Anthropocentrism ought to be valued above biocentrism.

I affirm the resolution. "Resolved: 1Anthropocentrism ought to be 2valued above 3Biocentrism." This means the resolution is asking us to evaluate these two competing ethical theories in the terms of 4morality; ……. Thus the only value for the round that can efficiently achieve the question of the resolution is Morality. To do so we must determine the content of morality and how we come to a right or wrong decision. The capacity to do this makes things worthy of moral consideration. Any moral theory can only attribute moral value to rational beings therefore my criterion to uphold morality is respecting rational creatures. I offer the following justifications for 5rationality. J1. Simply stated Morality undoubtedly requires cognitive capabilities that allow reason thus rationale. To discern between right or wrong and determine a things morality we must consider details of the situation pit up for consideration. Thus reason/rationalization is imperative. J2. When considering action we automatically think about the consequences of said actions. We consider what will happen and why we want to do this or why we already have done this. The ability to have a reason for action indicates we can be held accountable. Things like hurricanes can not be given a lawyer or put on trial or put in jail for its destruction of a population. J3.When looking at morality itself we think about what means. The key word is that we have to think about it. Morality didn't appear out of ether. Morality requires a cognizant analysis therefore conceptualizing it requires rationality. The burden of the affirmative is to prove that Humans are the only rational creatures thus the only things worthy of moral consideration. C1. Humans are 6uniquely rational. A.Non-Human Animals 7physiology doesn't allow rationality. - -No 8beliefs+no concept= No rationality 1(Stich 1978) 9." we cannot attribute propositional attitudes to animals in any metaphysically robust sense, given our inability to attribute content to an animal's purported belief" On Stich's view, if attribution of belief to animals is understood purely instrumentally, then animals have beliefs. However, if attribution of beliefs to animals requires that we can accurately describe the content of those beliefs, then animals don't have beliefs Given the second sense of having belief, Stich argues that because 2 (Stich 1978, 23)10, "nothing we could discover would enable us to attribute content to an animal's belief" we are unable to make de dicto attributions to other species, and we cannot make de re attributions because this would violate the truth-preserving role of attribution. Hence we can make no attribution, and if we can't say what an animal's belief is about, it makes no sense to say that an animal has a belief. The worry here is similar to the worry about anthropomorphism; when we use our language to ascribe content to other species, we may be attributing to them more than is appropriate. Stich is concerned that when we say "Fido believes there is a meaty bone buried in the backyard" we are attributing to Fido concepts he cannot possibility have, concepts like "backyard" which are only comprehensible if one has corresponding concepts such as "property line", "house", "fence", and so on. Stich's argument can be formulated as: In order for something to have a belief, it must have a concept. In order to have a concept, one must have particular kinds of knowledge, including knowledge of how the concept relates to other concepts. Non-human animals don't have this knowledge. Therefore, non-human animals don't have beliefs. B.For non-human animals 10instinct precludes rationality. 12MIlikan1 It is true that nonhuman animals may learn or remember, may systematically store away, knowledge of the layout and of many significant features of the geography of the locales in which they live, knowledge of conditional probabilities among events significant for the animal, knowledge of hundreds of places in which they have cached food, knowledge of the social hierarchy of the group in which they live, and so forth, and that all of these things may be learned prior to use of this information to govern rewarding behavior. But these kinds of knowledge seem all to have been determined in advance by the experience of the species as useful in guiding practical activities of importance for survival. Moreover, this knowledge is typically called on only in contexts in which, according to the experience of the individual or the species, it has immediate uses of predetermined kinds. Meaning that all knowledge sought before some practical activity for animals is strictly a means of survival as opposed to a furtherance of the species itself. 13Millikan2 Motivation would always be directly grounded in perception, including perception of the animal's interior, of course, of its current needs as well as its current opportunities. Accordingly, Merlin Donald says of the behavior of apes: "complex as it is, [it] seems unreflective, concrete, and situation-bound. Even their uses of signing and their social behavior are immediate, short-term responses to the environment... ...Their lives are lived entirely in the present, as a series of concrete episodes..." (Donald 1991, p. 149) and "...the use of signing by apes is restricted to situations in which the eliciting stimulus, and the reward, are clearly specified and present, or at least very close to the ape at the time of signing" (p. 152). The pushmi-pullyu animal solves only problems posed by immediate perception. It does so by deciding from among possibilities currently presented in perception, or as known extensions from current perception, as in knowingly moving from a known place toward another place known to afford what the animal currently needs. Thus the behavior of non-human animal is completely situation bound and not that of reason. Every goal is achieved through motivation provided by the current needs not of a rational decision or some other mental inclination. Overall this means that Animal competencies are mainly adaptations restricted to a single goal as opposed to Human competencies that are domain-general and serve numerous goal. If instinct is what purely drives animals to be then rationality obviously doesn't exist for nonhuman animals. By attempting to value Biocentrism above Anthropocentrism the wheels of dehumanizing the human population begin to turn.