morality cannot be universal, she would be contending that the resolution is false. Again, as with most of her arguments, she is in a double bind. She completely dropped the first double bind that I put on her with her CNS analysis. Remember that not all animals have CNS, so according to her own analysis, either some omnivorous diets would be morally acceptable, meaning that she is conceding, or CNS-status is immaterial to the intrinsic moral worth of a living being, meaning that plants can also be proper moral agents. This was cold dropped; she did not even attempt to respond to it. This means that you vote negative because either way the resolution is false. She then addresses the painkiller analysis by claiming that the painkillers are used to communicate with other plants. While this is true, note that the article also mentions that they were used to RESPOND TO STRESS. Her next argument about cannibis is ludicrous because she is applying the effect that cannibis has on humans to the plant. This is equivalent to claiming that the HIV virus is infected with AIDS because it causes AIDS in humans. While ingesting some plants have a sedative effect on humans, they are not sedating themselves, so her analogy is ridiculous and should not be accepted. Her only response to the University of Bonn analysis is that it is "pseudoscience." Note that she did not even bother to look at the study, so she cannot claim that this is true. It is unfair for her make such claims without evaluating the evidence that I provided, especially since the study was backed by a major German university. You can next extend the utilitarian analysis because she does not even attempt to respond to the fact that more organisms are suffering and dying in the affirmative world than in the negative world, so she maximizes suffering for the greatest number of creatures. Then extend the fact that even if only plants are eaten, animals lose their habitats to the expansion of farmland and thus are killed in her world as well. THIS WAS COLD DROPPED: ANIMALS AND PLANTS ARE SUFFERING ON HER SIDE, but there is less suffering on my side. So, you can vote negative off of either of these issues because they fulfill her moral utilitarian standards. Next extend the analysis that demonstrates that life forms cannot be distinguished by their ability to feel pain. THIS WAS COMPLETELY DROPPED. Even if you accept that plants have no emotions and cannot feel pain, you still vote negative because I have proven, and she has failed to refute, that we cannot distinguish between organisms based on the ability to feel pain; it is an arbitrary standard that has no place in a set of universal principles. Since this is true, both omnivorous diets and vegetarian ones are morally equivalent. I did not draw any inspiration from Cleve Backster, so her evidence is nonresponsive. My evidence is from Jagadish Bose, whose works she has conveniently ignored throughout the round. Don't accept any of her analysis about Backster because I never even mentioned him or his works once. Go to her "misquote" analysis. First, you can turn the psychological pain analysis because it proves that pain does not necessarily have to be on a physical level; it can be experienced on a population or species level as well. If this is true, then even if you do not accept the serial nervous system evidence, you still vote negative because the pain of plant loss is felt on a species level when some organisms are not able to pass on their genes to their offspring and the population's genes become more uniform. In addition, not all animals have emotions because some, like spiders, consume members of the same species. (http://en.wikipedia.org...). That means that emotional pain is not sufficient to vote affirmative. Also, extend the argument that we can kill animals painlessly with tranquilizers and thus avoid animal pain. This is key because it allows modern civilizations to avoid her "ethical objections." I did not straw man her first contention because she literally said that "it is not necessary to kill the trees that drop fruit". She tried to avoid plant pain by claiming that we can eat parts of the plant that are not technically alive, meaning the ovary/fruit. Extend all of the turns on the fruit analysis. Against my analysis about "finding animals in the woods" she claims that modern societies do not do this. Sure, but that does not mean that they CANNOT do this. The fact that animals are currently slaughtered a certain way is immaterial because it does not mean that society cannot change. If we accept this part of her analysis, then she still loses because society currently eats meat but she is demanding a change. She then argues that I never answer the question of causing unnecessary suffering. This is false because I proved that more suffering is on her side of the resolution through the utilitarianism analysis, which was entirely unanswered. That means that unnecessary suffering is on her side of the resolution because more organisms suffer in the affirmative world than in the negative one. I don't have to answer the question, but she does, and she clearly never did. Finally, there is no evidence that chimps mourn their dead and suffer emotional pain; indeed, I have provided evidence of animal cannibalism that runs contrary to any such notion of emotional damage to animals. In addition, even if chimps do feel pain, note that they are the second most intelligent species in the world. Chimp characteristics do not apply to all animals, so this response is nonsensical.