Speciesism is unjustified given a preference utilitarian framework

Thanks to Pinko for an awesome round! :D C1: Hierarchy of Interests Marginal Cases Pinko attempts to disprove my impact of ethical paralysis by saying there is no ethical dilemma in the case of a chimpanzee and a brain-orphan. However this doesn’t disprove anything because it links directly into the Singer analysis – that utilitarianism doesn’t give credence towards rare and marginal circumstances. Essentially Pinko is trying to disprove my marginal case analysis by referencing other marginal cases. But, Pinko goes further to argue that even commonplace moral dilemmas would not require this hierarchy of interests – he offers an example of a braindead human on life support. Theres one slight problem with this point, which he himself states: only humans are involved. The underlying assumption with the hierarchy of interests is that there is a common moral dilemma between competing species, not between competing humans. Hierarchy Pinko makes the keen observation that even if we accept my scenario of ethical paralysis the hierarchy fails in this instance because giving favor to the human for simply being human might violate the PU calculus. However, I think Pinko is missing the fundamental impact, which ironically, he uses as an objection to my 3rd Contention – it is the notion of having a basic rule. My argument is that if there is no hierarchy of interests categorized into generalizations of interests than the only theoretical result would be paralysis of action. Insofar as it is impossible to gauge all interests for all parties involved in a moral dilemma, then accepting this “pure” calculus would lead to paralysis and inaction. If that’s true, than all preferences involved has been violated. The collective violation of preferences would be more than the individual preference violation. But, this is the least important of my contentions. The most important is C2. C2: Preference Violation (Or lack thereof) Pinko: My opponent argues that my argument against speciesism is that it violates (in itself as a belief or opinion) animal preferences. This is not the case at all; on the contrary it is the exact opposite. My argument is that speciesism does not inherently lead to preference violation. In order for my opponent to affirm the resolution using the word” unjustified”, as he defined it as, speciesism must in and of itself violate animal preferences. As previously mentioned, attributing a different status or discriminating against animals (being speciesism is) does not necessarily lead to animal cruelty, abuse, violence or preference violations. Pinko dropped the analysis about what a PU framework actually is – utilitarian frameworks only give credence to actions which violate the fundamentals of the framework. The fundamental of a PU framework is preferences. Thus, unless speciesism as an idea results in animal preferences being violated then Pinko gains no ground in the realm of claiming it unjustified. Pinko attempts to say I violated the rules using a semantics argument; however, this is quite misleading. The argument does not rely on a debate of definition or meaning of language, but rather to what extent does specisism link into the notion of preference utilitarianism. I’m using all of the definitions provided by Pinko in the first round, not on the basis of the language itself but what are the logical implications of what specisism is. But regardless this is a new argument in the last round. Pinko dropped the argument he used making the analogy to Kant and the first formulation. This is a contention that is of voter status. Why? Because PU cannot exclude any action or belief categorically (i. e. the action is unjustified) unless that action or belief violates the tenets of the framework. C3: Lack of Pain Pinko’s first argument against this is that I gave no warrant as to how specisism and preference analysis can be molded together. However I did specifically in the last round: one’s species determines the extent by which one has negative preferences. Since sponges are sponges, they lack a nervous system capable of feeling pain. Pinko says the word “purely” in the resolution means we can kill a sponge for being a sponge, not that we can kill it because it doesn’t have preferences. However, after the word purely, there is the qualified statement: …”based on their membership in their respective species”. Acting against a sponge based on being a member of the sponge species means there is no preference violation, which means the PU framework has not been violated. Remember, my analysis of the PU framework is that utilitarianism only cares about actions, not intent. Even if the guy killing the sponge was only killing it for it being a sponge, since this sponge doesn’t feel pain then no preferences have been violated. Thus, PU does not make specisism unjustified. Pinko has created a double bind for himself by using the rational rule argument. If we accept that there is credence to this argument then my opponent accesses the need to prevent ethical paralysis/inaction present in my 1st contention. And I would further argue that the need to prevent this paralysis outweighs the need for a rule to generalize between species that can and cannot feel pain. Why? Because I would contend through ethical paralysis all parties involved will have their preferences violated, as opposed to it being a coin-flip between a species that can feel pain or cannot feel pain. But, if you reject the rational rule argument than specisism cannot be coined as “unjustified” insofar as there are species of animals which cannot feel pain.