Eating animal meat purely for pleasure is unethical.

Let me first begin by thanking my opponent for this debate and also for his thought provoking and timely responses. "A snail is an animal. My opponent is not opposed to eating a snail for pleasure. Resolution negated." If obscurantism were an Olympic sport then that argument would have just won you the gold medal. I closed the door to this line of attack on numerous occasions in my first round. - - -Round 1 quotes -"Clearly a claim to rights should have something to do with whether or not an entity can hold preferences and suffer. It would simply be absurd to say that kicking a rock is a violation of its rights because the rock cannot desire anything. A rock is not capable of holding any desires about the world nor can a rock suffer, one would presume. Chickens, cows, and pigs on the other hand can all feel a great deal of pain and also hold rudimentary preferences; i.e. they would really prefer not to be eaten." -"I am not arguing that there is anything prima facie wrong with the consumption of meat. For example, I would not be opposed to people eating road kill, insofar as this behavior didn't encourage other people to run over extra animals. Nor would I be opposed to eating meat grown in a laboratory, which did not require the death of a conscious creature." Your obscurantism is unwarranted because snails probably can't suffer. ============ Case Pro - Rebuttals ============ Much of our debate hinges upon whether or not animals can hold preferences. There are several peripheral issues we touched on that rest upon the outcome of this. So, I will try to focus in and make my case that animals can hold preferences. Insofar as an animal can suffer it can hold a preference not to suffer. I must now make a concession and acknowledge that you were probably right about self-awareness in animals like cows and chickens. I do this, however, without conceding my basic premise: namely that animals can suffer and thus hold preferences not to suffer or be tormented. Consider the following fact. A full grown dog, hoarse, and cow all have higher capacities to be rational, converse, and be aware of their surroundings than a month old or even a year old human baby. If your argument that animals cannot hold preferences and merely follow evolutionary directives were sound then this argument would be equally valid when applied to 1-year-old infants. Indeed, one-year old infants, by your own standards, are not "capable of self-awarely considering the future". Your argument immediately begins to crumble upon close scrutiny because it was built upon some rather dubious premises from the start. Consider the following hypothetical situation. A one-year-old orphan, with no living relatives, shows up on your doorstep. If your argument about painlessly euthanizing cows were valid then we could also conclude that painlessly euthanizing a one year old infant is not morally wrong. By now the flaw in your argument should strike you like an uppercut from Mike Tyson. I suspect that my opponent is too intelligent to get into an argument about the potentials for living entities but if he does take this route he should consider the following. Given what we know about genetic manipulation every cell in the human body with a nucleus has the potential to develop into a full grown human. http://en.wikipedia.org... So, arguments for an infants potential aren't going to get you anywhere. ============= I firmly maintain that the capacity to suffer is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others. [1] In the same way it would not be moral to euthanize a severely retarded person if they lacked the capacity to be "capable of self-awarely considering the future" it would not be moral to kill a cow or pig that can suffer that also lacked those same capacities. All other moral boundaries reek of sexism, racism, tribalism, and indeed speciesism. In the same way it would be obscene to discriminate against humans on the basis of intelligence or rationality it is also faulty to use these characteristics to discriminate against animals. I have demonstrated twice that membership in a species is irrelevant to ethics and my opponent has offered nothing but smoke and mirrors in response. Allow me to use a third and final hypothetical situation to drive my point home. Imagine that humans were not the only living hominid species left on the planet. In other words imagine that a highly intelligent equally capable species of hominids had survived the evolutionary process and still walked among us today with more or less identical characteristics. Unless my opponent is willing to discriminate against them because they are members of a different species then he must concede my point. Even if the chimp analogy I gave were unrealistic, as he claims, it still demonstrates the truth of my position. And given the recent advances in genetics the prospect of having a human mind in a chimp body isn't even that unlikely and only grows more probable by the day. ================= ====== Case Con ====== "My opponent should not overpower me and take my money because if he does so, it will sow distrust. He may go to jail. More directly, though, no one will trust him and he will be hurt in the long run." My opponent's position on these matters amounts to little more than special pleading. He isn't prepared to live in the dog eat dog world he beckoned us to when he wrote, "Humans have no loyalties to members of other species. In survival of the fittest, we may do whatever we please to further our own goals." You say that I shouldn't beat you up and steal your money because I may face social repercussions but surely someone like myself is skillful enough to get away with crimes. Uneducated criminals do it all the time. And educated criminals do it even more adeptly. If your position were taken to its logical conclusion my decision to steal, murder, or lie are only "wrong" insofar as they have negative social repercussions. If however I were skillful enough to commit these acts and not incur social repercussions then I would be free to steal and murder to my hearts content. Indeed these acts would even be moral in the world to which you beckoned us, because they would serve my own selfish interest and not accumulate negative social repercussions. =================== "I ask the reader to step outside of the evolutionary directive and understand WHY we consider these behaviors to be wrong. It is not truly because they are harmful to others; it is because they have social repercussions." "I am perfectly aware of the workings of the naturalistic fallacy. I am not saying that we should follow the moral imperative simply because it is natural. I am saying that we should follow it because the fact that it is natural makes it the only true option." On top of committing the naturalistic fallacy and then backpedaling my opponent has dug himself in deeper by creating a false dilemma. (http://en.wikipedia.org...) Nowhere has he demonstrated that following nature is the "only true option" to form moral principles. ======== Conclusion ======== My opponent has already conceded that our purchase and consumption of meat, however small, leads to the needless suffering of animals. Likewise I have demonstrated that the capacity to suffer is the only defensible boundary for weighing the interests of others. Once we realize that our desire the eat meat contributes to the suffering of animals the moral choice for us becomes obvious. With this in mind I affirm the resolution that eating meat purely for pleasure is unethical. Best, Freeman Sources [1] http://www.animal-rights-library.com...