The majority of animal agriculture in the United States is slavery [for @Oromagi]
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 7 votes and with 7 points ahead, the winner is...
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Is Animal Farming Slavery?
Full resolution: The majority of animal agriculture in the United States is slavery.
The burden of proof is shared:
Pro: The majority of Animal agriculture in the US is slavery.
Con: The majority of Animal agriculture in the US is not slavery.
Slavery: the state of being owned by another person.
Animal agriculture is the rearing of animals for resources/food consumption.
All rules, terms, and specifications of the debate are agreed upon by acceptance.
Only Oromagi or Barney can accept this debate. Anyone else accepting will result in an automatic loss.
- Our framework is set by the description of the debate where all terms are defined and accepted.
- Slavery is the state of being owned by another person.
- Animal agriculture is the rearing of animals for resources/food consumption.
- The majority is greater than 50%.
- Premise one is definitional, with all terms being found in the description of our debate. Premise two, subsequently, is truistic. In animal agriculture, animals are owned as the property of their rearers. Observing domains such as animal husbandry, animals are exploited, and geared toward the production of certain resources. Given that "99 percent of animals in the US are raised on factory farms;" a system of farming in which a lot of animals are kept in a small closed area, in order to produce a large amount of meat, eggs, or milk as cheaply as possible, it goes without question that the majority, if not the entirety of animal agricultural processes categorically conform to the exploitation of animals, using them as resources for profit, taking them as profit, thus culminating in a description of slavery.
- My conclusion follows via the modus ponens rule of inference. Animal agriculture is the enslavement of sentient creatures, turning them into resources for human consumption.
- This syllogism effectively proposes that there must be an ethically relevant distinction between farm animals and humans that delineates the respective justifications for our societal actions towards them. It rests on two propositions:
- There are commonly many proposed distinctions, however, none of them are ethically relevant, and thus none of them showcase a justification for P2.
- a. Intelligence
- It would be untenable to suggest that a human of low intelligence, such as children, and those disabled (ex. severe down syndrome and other deformities) can be farmed, enslaved, and eaten by other human beings.
- a.b. Rationality
- The same case follows for rationality. It would be absurd to suggest that it would be ethically permissible for disabled humans, or young children, who are not rational, to be raised in factory farms to be enslaved and consumed.
- b. Species
- If there were a species that was sentiently identical to humans, it would be absurd to suggest they can be farmed, enslaved, and ultimately consumed by virtue of being non-human just as it would be to suggest the same if a population of humans over time evolved into a different species, but maintained the overwhelming majority of the same attributes.
- c. Citizenship
- It would be untenable to suggest we can farm, enslave, and consume non-citizens such as various immigrants.
- d. Consciousness
- Farm animals are conscious, (awake and aware of [their] surroundings) and it would be untenable to say we can consume anyone who is unconscious.
- e. Sentience
- Farm animals are sentient (able to perceive or feel things).
- My round-one arguments establish certain propositions. For one, animal agriculture is slavery, irrefutably, within the parameters of our deliberation. Animals are in a state of being owned by another person and thus enslaved.
- Secondly, I demonstrate that there is nothing true of animals, that if true of humans would categorically preclude slavery. Thus, animal farming must logically be slavery if doing the same to humans is slavery, so long as there is no ethically relevant distinction between the two.
- Conclusively, my first argument demonstrates the resolution to be a certainty. My second argument demonstrates the resolution to be a certainty.
- CON must show that the majority of animal agriculture in the US is not slavery.
- PRO has provided a customized definition without any dictionary source:
- SLAVERY is "the state of being owned by another person"
- That is, PRO defined SLAVERY as an exclusively human state because ANOTHER is a determiner specifying the interaction of at least two people, the owned person and another person who is the owner.
- That slaves are human would have been evident to PRO had he relied on a dictionary definition of the term. For example,
- SLAVE is " someone who is legally owned by another person and is forced to work for that person without pay"
- PRO's definition is also insufficient. PRO wants to argue that "SLAVERY is the state of being owned by a person" but that describes all property and while SLAVES are generally property not all property is a SLAVE
- A car is not a PERSON and so cannot be said to be owned by ANOTHER PERSON. By definition, cars cannot be slaves
- A chicken is not a PERSON and so cannot be said to owned by ANOTHER PERSON. By definition, chickens cannot be slaves
- PRO should have also checked his definition constitutionally:
- The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution states:
- Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction
- 94% of Americans eat meat but no law enforcement officials consider that fact a constitutional crisis because animal agriculture is not SLAVERY
P1) Slavery is the state of being owned by another personP2) The majority of animal agriculture places animals in the state of being owned by ANOTHER personC) The majority of animal agriculture is slavery.
- PRO 1 fails by definitional fallacy: Slavery only applies to people and never to animals.
- It is not true that the majority of animals agriculture places animals in the state of being owned by ANOTHER person because no animals are persons
- Therefore the conclusion is false and PRO's argument stands disproved
- PRO falsely characterizes his argument as deduction, modus pollens, when in fact PRO just invented an unwarranted definition to try to force a false argument to appear true
PRO II. Moral Equalization
P1) If x societal practice features the disparate treatment of different sentient individuals, there must be an ethically relevant distinction between the instigators and the recipients of x practice, such that x practice is justified as ethically permissible.P2) Our current societal practices feature the disparate treatment of different sentient individuals (animals and humans).C) Therefore, there must be an ethically relevant distinction between the instigators and the recipients of x practice, such that x practice is justified as ethically permissible.
- PRO II fails by non-sequitur fallacy: whether animal agriculture is ethically permissible is entirely irrelevant to the question of whether animal agriculture is correctly described as SLAVERY
- Just because we agree that murder and rape are bother ethically impermissible does not mean that rape is murder.
- Even if PRO could show that eating meat was just as ethically impermissible as human slavery, that would not make SLAVERY the correct adjective to use when describing animal ownership
- PRO ridiculously blows off many ethically relevant distinctions between humans and animals that might justify human ownership of animals
- HUMAN RIGHTS- humans are the only species capable of conceiving, demanding, upholding civil rights and as such, enjoy a superior and unique claim to those rights we perceive as self-evident.
- HERBIVORES vs OMNIVORES- almost all animals farmed for meat are herbivores. The herbivores position and value within relevant ecological biomes is actually dependent in part on their role as prey. The gazelle runs fast because it is adapted to be hunted by big cats. Likewise, omnivores are adapted to obtain essential nutrients like Omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin B-12, protein, etc.
- DOMESTICATION- most food animals would not exist in nature and are entirely dependent on their role as human food for existence. Cattle are descended from wild aurochs but would not survive long outside of human husbandry
- ANALYSIS:
- PRO is employing loaded language to sensationalize the issue of animal agriculture
- LINK:
- SLAVERY is one of the most fraught and divisive issues in US History. The bloodiest war in American History was the American Civil War fought to resolve the issue of SLAVERY and abolish that undemocratic practice in America forevermore. PRO is evoking that outrage of the past to describe an ordinary human practice that is foundational to human nutrition, evolution, religion, and civilization, namely eating meat
- IMPLICATIONS:
- Loaded words like SLAVERY are employed to produce an emotional response that terminates more reasoned approaches. Americans need to be able to discuss the environmental, economic, nutritional, and yes, even ethical consequences and advantages of phasing out factory farming without likening the status quo to the great evils of SLAVERY or suggesting the violence that might be justified to force that phase out in the way that violence was justified to end SLAVERY
- PRO forgets that one of the false justifications of SLAVERY was that African-Americans were less than human, less evolved, closer to animals then mankind. SLAVERY was unacceptable because Americans came to understand that African-Americans were human, fully distinct from animals and, unlike animals, deserving of equal rights and liberties. PRO's reasoning downplays the fact that the most inhumane aspect of SLAVERY was the act of one human declaring ownership over another, and in this sense, PRO extends the comparison of Black Americans to animals
- ALTERNATIVE:
- These harms are easily avoided by using less hyperbolic language to describe ordinary human practice of animal agriculture. CON recommends the more precise and less loaded term ANIMAL HUSBANDRY for use in discussing the practice and ethics of animal agriculture.
- VOTERS can discourage the abuse of loaded language in debates by awarding points with deliberate reference to that abuse
- ANALYSIS:
- PRO is deliberately abusing the debate description to disguise a tautological trap
- A TAUTOLOGY, in logic, is "a statement so framed that it cannot be denied without inconsistency"
- PRO's trap failed to spring because PRO defined SLAVERY as ownership by ANOTHER PERSON, rather than just "a person," but the attempt should be noted and the harms of such conduct confronted
- LINK:
- PRO attempted to trap CON by making the argument true by definition without any resort to logic.
- That is, by trying to define SLAVERY as simply any ownership when everybody knows that animals raised for food are owned by definition, PRO tried to make his case a foregone conclusion without any resort to logic. That's why PRO keeps re-emphasizing his definition:
- Premise one is definitional, with all terms being found in the description of our debate. Premise two, subsequently, is truistic.
- animal agriculture is slavery, irrefutably, within the parameters of our deliberation
- Since animal ownership is never referred to as SLAVERY in dictionaries, encyclopedias, common discourse, or the law, PRO invented his own overly broad definition that applies not just to food animals but to all human property. Using PRO's entirely inadequate definition the way PRO hoped to use it, just about everything is SLAVERY:
- bottled water is SLAVERY
- sailboats are SLAVERY
- Cheetos are SLAVERY
- television shows are SLAVERY
- PRO screwed up his definition but even if his definition were interpreted as intended, we can see that PRO deliberately defined his terms with irrational overbroadness in order to reach out for some validation of his obviously false conclusion
- IMPLICATIONS:
- Let's agree that such semantic traps are bad for the quality of debates on debate.com. Tautologies test no rhetorical skill and teach no truths.
- As DebateArt.com's VOTING POLICY states:
- "The setup for a debate need not be wholly fair, but there should be grounds for either side to argue. A debate such as “the sun is hot”' are so overwhelmingly in favor of one side, that the other side is best off kritiking the setup and asking for voters to disregard the proofs. This makes it a time of voter discretion if the setup was cheating or not"
- VOTERS will note that CON is following the advice and forms of kritik to combat PRO's harms to the quality of debate on this site
- ALTERNATIVE:
- VOTERS should note the VOTING POLICY regarding instigator's rules in the description:
- Whereas some clarifications in the description are conducive to the spirit of debate, others are clearly set to swindle someone out of having an actual debate
- A debate may have special rules specified within the description. These are not strictly enforced by moderation, but a voter may choose to abide. If a voter is choosing to and there was a challenge to said rules within the debate, some analysis of that challenge is highly suggested
- VOTERS can discourage the abuse of customized definitions in debates by awarding points with deliberate reference to that abuse
P1A: SLAVERY is the state of being owned by another person
P1B: No persons in the US are farmed for food
C1: Therefore, no animal agriculture in the US is SLAVERY
- PRO tried to trap CON with cleverness in lieu of a rational argument
- Unfortunately for PRO, his definition still makes SLAVERY an exclusively human institution
- CON looks forward to PRO's R2.
- Let's make some brief notes. First, to concede means to "admit that something is true or valid after first denying or resisting it." As long as our voters have functional eyesight and can observe this has not occurred, you can ignore anywhere con suggests his fantasy.
- Second, con's analysis of the intricate semantics of my definition seems to be a waste of his entire round one. His kritks not only bear no relation to any argument or position of mine, his conspiratorial notions of a secret plot of mine also bring his conduct into question.
- Contrary to con's notions, a "person" refers to the doctrine of personhood which evaluates whether or, not an entity has imperative moral rights or moral consideration. This is understood as commonplace in the foundations of ethical philosophy. A person is "any entity that has the moral right of self-determination, or "the kind of entity that has the moral right to make its own life-choices, to live its life without (unprovoked) interference from others."
- Personhood as a concept has shaped the evolution of society and our perceptions of entities. It has been the determinant of rights for marginalized groups and continues to configure our discourse around ethical issues of today such as abortion, and likewise, animal rights. My moral equalization argument (II) already demonstrates that there are no ethically relevant differences between animals and humans. I have thus argued and delineated that Farm animals are persons, entities that have a moral right to self-determination. Extending this as case, all categorizations of human slavery must apply to farm animals.
- In the same way that various groups, Black people, Jewish people, etc. are and were persons despite historically not being recognized as such, animals are persons despite not being recognized as such because they have a moral right to determine themselves.
- Extending from personhood, this renders con's objection to irrelevance. Various groups of humans in the United States and around the world were not considered persons; they were not recognized as entities with rights or moral value, yet we would still ascribe their treatment as genocide or murder. Despite not being considered persons, they were persons, being individuals which exhibit no ethical difference between the then irrational conceptions of such. Being individuals that had a moral right to their self-determination, Farm animals, despite not being considered persons, are persons, by virtue of having the same ethical right to self-determination as shown through inconsequential differences (II).
- The prevalence of animals in the factory farming system unquestionably vanquishes my burden for this debate. It indicates that the near entirety of animal farming places animals in a state of enslavement. Consequently, the only particular of our debate in dispute, is whether or not these entities are persons. Any aspect of con's round one speech that diverts from this question can effectively be ignored. If this is in dispute we can simply answer this question with moral equalization.
- My argument is of moral trait equalization. In this, we examine the traits that we implicate with value and see whether or not they distinguish how we treat humans and farm animals. Extend all premises henceforth.
- If humans are persons, farm animals are persons. If humans have personhood then animals have personhood based on the same parameters of analysis. If one denies this they exhibit special pleading, the prelim of logical contradiction. Con's ignorance of the deductive implications of my argument should be ignored. Not only does it attack the ethical permissibility of our social practices, it equalizes our treatment of humans and animals. They are not mutually exclusive as he dogmatically suggests.
- If there is no ethically relevant difference between humans and animals, and if the same actions we perform on animals would be considered slavery on humans, they are logically slavery when performed on farm animals. Even further, my argument equalizes our conceptions of personhood as well. Animals are persons—entities with a moral right of self-determination—if humans are, because no ethically relevant distinction exists between them.
- Con attempts to propose a set of differences he believes are relevant, however, they are all untenable and lead him to absurd conclusions that alone are enough to make the decision self-evidently in favor of the instigator:
- "Human rights..."
- Pro's claims are baseless. Many humans, such as disabled people, are not capable of doing anything substantial to speak less of conceptualizing rights, yet this does not entail we can farm them and consume them for resources. The acquisition of rights based on species is also logically incoherent (b. round 1).
- "Omnivores/Essential..."
- Pro uses the is-ought gap fallacy, assuming that just because evolution exists, it is ethical to torture, farm, and kill animals. Discard the fallacious argument. David Hume has already proven that "you cannot deduce moral conclusions, featuring moral words such as ‘ought’, from non-moral premises, that is premises from which the moral words are absent." Further, animal farming is not essential. Not only is it continuously found that "plant-based diets are healthier than diets where meat is consumed," they are significantly more affordable. This is an unnecessary consumption and an unnecessary practice, just like enslaving humans would be, yet con does not argue that enslaving humans is ethically permissible.
- "Domestication..."
- Many humans would not survive long outside of human care, such as the elderly, the sick, and infants. This does not entail you can farm and kill these humans.
- Pro's fallacious conjectures and weak ad hoc justifications further solidify that we can't even create a logical division between humans and animals. Animal farming is slavery. These animals have the same rights to self-determination as we do. They are persons.
- We can even further examine con's questionable and fallacious line of argument.
94% of Americans eat meat but no law enforcement officials consider that fact a constitutional crisis because animal agriculture is not SLAVERY
- This is an appeal to popularity fallacy (using the popularity of a premise or proposition as evidence for its truthfulness). Spousal sexual abuse was not recognized as rape, yet this does not change the fact that it was, as there is no logical difference between being sexually assaulted by a stranger, and by your husband. Likewise, farm animals may not be recognized as persons, but this does not change what they are because there is no logical difference between the justification of what we do to animals and what we do to humans. Farm animals are entities that hold a moral right of self-determination.
- Con's points here are all immaterial if not irrelevant to my case, allowing them to be cleanly discarded. Firstly, I am describing animal agriculture as it is: the enslavement of persons. This is not loaded language but a proposition that I have argued for soundly.
- Secondly, Con weirdly claims that my definition has a secret intended use (there is a mystery plot behind the scenes) seemingly contradicting everything he pointlessly argued for: a sole application to persons. Thus con's examples of objects that he believes are slaves do not influence my case, nor are they relevant to anything I have discussed.
- In round one, I showcased two compelling arguments that prove that animal farming is slavery. My moral equalization argument equalizes the conclusions from premises society has instantiated, including personhood.
- In round two, I extend this argument, the only opposition I face being the use of the word person as a synonym for a human being. This is incongruent with the commonplace of axiology/ethical philosophy and the development of our ethical understanding. It should be ignored. Animals are persons because they are entities that have a moral right to their own self-determination. As it stands, pro has made a sound argument that animal farming is the enslavement of persons, beings that have an ethical actualize themselves. The decision hence is simple. There is only one debater who has made sound arguments: the one who has upheld our resolution beyond doubt.
- In his description, PRO defined SLAVERY as being owned by another PERSON
- and in R1 CON defined a PERSON is " a "human being" using the first definition found in most common dictionaries
- After missing two opportunities (in the description and Round1) to define PERSON, and only as reaction to CON's demonstration that all slaves are human by definition in Round1, PRO now relies on the equivocation found in the fallacy of persuasive definition
- "Persuasive definitions commonly appear in controversial topics such as politics, sex, and religion, as participants in emotionally charged exchanges will sometimes become more concerned about swaying people to one side or another than expressing the unbiased facts. A persuasive definition of a term is favorable to one argument or unfavorable to the other argument, but is presented as if it were neutral and well-accepted, and the listener is expected to accept such a definition without question"
- PRO describes his definition of SLAVERY as "intricate" but in fact that definition was quite straightforward, just not to be found in any dictionary. What is quite intricate is PRO's Round2 definition of PERSON created especially to rescue his argument, but which is also not to be found in dictionaries
- VOTERS are asked to notice how PRO has no problem relying on commonplace dictionaries to define a word like CONCEDE but in order to create the illusion that animals are properly defined as PERSONS, PRO runs far away from dictionaries into the realm of philosophical theory
- Even at those semantic fringes, PRO's own sources substantially undermine PRO's specialized definition:
- Anderson: "Of course, when it comes to animals there are serious moral constraints on how we may treat them. But we do not, in fact, give animals the same kind of autonomy that we accord persons"
- Kawohl: "The English term, "person," is ambiguous. We often use it as a synonym for "human being."
- Wikipedia: " The concept of personhood is difficult to define in a way that is universally accepted, due to its historical and cultural variability and the controversies surrounding its use in some contexts. Capacities or attributes common to definitions of personhood can include human nature, agency, self-awareness, a notion of the past and future, and the possession of rights and duties, among others"
- A definitional fallacy presents "as if it were neutral and well-accepted" but according to PRO's own sources, defining animals as PERSONS is neither neutral nor well-accepted. PRO's definition certainly meets the qualification of "emotionally charged"'
. My moral equalization argument (II) already demonstrates that there are no ethically relevant differences between animals and humans
- We've seen PRO's own sources disagree but so does any application of common sense
- There are many important ethical differences between humans and non-humans, the most obvious being that no non-humans are ever ethical agents.
- Domesticated pig mothers, for example, will savage and devour their offspring when under stress or underfed. Humans' ethical response to this behavior is to increase comfort and support for the sow
- but if a human mother kills and devours her children under any circumstance, humans' ethical response to this behavior is isolate and punish that individual
- so clearly it cannot be fairly claimed that there are no ethically relevant differences between humans and pigs
In the same way that various groups, Black people Jewish people, etc. are and were persons despite historically not being recognized as such animals are persons despite not being recognized as such because they have a moral right to determine themselves
- Even unacknowledged , Black people and Jewish people were always people (the plural of PERSON) because they were manifestly human in exactly the same way that non-human animals are manifestly non-human. To argue that animals are just as deserving of ethical consideration and human rights and Black and Jewish is to fail to acknowledge the manifest, natural, inherent humanity of Black and Jewish people (see KRITIK 1)
- Even though PRO's entire argument hinges on VOTERS acceptance of his fringe definition of PERSONS as animals, CON asks VOTERS to disqualify PRO's definition of PERSON as
- too late in the debate
- too customized to PRO's argument, and
- too reliant on controversial theory to serve our discussion of SLAVERY in America
P1) Slavery is the state of being owned by another personP2) The majority of animal agriculture places animals in the state of being owned by ANOTHER personC) The majority of animal agriculture is slavery
- Therefore, PRO 1 still fails by definitional fallacy: Slavery only applies to people and never to animals
- Therefore, PRO II continues to fail by non-sequitur fallacy. PRO has defined all SLAVES as PERSONS, therefore no animals can be SLAVES by definition
- PRO insists that there is no ethical difference between animals and humans but this is madness
- ETHICS is "rules of behavior based on ideas about what is morally good and bad"
- Humans are the only animals with ethics, morals, good, and bad. We invented the whole notion for our own social purposes
- Right and wrong is predicated on our humanity: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. We have a special obligation to moral agents because we are moral agents ourselves. We treat the humans at the margins of humanity, the infants and sick and dying as fellow humans not because they are animals with feeling s but because they belong to the society of moral agents with deep and sophisticated binds of social obligation and care
- No animal is a moral agent
- When the elk gores the occasional hunter, we do not fault the elk
- When the sow eats her piglets, we do not fault the sow
- Since animals cannot play the role of moral agent, they lack the rights to respectful reciprocity that every human in every condition enjoys
- Humans owe a moral debt to all other humans first and before any animal
- Humans are the only animal that controls the destiny of the Earth, and so we control the destiny of all other species
- Domesticated farm animals are literally a human creation, we took them in to our civilizations, bred important survival characteristics out of them, changed their very nature to be more fat and docile and dependent on human care
- THAT is why we don't call animals SLAVES, to distinguish our unique moral obligation to respect the freedom of other humans
- THAT is why it is an insult to humans harmed by SLAVERY to equate that harm to animals with little sense of equality or independence or right or wrong
- PRO argues that such an outlooks suffers from the gap between is and ought- that because it was always thus it should remain so but this is not CON's argument at all
- In fact, 20th century innovations in agriculture and nutrition make make abstinence from meat a realistic option for humans for the first time in history while 20th century threats like overpopulation, pollution, and climate change make abstinence from meat realistic efficiencies likely to improve human sustainability
- But THOSE are truly moral "oughts" with realistic moral weight- human improvement, human sustainability, not fuzzy intangible "oughts" like "animal slavery"
- If we do away with cows as a source of food, we aren't going to give those cows free reign to breed and eat as they chose
- PRO thinks that any notion with popular support must be wrong because a book told him that appeals to popularity are fallacious, but in fact, argumentum ad populum is only a fallacy when irrelevant to the truth
- The English language derives meaning from usage
- It is entirely relevant to point out that English language speakers use the word SLAVERY in order to distinguish human bondage from the bondage of other kinds of animals
- It is not irrelevant to point out that it "sounds wrong" to call a chicken a slave because that exaggeration disrespects the special harm that we designate with the word SLAVERY (see KRITIK 1)
- Likewise, it is entirely relevant to point our that American law defines SLAVERY and outlaws that act constitutionally and that any treatment of any animal, legal or not, is very carefully and particular never called SLAVERY because that exaggeration disrespects the inhumanity we designate with the word SLAVERY
- PRO drops this argument
- PRO stands by his disrespectful use of loaded language to sensationalize his political views but he makes no argument in defense
- PRO does not deny he could argue the same topic using non-sensational terminology like animal farming or animal husbandry
- PRO drops this argument
- PRO stands by his tricky abuse of loaded language to conceal a tautological trap but makes no argument in defense of this practice
- RPO does not deny his PRO 1 argument is no more than tautology disguised as controversy
- PRO does not deny his definition of SLAVERY as the "state of being owned" deliberately avoids dictionary definitions of the word and commonplace semantic understandings of the word because any dictionary or good faith semantic interpretation of the word SLAVERY effectively terminates PRO's case
P1A: SLAVERY is the state of being owned by another person
P1B: No persons in the US are farmed for food
C1: Therefore, no animal agriculture in the US is SLAVERY
- PRO offered no counter to CON's affirmative case. We can see here clearly why PRO's argument depends on a radical interpretation of farm animals as people: because if farm animals are not people, PRO's case must fail
- Unfortunately for PRO's case, animals are not people
- Therefore, even PRO's overbroad definition still makes SLAVERY an exclusively human institution
- CON looks forward to PRO's R3
- For some notes, a dropped argument is one "not answered in the speech in which the opposing team has the first opportunity to answer it." I have responded to con's arguments in entirety, so voters can ignore his delusion along with other claims that I have not responded to x.
- I extend my responses to con's kritiks: neither impact my case. First, the resolution is a proposition I have made sound arguments for, precluding loaded language. Second, con continues to contradict his own arguments, wanting to have it both ways. He argues that slavery only applies to persons (something weirdly no one has denied) and also argues that slavery also applies to objects. Which one is it? If con believes books are slaves that is his position, not mine. I remind the voters that (per rules) we have agreed to all terms of the debate.
- I have consistently shown from round one with contention II, that equalizing the justifications of our actions towards farm animals reveal no ethically relevant distinctions, entailing that all our societal practices and conceptions apply to farm animals—they are persons. Slavery as a category applies to them just as personhood does. Having been shown from round one, con's complaints of anything coming too late, at best show an inability to read. Animals are persons by virtue of having a moral right to self-determination.
- What is personhood, and why is it imperative? Personhood is a doctrine of ethics. It is a moral category used to denote entities that have certain moral/ethical rights. A person is any entity that has the moral right of self-determination. There are undoubtedly both non-human persons and human non-persons. For instance, abortion issues deliberate over the personhood of the unborn child. If being a biological human alone was sufficient for personhood, this would not be the case. Con's use of terms like "common sense," amounts to an argument from incredulity, and should be discarded. When discussing ethical issues regarding how we ought to treat entities, we discuss whether or not these entities are persons: whether or not they have a moral right to their self-determination.
- Voters can ignore con's conspiracy that I created the definition of a person or personhood as a concept. The doctrine is one of the most fundamental aspects of ethical philosophy. Things con does not like do in fact exist, and establish the basis for our approach towards moral issues such as abortion or animal rights.
- Voters can also ignore con's statement that my sources somehow work against me. Both of my sources define a person (from personhood) in ethical philosophy. What con refers to is their documentation of individual theories of personhood from different philosophers: these have no impact on what a "person" means as a category—con commits a category error. I don't have to agree with the entirety of what any source I use includes, so cherry-picking various quotes yields no impact on my case; I simply argue against them. My moral equalization argument (II) shows that it is logically impossible to argue humans are persons without arguing that farm animals are persons by the same token. If humans are persons, animals are persons. If humans have a moral right to self-determination, animals have a moral right to self-determination.
- Extend. I have argued soundly, imperatively (II) that animals are persons, entities that have the moral right of self-determination. This makes my opening syllogism sound. Con exhibits no remaining defense against my argument.
- I will re-iterate my argument once more. This contention equalizes our treatment of farm animals and humans. Through this, I demonstrate four propositions that affirm the resolution beyond doubt: (1) There are no ethically relevant distinctions between our treatment of humans and animals. (2) Animals, like humans, have a moral right to self-determination (3) From this, animals are persons, and (4) any action performed on animals that would be categorized as slavery if performed on humans, is categorized as slavery. From these simple propositions, the resolution is affirmed. Con has provided no ethically relevant distinction that would reject any of them.
- Not only does moral equalization equalize our treatment of animals, but it also equalizes our notions of personhood. If humans are persons, animals are persons because there is no ethically relevant distinction between them. This necessitates the conclusion that animal farming is the ownership of persons, and that animal farming is slavery because animals have the same fundamental moral right to self-determination.
- Cumulatively: by establishing that personhood must necessarily apply to farm animals, moral equalization shows that our treatment of animals—which would be considered slavery on humans—must be considered slavery for animals. Con's newly proposed distinctions are even worse than those from round two, and they are new because he drops his previous ones upon their refutation.
- "Moral Agents..."
- By the same token, many disabled people are not cognitively developed enough to engage in moral reasoning or to know the difference between right and wrong. They are not moral agents, and neither are most children who are too young to understand these concepts. Does con argue that we can dissect and kill these people for resources?
- "Controls the destiny of the Earth..."
- This statement is vague—almost meaningless. All living things control the destiny of the earth through ecological processes, including farm animals. Thus pro's implication that humans "control the destiny of other species," is an informal fallacy: proof by assertion, not an argument. Just because humans have accumulated the most power does not mean they are justified in their actions. Besides exhibiting the is-ought gap fallacy, it amounts to an argument that might makes right. Con would also conclude that had Hitler won world war two, he would have been right in torturing Jewish people, or that if an aliens species: one more advanced than humans came to earth, they would actually be right in enslaving and torturing humans for resources.
- "Farm animals are...a human creation"
- Children are a human creation, in fact, any human that exists was created by another human, yet this does not mean we can farm and torture all humans, or any human, for resources.
- "Pig mothers...devour their offspring"
- Humans have oppressed entire racial groups, engineered the holocaust, and commit acts of genocide, rape, murder, infanticide, torture, and terrorism on a daily basis. Yes, people can do bad things, but I fail to see how this is a point in con's favor given that humans seem to perform the most morally depraved actions.
- The perpetual weaknesses in con's case remain evident.
- Con's response is a red-herring. If slavery is the state of being owned by another person (description), farm animals are persons (I, II) and there are no ethically relevant distinctions between our treatment of humans and farm animals (II), animal agriculture must be slavery regardless of the population's perceptions after having equalized these imperatives between animals and humans. To deny this would be to state that "slavery is and is not slavery," a logical contradiction, or to exhibit special pleading, another logical contradiction. The development of language is immaterial to this.
- Con continues to argue fallaciously: in fact, we can discard many of his points in the notion that just because something is the case, does not mean it ought to be so. "You cannot deduce moral conclusions, featuring moral words such as ‘ought’, from non-moral premises, that is premises from which the moral words are absent," and con continues to do so, hoping that dogmatically repeating himself will make the fallacies go away.
- The goal of this contention is simple. I have made a sound argument that there are no ethically relevant differences between humans and animals. If humans are persons by having a moral right to self-determination, animals are persons by having those same moral rights. Thus, I have showcased that animals have personhood, possessing this same moral right. It is not only illogical but irrational and contradictory to suggest they do not while retaining that humans do.
- Let's examine both of our cases in this debate. It is easy to see that pro has won every contention.
- We established that personhood in ethical philosophy denotes any entity that has a moral right to self-determination. Personhood remains a central doctrine evaluated in moral issues, most especially animal rights. Thus we adhere to the doctrine of personhood to evaluate whether or not animals are persons. The central question of this debate became whether or not farm animals are persons. Thus, if I prove animals to be persons, I have won the debate.
- My moral equalization argument shows just that: farm animals are beings that have a moral right to their own self-determination, by the same token that humans are. No matter what con posits, no matter what justification he hopes will stick, I have shown they all lead to absurd conclusions that eradicate their ethical tenability. Thus, any action performed on animals, if it would be considered slavery when placed upon humans, is slavery because animals are persons.
- Con has failed to refute this argument. Each ad hoc justification he provided yielded more and more insane conclusions that undercut his own arguments, placing him in more and more awkward positions.
- The decision for this debate is not difficult. One debater has made consistent valid and sound arguments. The resolution is confirmed.
- CON must show that the majority of animal agriculture in the US is not slavery
- VOTERS should find this debate fairly straightforward to evaluate since the only question at issue is whether farm animals are properly defined as slaves in the English language.
- The answer is no, Americans don't refer chickens, pigs, or cows as "slaves" in ordinary parlance.
- No dictionary definition of SLAVERY or SLAVES mentions farm animals at all.
- Wiktionary: An institution or social practice of owning human beings as property, especially for use as forced laborers.
- Oxford: the practice of owning and forcing people to work as slaves
- Mirriam-Webster: : the state of a person who is held in forced servitude
- PRO offered a non-dictionary definition that nevertheless defines SLAVE as a person.
- At the top of Round1, CON offered a simple dictionary definition of PERSON as "a human being."
- Having created a debate that depends entirely on the definition of PERSON and having missed two opportunities to provide that essential piece of his argument in the description and in Round1, PRO then asks VOTERS to ignore CON's simple dictionary definition and instead an overwrought and entirely theoretical definition of PERSON. A PERSON is "any entity that has the moral right of self-determination, or the kind of entity that has the moral right to make its own life-choices, to live its life without (unprovoked) interference from others."
- PRO makes no apology for ignoring CON's earlier definition
- PRO makes no argument against CON's definition, PRO just insists that all the dictionaries are wrong and that his customized ad-hoc definition must be right because it is "commonplace in the foundations of ethical philosophy." (and thereby, relying on the very fallacious appeal to popularity that PRO accused CON with in Round 2. CON asks VOTERS to consider which is more relevant to the definition of SLAVERY in America- the fact that almost no Americans recognize animal agriculture as a criminal enterprise or the fact the some academics can't discern an ethical difference between humans and animals?)
- PRO then adds an adds an appeal to authority by arguing that his definition should be preferred because "the doctrine is one of the most fundamental aspects of ethical philosophy." Not particularly true but also totally unsupported by PRO's own sources. VOTERS will recall that in Round2, CON quoted all three of the sources PRO used to back up his ad hoc definition specifically refuting PRO's claim equating animals as the ethical equals of humans.
- VOTERS should note that PRO failed to find one single source that backs his claims that his argument from marginal cases is fundamental or even persuasive to most philosophic thinking in the US
- PRO misidentifies CON's reliance on common sense as "appeal to incredulity." Certainly one can imagine the possibility of a farmer referring to her cows as people, her chickens as slaves. CON does not say that's impossible, CON merely calls that improper usage. If you were on a farm with an average farmer and called his cows people or his chickens slaves would that farmer think you were using proper terminology? No.
- Similarly, we do not admit pigs to emergency rooms because they are not people. We do not report runaway goats as runaway slaves because that would confuse the populace.
- VOTERS are asked to rely on CON's definition of people as humans and entirely disregard PRO's late, sloppy, vague definition of people.
- Slavery means more than just being owned by another person. Objects can be owned but are not slaves. Plants can be owned but are not slaves. Animals can be owned but are not slaves. P1 fails by definitional fallacy, invalidating PRO's syllogism.
- PRO's argument is first and foremost non-sequitur. No ethical consideration turns animals into SLAVES.
- PRO argues that there's no ethically relevant distinction between humans and animals as if humanity itself were not an important ethical distinction. We treat the marginal cases among us- the infants, the elderly, the ill as fellow humans because we recognize that human distinction from mere animal. If you subtract every animal quality from humans, there is still something more to humans that no other animal can match- our investigation and understanding of the universe we live in, our belief in the divine and the divinity in human nature- self-sacrifice, self-appreciation, self-destruction beyond any animals comprehension.
- PRO drops or eludes most of CON's counters here.
- CON says only humans conceive of rights
- PRO just calls that logically incoherent, but ignores whether that's an important ethical distinction
- CON says humans evolved to eat the meat of animals
- PRO calls that is/ought fallacy but whether we should change does not change the definition of what we are now
- CON says that farm animals are human creations via domestication
- PRO says infants would survive no longer than domesticated animals on their but ignores the fact that we don't give infants the right to self-determination either
- CON says humans are the only creatures that have or understand ethics
- PRO says some disabled people don't have ethics either but ignores the point that no animals can or do have ethics
- CON says humans control the Earth's destiny
- PRO falsely argues that all animals are a part of climate change. In fact, animals species have always lived in a remarkable balance within ecosystems. Only humans surpass, bypass, destroy those ecosystems for man and animal alike. PRO calls this might makes right but that argument acknowledge that might is an important ethical distinction between humans and beasts
- CON argues that we treat animals entirely different then humans in the same situations
- PRO counters with racial oppression, genocide, and holocaust failing to see how this reinforces CON's case that humans are ethically quite different from animals
- Even property itself is an entirely human distinction. When PRO says "animals are persons owned by another person" he never, ever means that "another person" is another animal because only humans claim property ownership and that itself is an essential ethical distinction between people and animals.
- We do not give animals self-determination because unlike human slaves, animals would not join in civilization or the economy nor would they cease to be anything more than a burden on humanity. Humans would not like what pigs at liberty would do to farms and fences, traffic, parks and playgrounds, produce sections at the supermarket.
- Even non-sequitur, PRO's case also fails as concrete, thinking about how to approach the human-animal relationship
- CON asks VOTERS to ignore this entire argument as irrelevant to the question of whether animals husbandry is properly called the human institution of SLAVERY
- PRO stands by his disrespectful use of loaded language to sensationalize his political views but he makes no argument in defense
- PRO does not deny he could argue the same topic using non-sensational terminology like animal farming or animal husbandry
- CON argues that the loaded language was employed to disguise the otherwise tautological nature of PRO's argument (see KRITIK2)
- VOTERS can discourage the abuse of loaded language in debates by awarding points with deliberate reference to that abuse
- PRO stands by his tricky abuse of loaded language to conceal a tautological trap but makes no argument in defense of this practice
- RPO does not deny his PRO 1 argument is anything more than tautology masquerading as controversy
- VOTERS can discourage tautology in debates by awarding points with deliberate reference to that abuse
- Debate.com's VOTING POLICY advises:
- The setup for a debate need not be wholly fair, but there should be grounds for either side to argue. A debate such as “the sun is hot”' are so overwhelmingly in favor of one side, that the other side is best off kritiking the setup and asking for voters to disregard the proofs
- If VOTERS rely on PRO's definition, then all he is arguing that "some people are slaves," which would not be particularly controversial if PRO's definitions weren't so bizarre.
P1A: SLAVERY is the state of being owned by another person
P1B: No persons in the US are farmed for food
C1: Therefore, no animal agriculture in the US is SLAVERY
- PRO dropped 100% of CON's affirmative case.
- VOTERS should find this debate fairly straightforward to evaluate since the only question at issue is whether farm animals are properly defined as slaves in the English language. As long as PRO's radical redefinition of animals as the moral and semantic equivalent of human beings fails to persuade, then CON wins this debate.
- CON asks VOTERS to further consider PRO's deliberate inconsistencies and delays in defining his terms when considering votes for sources
- CON asks VOTERS to further consider PRO's abuse of loaded language to disguise a tautological trap when considering votes for conduct
The crucial contention in the debate is one which lies far from the topical stipulations. We can all agree that, in the intended debate regarding the moral aspects of animals, Novice_II clearly wins - however, this was not how the contest panned out. Oromagi opts to instead critique the fundamentals of the instigator's case, by exposing that the definition results in a tautological impossibility. It’s a risky strategy - let’s see if it pays off.
R1. PRO
Nothing which will be substantive in the overall decision is said here because Oromagi will undermine the entire argument. Thus, I need not make any comment.
R1. CON
Nothing much needs to be said here either - CON establishes the beginning of their Kritik - that the term “another” implies “in addition”, which further implies that according to the provided definitions, slavery is that which must include at least two agents. Thus, the rest of the instigators case is null, for they apply to animals as opposed to “another” human being.
R2. PRO
PRO responds compellingly here (personally, I had thought the debate was over already and that CON had won). They argue that “person” refers to “that who has personhood” and further compliments this by showing examples, where in the traditional definition of “person” is insufficient (ie, the abortion debate is one where “person” is in contention, there was once a time when the status of African’s or Jew’s were questioned etc).
R2. CON
CON replies by arguing that PRO’s definitions fall prey to the stipulative fallacy, wherein the ambiguous defining of a term is done so in order to bolster one’s own argument. They also claim that PRO does not use the most common of definitions. I don’t buy this - if it were the case that we can only use surface level definitions, debates regarding abortion and the rights of minorities could never be accelerated, as PRO observes in both rounds.
R3. PRO
Much of the same here, though PRO adds that CON’s reliance on “common sense” defines an argument from incredulity. I buy this - once upon a time, common sense determined the subjugation of African Americans, a point which PRO made in the prior round and also supplements when stipulating “ When discussing ethical issues regarding how we ought to treat entities, we discuss whether or not these entities are persons”
R3. CON
CON refutes the charges of an appeal to incredulity by arguing that the definitions are not “common place”, but this is exactly what PRO had charged as being an appeal to incredulity - the sentiment that “we ought use the common place definition” is exactly what PRO described as being incredulous. Furthermore, critiquing the notion that the "personhood" doctrine is uncommon isn't actually an engagement with the argument, merely a stipulation that it isn't very common (might I add as an example that it was once uncommon to hold that African Americans had rights). CON could have very easily argued that animals do not qualify for moral calculation, however, they did not.
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Overview of arguments
CON's entire argument is that PRO does not conform to most dictionaries. In a clearly philosophical debate, it is clear you must do more than this (e.g. arguing abortion is wrong because it is illegal is akin to this level of argumentation). PRO correctly argues that, adopting the narrow view of CON's case, we would never have been able to further the rights of Africans and Jews, or have any dialectic in the abortion debate. CON could have won the debate if they had invested more into the moral aspect, as they did in round two, but it must be admitted that the majority of their case is semantics, and as the semantics was nullified by PRO's personhood doctrine, the argument is neutralised and the rest of PRO's arguments go untouched. Like Whiteflames said, it is clear that in a debate like this, crucial terms like "person" are up for grabs (especially in a distinctly morally grounded debate) , and I ultimately favoured the engagement of the personhood definition when compared to the regurgitation of dictionaries.
Conduct
I don’t appreciate that CON hinges their entire argument on semantical grounds - a kritik here and there as a supplementary riddle for the opponent to address is fine, but when you base your entire case on semantics, it’s quite annoying. Nonetheless, my personal dissatisfaction does not constitute enough of a justification to deduct a conduct point.
More convincing arguments:
CON showed that it is impossible to argue the notion of personhood for animals because:
1. PRO never gave animals personhood in his opening argument.
2. the word "another" denotes, as CON put it, equal value between two things.
Some reasons CON interpreted PRO correctly:
"Premise one is definitional, with all terms being found in the description of our debate. Premise two, subsequently, is truistic. In animal agriculture, animals are owned as the property of their rearers." - Here PRO distinctly states animals and humans are different.
"Animal agriculture is the enslavement of sentient creatures, turning them into resources for human consumption." - Here PRO states that animals are enslaved by humans. This is important because his opening point was the "another person" was a human.
It was not until Round 2 where PRO actually stated he meant animals were persons under the philosophy of personhood. At minimum this means PRO was trying to hide his argument for this, or he automatically assumed without cause, since the description did not include a dictionary or a definition for personhood, that person meant the philosophical sense. So PRO is doubling back because CON destroyed his argument through simple tautology.
* * *
Reliable Sources:
CON cited Pro's .edu source for personhood, the LII, Merriam Webster, Encyclopedia Britannica, and Oxford's learner dictionary.
PRO cited three .edu websites, the EPA, a reputable philosophy magazine, and one Oxford link, in addition to Cambridge Dictionary.
Therefore PRO used more reliable sources.
* * *
I ran both arguments from all the rounds into Grammarly's grammar checker (which is one of the best on the market) and arrived at the following scores:
CON: 29 issues
PRO: 28 issues
Therefore, CON had worse spelling and grammar using an objective measurement for both parties, a program used by colleges and universities nationwide to help students write better.
* * *
Conduct:
Tied.
Following a mysterious vote deletion 1.5 hours before the results deadline, without an explanation, I am voting again without the conduct point. Allocated as that is what I assume was the issue.
RFD: https://www.debateart.com/debates/3775/comment-links/46505
Edited to remove sources. Conduct and arguments are unchanged.
...
Pro gave himself a high BoP in needing to prove that animals are in fact people. Not merely that they ought to be granted rights and regarded as similar to people, but in plain English that they already are people.
Pro is successful in showing that the meat industry is bad. However, as con is apt to point out, without showing that people are being farmed for food, BoP is unable to be met.
While you can compare apples to oranges, that doesn't cause them to equal each other.
...
Pro is effective in using repeated pathos appeals along the lines of /imagine the same was done to your children!/, but con is fast to point out the disjunction of this when applied to the topic being a definitional fallacy. And further if farming is bad is non-sequitur to this topic unless people are being farmed.
Pro comes back declaring "Black people, Jewish people, etc." are the same as animals (I wouldn't phrase it like this, but con already caught the horrible implications of this comparison, and pro actively chose to double down on it). He further claims that con claims "it is ethical to torture, farm, and kill animals." Which is obviously a non-sequitur poisoning of the well (that con argues it is not the same, does not mean the debate changes topics to be about if it is right or wrong).
Human rights:
Going to use the first instance of a definition for that "HUMAN RIGHTS- humans are the only species capable of conceiving, demanding, upholding civil rights and as such, enjoy a superior and unique claim to those rights we perceive as self-evident." Pro basically accuses con of being in favor of eating the disabled for this (literally on the next paragraph he follows up with an accusation that con's logic is in favor of farming "elderly, the sick, and infants," so I think I'm at the point of not listing any more of these pathological insults) rather than showing the farm animals which rise to the level of thought as the average person (AKA, the average human being).
Personhood:
Con argues we should use English. Pro asserts that "Animals are persons because they are entities that have a moral right to their own self-determination" yet instead of showing this, he falls back to R1 Google searches for the definitions of key words, without actually showing the animals in question are capable of self-determination even to a comparable level to humans.
Abortion:
Pro for some strange reason keeps bringing up abortion. This is way too far off topic to be seriously considered.
Conduct: con.
I wouldn't assign this, except pro requested the point be given to him for con making arguments in R1. Which by itself is just weird, but when combined with obvious gaslighting at the start of R2 by pro (claiming that con accused him of conceding the debate; when no such words were written) undermines his case in a way that takes the reader out of the debate distracting from the topic at hand. It gets worse as noted above (such as claiming that con is in favor of murdering and eating defenseless human beings).
Sources: Tie, leaving toward con.
Initially voted this in con's favor, but in re-review both sides indeed put in their due diligence. That some of pro's own sources were proven to favor con, greatly hurt his case, but without deeper review on more of them it does not net the points.
Original reasoning: Pro brings up sources which proclaim personhood equals human being, cherry picks around that obvious problem, and then declares that con was really the one cherry picking for pointing out what pro's source says (the defense is good when applied to different webpages within any site, but not literally the same page on the same site). So for better leveraging of pro's own sources, con is able to claim this.
Legibility:
Both sides were fine on this front.
The crucial contention in the debate is one which lies far from the topical stipulations. We can all agree that, in the intended debate regarding the moral aspects of animals, Novice_II clearly wins - however, this was not how the contest panned out. Oromagi opts to instead critique the fundamentals of the instigator's case, by exposing that the definition results in a tautological impossibility. It’s a risky strategy - let’s see if it pays off.
R1. PRO
Nothing which will be substantive in the overall decision is said here because Oromagi will undermine the entire argument. Thus, I need not make any comment.
R1. CON
Nothing much needs to be said here either - CON establishes the beginning of their Kritik - that the term “another” implies “in addition”, which further implies that according to the provided definitions, slavery is that which must include at least two agents. Thus, the rest of the instigators case is null, for they apply to animals as opposed to “another” human being.
R2. PRO
PRO responds compellingly here (personally, I had thought the debate was over already and that CON had won). They argue that “person” refers to “that who has personhood” and further compliments this by showing examples, where in the traditional definition of “person” is insufficient (ie, the abortion debate is one where “person” is in contention, there was once a time when the status of African’s or Jew’s were questioned etc).
R2. CON
CON replies by arguing that PRO’s definitions fall prey to the stipulative fallacy, wherein the ambiguous defining of a term is done so in order to bolster one’s own argument. They also claim that PRO does not use the most common of definitions. I don’t buy this - if it were the case that we can only use surface level definitions, debates regarding abortion and the rights of minorities could never be accelerated, as PRO observes in both rounds.
R3. PRO
Much of the same here, though PRO adds that CON’s reliance on “common sense” defines an argument from incredulity. I buy this - once upon a time, common sense determined the subjugation of African Americans, a point which PRO made in the prior round and also supplements when stipulating “ When discussing ethical issues regarding how we ought to treat entities, we discuss whether or not these entities are persons”
R3. CON
CON refutes the charges of an appeal to incredulity by arguing that the definitions are not “common place”, but this is exactly what PRO had charged as being an appeal to incredulity - the sentiment that “we ought use the common place definition” is exactly what PRO described as being incredulous. Furthermore, critiquing the notion that the "personhood" doctrine is uncommon isn't actually an engagement with the argument, merely a stipulation that it isn't very common (might I add as an example that it was once uncommon to hold that African Americans had rights). CON could have very easily argued that animals do not qualify for moral calculation, however, they did not.
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Overview of arguments
CON's entire argument is that PRO does not conform to most dictionaries. In a clearly philosophical debate, it is clear you must do more than this (e.g. arguing abortion is wrong because it is illegal is akin to this level of argumentation). PRO correctly argues that, adopting the narrow view of CON's case, we would never have been able to further the rights of Africans and Jews, or have any dialectic in the abortion debate. CON could have won the debate if they had invested more into the moral aspect, as they did in round two, but it must be admitted that the majority of their case is semantics, and as the semantics was nullified by PRO's personhood doctrine, the argument is neutralised and the rest of PRO's arguments go untouched. Like Whiteflames said, it is clear that in a debate like this, crucial terms like "person" are up for grabs (especially in a distinctly morally grounded debate) , and I ultimately favoured the engagement of the personhood definition when compared to the regurgitation of dictionaries.
Conduct
I don’t appreciate that CON hinges their entire argument on semantical grounds - a kritik here and there as a supplementary riddle for the opponent to address is fine, but when you base your entire case on semantics, it’s quite annoying. Nonetheless, my personal dissatisfaction does not constitute enough of a justification to deduct a conduct point.
"The majority of animal agriculture in the United States is slavery"
That's the topic, and given how much back-and-forth there is in this debate, I think it's surreal that my decision comes down to a single, seemingly unimportant word in that resolution: is. Animal agriculture IS slavery. That's a fact resolution. It's not a should resolution. There is room in this kind of resolution for discussion of the terms, but those discussions surround the facts of what slavery is and how it is defined, not how we ought to define it. So when I look at Pro's case, I'm not seeing engagement with how slavery is defined (if anything, that's largely agreed up front), but rather with how persons are defined. Even in that sense, Pro's case focuses on how we should define persons, critiquing the way that we use to determine whether an entity is a or is not a person. I've got problems with that argument that I won't get into here because they aren't pertinent to the debate (Con did start down some of these lines, but I didn't think he went far enough in his analysis), but the long and short of it is that I end up agreeing with a lot of it... but it doesn't seem relevant to the debate. I could wholly agree that farm animals at least SHOULD BE considered persons and end up still voting Con because that doesn't mean that they are.
And that's the fundamental sticking point for me. I can understand how Pro's argument works and I can see him using rather careful language to say that his argument means that farm animals ARE persons and therefore the term slavery DOES apply to them, but just saying it that way doesn't make it so. I can accept that standing definitions for persons are arbitrary and deeply flawed, but that doesn't change what they are. Hell, I can even grant all the points about how the definitions for persons have changed over time, since those points only demonstrate that the term has been used to exclude humans that most or all of us would now consider to be persons. All that tells me is that the meaning of persons should change, not that it already is what Pro wants it to be. And Con does a good job of pointing that out, arguing that common usage supports his position on the terminology, and that there are many definitions of what makes a person that support his case whereas Pro's only definitions that support his require expansions on and selective readings of existing definitions.
At the end of the day, while Pro spends most of his time pointing out the problems with our delineations between persons and non-persons, and I largely agree with him that he has demonstrated those differences to be problematic, they are insufficient for netting him this debate. This is the topic Pro chose and, yeah, it doesn't give him a lot of wiggle room to argue this way. I can't just agree that the definition should be what he says it is. I need to see good reason why the definition of persons already includes animals. Bringing up issues like the abortion debate and whether the unborn have personhood might have been a start down that road, but all it does is show where there is disagreement over existing definitions of personhood, i.e. what wiggle room exists within the definition. It doesn't tell us that animals are within that span of wiggle room. Without doing that, Pro fails to meet his burden for the debate, so I end up voting Con.
I will say that I don't end up buying the two Kritiks from Con. I didn't really see this as a tautological trap, especially given that terms like person were up for debate. As for sensationalizing, I get the point being made, though I think it would have to be clearer that Pro is somehow degrading the human suffering the results from enslavement. I didn't see him doing that, though he was certainly applying it to a much larger subset of life on this planet.
RFD in comments.
There has already been an extremely misguided vote by Barney, so your statement is already proven true.
However, I always ultimately prefer to hate the game and not the player.
Really a toss-up... one misguided vote could change everything.
ARGUMENTS (1/3)
Pro's case is actually very excellently grown throughout the debate, after all if I don't come in with tabula rasa, Pro wins EVEN MORE so as he points out the personhood point. It was 100% identical and akin to how flimsy the 'person' definition is that led to whites dehumanising blacks and all the way from ancient egypt to now the way that one can easily say a group is not 'person' and therefore can be mistreated in any way one sees fit. It has absolutely no true link to being 'human' as even humans can be non-persons.
With tabula Rasa, the Round 2 rebuttal regarding personhood against Con's very dirty-play semantics, was phenomenal to watch.
Con comes in using an attack that Barney gave him the idea to in the comments section:
https://www.debateart.com/debates/3775/comment-links/46267
Not only does Con pretend this was 0% involved (which is possible, sure, if Con ignored the comments section) but to nitpick 'by another person' as a legitimate reason to disprove the entire resolution is just plain dirty play, already lost respect for Con from that moment as it was clear this was going to be semantic nitpicking from the get-go.
Con's primary points are as follows:
An animal is not a person, therefore it can't be enslaved even if it meets all the criteria of slavery because humans have a human-supermacist idea of personhood at the moment (similar to how whites did when blacks were slaves, I may note).
A disturbing notion that since farm animals may never have existed if not (as Pro would say 'enslaved') born into subjucation at the mercy or lack thereof, of the human farmers, that this justifies anything we do to the animal. This argument would be 100% akin to saying that if one makes one human slave breed with another, since that offspring wouldn't exist otherwise, one is entitled to treat them as they see fit.
I'll stop before addressing the Kritiks because I want to contrast this to Pro's core points.
Pro's core points are as follows:
Pro's definitional point is a zero-sum game after Round 1 as neither side has established if animals are able to be deemed 'person(s)' or not. This is key and crucial for Pro to address in Round 2 but at this point I already saw that rebuttal coming and as dirty play as it was, Con did at least initially negate it.
Pro's equivalence angle is far stronger and becomes even the way that Pro is able to rebuke the rebuttal to his/her/their definitional point.
"Proposition a: If we can clearly recognize the slavery of humans, we can recognize that treating humans the way we treat farm animals would be slavery.
Proposition b: If there is no ethically relevant distinction between humans and animals, the way we treat farm animals is slavery.
There are commonly many proposed distinctions, however, none of them are ethically relevant, and thus none of them showcase a justification for P2. "
The first distinction shown is that animals are less rational and intelligent (to me this is the same thing) (which is obviously unfair, we wouldn't support abusing the learning disabled or very young etc). In fact, this renders farming of animals as being akin to tyrannical eugenics.
The second distinction is species, which Pro essentially looks to future and prior comparisons to humans to explain is irrelevant. Something's species shouldn't determine if it can be treated like crap or not, unless Con can give a good reason for it.
Linked to the second angle, Pro draws the third distinction moot as unless we are psychopaths who would torture and/or enslave immigrants, we can't involve the citizenship and rights given to citizens as the reason to negate it being slavery.
Then comes sentience and consciousness (again it's the same point split into two, like intelligence and rationality but so be it). In short, Pro tells us that animals have feelings and consciousness too.
In Round 1, both sides are very iffy with their usage of sources. Pro's best source is using https://thehumaneleague.org/article/what-is-factory-farming but despite being .org and exploring factory farming, which established that rougly 99 percent of animals are factory farmed (the most neglectful kind there is, with regards to their wellbeing, as for instance Pro explains they are cramped in small spaces). Pro's sources for animals being conscious were only Google searches of the words...
Both sides seem to be using sources only for definitions, fallacies and such but where Pro is different lies in Round 2 usage, whereas Con sticks to this strategy of only using basic layout sources with wikipedia pages and dictionaries, as well as 'fallacy wikis' being his go-tos.
ARGUMENTS (2/3)
Pro's Round 2 states this:
"In the same way that various groups, Black people, Jewish people, etc. are and were persons despite historically not being recognized as such, animals are persons despite not being recognized as such because they have a moral right to determine themselves. "
Which on its own would have destroyed Con's definitional dirty-play kritik but I do dislike that Pro never backs sentience of animals up with science, it would have been so easy and so brutal because Pro could have won the sources points just off of that since all Con uses sources for is definitions and wiki-pages for fallacies and overviews.
That said, the 'humaneleague' link was solid and used in Round 2 as well as in Round 1. In Round 2, Pro uses the humaneleague link to back up the point of factory farming happening on a large scale (this time dropping the 99%) and being inhumane. Other good examples of sourcing backing up points are in the 'essential' angle.
Pro negates the meat trade being essential for us humans despite us being capable of omnivorous diet by pointing out how much more sustainable and how equally capable a vegan (let alone vegetarian) diet are.
Pro does this as follows:
1. https://philosophynow.org/issues/83/Hume_on_Is_and_Ought is used to explore is vs ought (.org, philosophy education link) and explaining that just because one is an omnivore doesn't mean one ought to necessarily do the meat-eating side of it.
2. uses .edu and .ac.uk (ac means academic, it's the UK version of educational URL) websites:
https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2019/02/07/a-skeptical-look-at-popular-diets-vegetarian-is-healthy-if-you-tread-carefully/
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-cheaper-and-healthier-oxford-study
These back up that vegan alternatives to meat farming are both healthier, more sustainable even cheaper than meat farming today, rendering the essentiality of meat farming moot.
Con's rebuttal to this is some oldschool mantra about that the so-called natural place in the ecosystem for herbivores is to be eaten by creatures including us. This is a brand new idea that what is 'natural is good' so to speak (I am not quoting Con there) that Pro hasn't had a chance to rebuke yet.
Pro's Round 2 also explores how Con's points, especially the 4% meat-eating point, are appeals to popularity. I wish Pro had turned it against Con proving that more and more people at an exponential rate are turning vegan and vegetarian these days but Pro's defense was more 'pure defense' and I can respect that. The fact is that marital rape was socially accepted before, with many keeping 'hush hush' about it, this is linked also to the idea that back when slavery of blacks was done, it would be very easy to say 'this percent of whites own slaves, don't be so silly as to call it slavery' if we were to follow Con's logic. I like the parallels drawn and consider Pro's Round 2 a total obliteration of Con's Round 1 at the FUNDAMENTAL level even.
ARGUMENTS (3/3)
Con's Round 2 was subpar but to understand why, we need to revisit Con's Round 1 and see the Kritiks and how Pro responded.
Con's first Kritik is basically conceding that farm animals are enslaved but that to use the word 'slavery' is sensationalising and makes us panic more about it. Con would rather we use words that make us more comfortable with the way the animals are treated such as 'animal husbandry'.
Con's second Kritik is hilarious, absolutely so. Con cries that Pro set up a trap but all Con did was try to semantically entrap Pro into a dirty-play tautology of his own.
The problem is that these Kritiks already fall flat from how they are set up. Con literally cried about Pro attempting a trap that backfired and that Con is abusing, what is that about? As for the initial Kritik, Pro negated this in Round 2 with:
"Kritik(s)
Con's points here are all immaterial if not irrelevant to my case, allowing them to be cleanly discarded. Firstly, I am describing animal agriculture as it is: the enslavement of persons. This is not loaded language but a proposition that I have argued for soundly.
Secondly, Con weirdly claims that my definition has a secret intended use (there is a mystery plot behind the scenes) seemingly contradicting everything he pointlessly argued for: a sole application to persons. Thus con's examples of objects that he believes are slaves do not influence my case, nor are they relevant to anything I have discussed. "
Which, while different to how I would have gone about it, is a solid enough rebuttal. It definitely seems strange that Con brought up examples of slavery as Pro is saying these are irrelevant to the case and I agree.
Con's Round 2 was basically substanceless.
Con even pointed out how we are actually unfairly mean to humans in some ways when we should respect them as animals... This was ABSURD for Con to have raised. Con said that we care more for a distressed sow than for a distressed human mother if both harm their respective offspring, especially fatally. This actually is supporting Pro!
It was raised to show that there are moral differences between animals and humans but Pro never once said that he/she/they agrees with such distinction and Con didn't even prove that there aren't asshole farmers who treat the sow without mercy in such instance and I'm certain there are plenty. As for the reason why they may try to comfirt the sow, it's probably primarily becasue the sow will be profitable if kept alive usually. I have no idea how this was fair to bring up in Round 2, considering that this forces Pro to bring up new points to rebuke the new point.
Then Con goes on a seemingly incoherent series of bullet-points-yet-rants regarding the fact that because he feels that animals have absolutely no value in moral equations or can't be morally concerned (which again, Pro could give so many examples of evil and good amongst animals, even sheep and chickens let alone cows and horses, of course dogs, dolphins and primates... though they aren't farmed in the western world, they are animals).
I have no idea what I am meant to take away from it, just because Con doesn't believe they matter morally has no impact on Pro's case!
I don't even understand what logical fallacies Con says Pro committed.
Pro literally sees animals as people and thinks it's human supremacist terminology limiting our comprehension of that, akin to how whites used to define blacks as non-persons and how many cultures, especially Nazi culture, did this to Jews in the past. Con never addresses this, he just kind of says it's an unfair exaggeration as he supports the human-supremacist semantics.
Pro won the debate already at the end of Con's Round 2, Round 3 was essentially reiteration, I see no way that Con won this debate as so much of Pro's case went untouched and ignored.
CONDUCT
If we analyse Con's Round 1, there is a point where Con literally rallies us to utilise site rules to punish Pro for making what Con sees as a truism debate. This so-called unfair truism trap was made with the description explicitly limiting the debate to two of the highest rated, most difficult-to-beat opponents, the only addition Pro should have done would be to make it rating-restricted with the minimum being Barney's rating.
In fact, what Con attempted to do in this debate was turn it into a truism that favoured Con solely based on nitpicking 'another person', so Con is twofold the villain here:
1) Con engaged in a debate that the rules say shouldn't take place (according to Con)
2) Con was the one who debated that his side was a truism and that this even was a backfiring truism debate.
Combine this with Round 3:
"CON asks VOTERS to further consider PRO's abuse of loaded language to disguise a tautological trap when considering votes for conduct"
Meaning Con wanted to have an edge in conduct solely based on the fact that Pro asked two of the highest rated debaters on the website to engage him in a debate that clearly needed a definition of 'slavery' in the description to reduce semantic nitpicking... Which somehow didn't negate the nitpicking at all. Con took the debate seeing an 'easy win' in Con's eyes as Con could turn it into a tautologous truism where the word 'person' became the problem.
This is grandstanding, hypocrisy and going for sleazy point grabs even though Pro had good conduct all debate.
In fact the tautology being presented by Con is literally that an animal is not a person because the human supremacist definition makes it so. This would even win the debate for Con if proven correct, so what the fuck is it Con is complaining about? I cannot fathom it, all I see is hypocrisy.
SOURCES
While there was some so-called backfiring, the sole backfiring that I consider valid and genuine onto Pro was that a couple of Pro's sources had mixed messages where it established that currently people have a human-supremacist understanding of personhood, however all of Pro's sources backed the raw reasoning that Novice_II presented to us to justify this being wrong and invalid.
As I said in my previous RFD, the wikipedia source in particular definitely didn't overall backfire and had a quote explicitly backing Pro's position.
Meanwhile, Con had literally only used sources for definitions and framing what a certain logical fallacy is. The only time Con used a good source was to try and turn Pro's source against Pro...
There were literally like 17 opportunities for BOTH debaters but especially Con, to use more sources and back what was said. Every single time Con could use a source to give a fact or research backing what is said, we are instead linked to dictinaries, wiki page overviews etc. The most severe example was trying to prove that the killing of farm animals is ESSENTIAL, a necessary evil of sorts, to negate that it's slavery (even though essential/necessary slavery wouldn't negate the resolution). To negate this, Pro linked to several sources to establish that it is well establish in philosophy the difference between 'species X is omnivorous' and 'species X OUGHT to be omnivorous' (I didn't quote Pro there, I am explaining the is-ought):
Not only did Con give 0 sources proving a piss-easy-to-prove fact like that humans are omnivores but for SOURCES, this was clearly a glaring issue.
Pro's sourcing includes:
1) https://thehumaneleague.org/article/what-is-factory-farming
A well-respected animal rights '.org' source used to prove that the scope/severity of factory farming is 99% in Round 1 and for Round 2 is reiterated to prove that the default position would be that 99% of animals on farms are essentially enslaved. The problem of Pro not elaborating on factory farming too much didn't matter as Con never seemed to push on the idea that the animals are treated humanely. In fact, Con has no source backing anything that is said at all other than 'logical fallacy' type stuff'.
2) https://www.txst.edu/philosophy/resources/fallacy-definitions/Is-ought.html
This combined with:
https://philosophynow.org/issues/83/Hume_on_Is_and_Ought
https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2019/02/07/a-skeptical-look-at-popular-diets-vegetarian-is-healthy-if-you-tread-carefully/
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-cheaper-and-healthier-oxford-study
All four of which are non-profit organisations (.org, generally implies it's more for educating than profit), educationally renowned (.edu), or academically renowned (.ac.uk) sources.
These helped Pro prove that not only is it fallacious to assume we ought to be omnivorous but a vegetarian and even vegan diet is more sustainable, cheap and healthy than the omnivorous one most of us are currently accustomed to.
Beyond this, neither Pro nor Con used a source very well in the debate considering that we can say Pro's at least softly 'backfired' because they explored the idea that some use person to mean exclusively human persons, though all Pro's sources that Con says 'backfired' implied that alternatives were viable.
Con solely used dictionaries and wiki (can be edited by anyone) or .com 'fallacy' type stuff.
There are so many examples across the debate for both sides but 100% of Con's side, where statements are made regarding animals, personhood etc and instead of using science or research of any sort to back the idea that humans are perhaps more sentient, more self-aware or more worthy of being 'persons' or 'people', Con solely sticks to the narrative that we (humans that are human-supremacist) defined it that way. I am aware that I am using the term human supermacist where Pro didn't but it seems very intuitive considering that Pro's hugest point in Round 1 was that the things that separate us from animals are all ultimately negligible morally, since we wouldn't want to mistreat humans that were less sentient, less intelligent, non-citizens and also even if another species turned up, that point alone wouldn't matter.
Con keeps battling solely on dictionary sources and logical fallacy sources and the source for non-sequitur didn't at all back what Con was saying Pro did.
In fact, the only debater to use sources actually dedicated to the topic and with solid research on their side was Pro. As I said, these included Humane League, Stanford University Scope Blog, and Univeristy of Oxford research into sustainability, cost-effectiveness and health benefits of a vegetarian world/diet (it's a larger scale than just the individual so I say 'world') instead of just Oxford dictionary etc.
I am not 100% convinced on Barney's giving sources and conduct, but I do agree argument could have really gone either way. Pro was compelling in a different way from Con.
I would like for more people to vote on this debate given that there is approaching two days left.
How can you not see the relevance of abortion to this debate btw? Are you actually that daft?
Vote #2 has been reported. Please review it if you get a chance.
https://www.debateart.com/debates/3775-the-majority-of-animal-agriculture-in-the-united-states-is-slavery-for-atoromagi?open_tab=votes&votes_page=1&vote_number=2
Alright, deleted per your request.
Delete my vote please. I have reconsidered something.
RFD 3
Pro continues digging into the personhood idea. He tells us about the abortion argument, and that the debate means there is unclear standard for personhood. He also repeats the idea of no distinction, and telling us that the humans can also do bad things. Such as oppressing racial groups, engineering holocaust, so on and so forth. So the Animal devouring baby being seen as somewhat usual by humans doesn't really cause a noticeable difference with level of agency.
Con continues adding on countless semantic arguments, but doesn't really make an argument compared to Abortion's standard for personhood. I think Con is just missing the point that the entire point is that the animals can/should be treated as persons, by pro's argument. That our standard should not be different because there is no true different of persons, thus giving animals "personhood" as moral agents.
If Con could just show the crucial source showing Animals are too instinctual to clearly think about their actions, he might have won the debate. But the end is very blurry. Con's best arguments showed that we treat animals kinder than we treat humans -- allowing them to eat their offspring, and attack us, while preventing us from attacking them or eating our own offspring. But Pro seems to be implying the animals' instincts might be mistakes too. Just as we kill each other and cause crimes, there doesn't seem to be an issue with their violent or immoral-by-human standards. I think Con forgot to make the case, that some things were allowable by animals big scale, while we mostly refute the conflicts -- or have a high cooperation ability. Our moral high ground, is what I believe Con was trying to show. Just one or two crucial sentences, and Con might have had it.
The winner is PRO.
RFD 2
Pro cleverly circumvents his own defeat by talking more closely about personhood rather than mere persons. He talks about that the farm animals are same as entities that have self determination. He also said that the humans were not considered persons, but should still be persons -- thus having ethical consequences when doing bad things to them. An excellent argument. He also points out that animal farming isn't essential, making it unnecessary, and also talks about con's popularity fallacy.
Con repeats on his semantic arguments, talking about "persuasive definition" which is supposed to be emotional instead. He points out that animals do not have the same autonomy to accord persons, and the Wikipedia definition of personhood clearly goes against pro's arguments. He also tells us that the pig mothers would devour the offspring, which is completely different from our own behavior. He also points out that the animals follow their instinct, so we do not fault them for harming us, or damaging their others. He also points out there's a clear difference from the human abstinence of meat and the animal slavery being way more vague.
The battle is quite close here, it's difficult for me to tell who is winning; Con clearly tells a lot of clear differences between humans and animals, especially the "agency" idea. The animal's culture and instinct -- at least, implied here, not stated outright -- show we can't judge them by human standards. A very well done argument.
RFD
So from the get go I already have an idea how this is gonna go down; Oromagi does not excel in Philosophy or Morals, rather the nitty gritty annoying small stuff like semantics, so I have a bad feeling about this especially when it comes down to framework. Alright, let's see what happens.
Pro starts strong with an easy show that agriculture enslaves the creatures for human consumption. He admits current society seems to treat animals and humans differently, however, states that there is no true ethnical difference. Intelligence is not it, due to disability, same for rationality. Further stating that species may not perhaps be the solution, since if humans evolved entirely differently, we would be able to enslave ourselves. Thus he concludes since there is no true difference; we must consider the animal enslavement virtually the same as Human enslavement.
Con of course, uses the easy way out of course with the semantics of "another person", thus stating that the animals cannot possibly be slaves. In addition, the 13th amendment tells us that the punishment should be delivered for slavery, but no officials are refuting the idea of eating meat. He strongly states the slavery only applies to people, further by saying even if the ownership of animal was non-permissible, it would not be the same as the "human slavery". Con also blabs on a bit about loaded language, further saying that the slavery definition was too broad. Otherwise, it would be a tautology. A curious argument... though it misses the point of Pro's ideas. Let's keep going.
Okay, I searched '99%' that is my bad but I personally don't think it sway the vote on sources (enough).
I do very much appreciate this vote.
I just wanted to note for clarity that the 99% statistic, it is stated in quote that "roughly 99 percent of animals in the US are raised on factory farms" (https://thehumaneleague.org/article/what-is-factory-farming) under the subheading "Factory farming facts and statistics" in the source.
(RFD Part 1/4)
Pro's case is actually very excellently grown throughout the debate, after all if I don't come in with tabula rasa, Pro wins EVEN MORE so as he points out the personhood point. It was 100% identical and akin to how flimsy the 'person' definition is that led to whites dehumanising blacks and all the way from ancient egypt to now the way that one can easily say a group is not 'person' and therefore can be mistreated in any way one sees fit. It has absolutely no true link to being 'human' as even humans can be non-persons.
With tabula Rasa, the Round 2 rebuttal regarding personhood against Con's very dirty-play semantics, was phenomenal to watch.
Con comes in using an attack that Barney gave him the idea to in the comments section:
https://www.debateart.com/debates/3775/comment-links/46267
Not only does Con pretend this was 0% involved (which is possible, sure, if Con ignored the comments section) but to nitpick 'by another person' as a legitimate reason to disprove the entire resolution is just plain dirty play, already lost respect for Con from that moment as it was clear this was going to be semantic nitpicking from the get-go.
Con's primary points are as follows:
An animal is not a person, therefore it can't be enslaved even if it meets all the criteria of slavery because humans have a human-supermacist idea of personhood at the moment (similar to how whites did when blacks were slaves, I may note).
A disturbing notion that since farm animals may never have existed if not (as Pro would say 'enslaved') born into subjucation at the mercy or lack thereof, of the human farmers, that this justifies anything we do to the animal. This argument would be 100% akin to saying that if one makes one human slave breed with another, since that offspring wouldn't exist otherwise, one is entitled to treat them as they see fit.
I'll stop before addressing the Kritiks because I want to contrast this to Pro's core points.
Pro's core points are as follows:
Pro's definitional point is a zero-sum game after Round 1 as neither side has established if animals are able to be deemed 'person(s)' or not. This is key and crucial for Pro to address in Round 2 but at this point I already saw that rebuttal coming and as dirty play as it was, Con did at least initially negate it.
Pro's equivalence angle is far stronger and becomes even the way that Pro is able to rebuke the rebuttal to his/her/their definitional point.
"Proposition a: If we can clearly recognize the slavery of humans, we can recognize that treating humans the way we treat farm animals would be slavery.
Proposition b: If there is no ethically relevant distinction between humans and animals, the way we treat farm animals is slavery.
There are commonly many proposed distinctions, however, none of them are ethically relevant, and thus none of them showcase a justification for P2. "
The first distinction shown is that animals are less rational and intelligent (to me this is the same thing) (which is obviously unfair, we wouldn't support abusing the learning disabled or very young etc). In fact, this renders farming of animals as being akin to tyrannical eugenics.
The second distinction is species, which Pro essentially looks to future and prior comparisons to humans to explain is irrelevant. Something's species shouldn't determine if it can be treated like crap or not, unless Con can give a good reason for it.
Linked to the second angle, Pro draws the third distinction moot as unless we are psychopaths who would torture and/or enslave immigrants, we can't involve the citizenship and rights given to citizens as the reason to negate it being slavery.
Then comes sentience and consciousness (again it's the same point split into two, like intelligence and rationality but so be it). In short, Pro tells us that animals have feelings and consciousness too.
In Round 1, both sides are very iffy with their usage of sources. Pro's best source is using https://thehumaneleague.org/article/what-is-factory-farming but despite being .org and exploring factory farming, I didn't see anywhere that it said 99%, meaning Pro either just lied to us or had read that elsewhere and mistaken the statistic for being on the source he hyperlinked to back the statement up with. Pro's sources for animals being conscious were only Google searches of the words...
Both sides seem to be using sources only for definitions, fallacies and such but where Pro is different lies in Round 2 usage, whereas Con sticks to this strategy of only using basic layout sources with wikipedia pages and dictionaries, as well as 'fallacy wikis' being his go-tos.
(RFD part 2/4)
Pro's Round 2 states this:
"In the same way that various groups, Black people, Jewish people, etc. are and were persons despite historically not being recognized as such, animals are persons despite not being recognized as such because they have a moral right to determine themselves. "
Which on its own would have destroyed Con's definitional dirty-play kritik but I do dislike that Pro never backs sentience of animals up with science, it would have been so easy and so brutal because Pro could have won the sources points just off of that since all Con uses sources for is definitions and wiki-pages for fallacies and overviews.
That said, the 'humaneleague' link was solid and used far better in Round 2 than Round 1. In Round 2, Pro uses the humaneleague link to back up the point of factory farming happening on a large scale (this time dropping the 99%) and being inhumane. Other good examples of sourcing backing up points are in the 'essential' angle.
Pro negates the meat trade being essential for us humans despite us being capable of omnivorous diet by pointing out how much more sustainable and how equally capable a vegan (let alone vegetarian) diet are.
Pro does this as follows:
1. https://philosophynow.org/issues/83/Hume_on_Is_and_Ought is used to explore is vs ought (.org, philosophy education link) and explaining that just because one is an omnivore doesn't mean one ought to necessarily do the meat-eating side of it.
2. uses .edu and .ac.uk (ac means academic, it's the UK version of educational URL) websites:
https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2019/02/07/a-skeptical-look-at-popular-diets-vegetarian-is-healthy-if-you-tread-carefully/
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-11-sustainable-eating-cheaper-and-healthier-oxford-study
These back up that vegan alternatives to meat farming are both healthier, more sustainable even cheaper than meat farming today, rendering the essentiality of meat farming moot.
Con's rebuttal to this is some oldschool mantra about that the so-called natural place in the ecosystem for herbivores is to be eaten by creatures including us. This is a brand new idea that what is 'natural is good' so to speak (I am not quoting Con there) that Pro hasn't had a chance to rebuke yet.
Pro's Round 2 also explores how Con's points, especially the 4% meat-eating point, are appeals to popularity. I wish Pro had turned it against Con proving that more and more people at an exponential rate are turning vegan and vegetarian these days but Pro's defense was more 'pure defense' and I can respect that. The fact is that marital rape was socially accepted before, with many keeping 'hush hush' about it, this is linked also to the idea that back when slavery of blacks was done, it would be very easy to say 'this percent of whites own slaves, don't be so silly as to call it slavery' if we were to follow Con's logic. I like the parallels drawn and consider Pro's Round 2 a total obliteration of Con's Round 1 at the FUNDAMENTAL level even.
(RFD part 3/4)
Con's Round 2 was subpar but to understand why, we need to revisit Con's Round 1 and see the Kritiks and how Pro responded.
Con's first Kritik is basically conceding that farm animals are enslaved but that to use the word 'slavery' is sensationalising and makes us panic more about it. Con would rather we use words that make us more comfortable with the way the animals are treated such as 'animal husbandry'.
Con's second Kritik is hilarious, absolutely so. Con cries that Pro set up a trap but all Con did was try to semantically entrap Pro into a dirty-play tautology of his own. Fortunately for Con, I don't see semantic trickery as conduct-worthy punishment so my vote stays neutral there, to me that's just part of debating, no matter how dishonorable. It is mercilessness to the opponent and both of these debaters are known for that, so really why should we be punishing that for conduct here? It's not like an amazing debater vs a noob where the noob is being toyed with, Novice and Oromagi both know about semantics and being a word-twisting trickster, it's just that in this debate Oromagi was the trickster and Novice ventured to be the more open and honest one. Perhaps that was necessitated by the fact that Con's side does inherently require hypocrisy to be pulled off.
The problem is that these Kritiks already fall flat from how they are set up. Con literally cried about Pro attempting a trap that backfired and that Con is abusing, what is that about? As for the initial Kritik, Pro negated this in Round 2 with:
"Kritik(s)
Con's points here are all immaterial if not irrelevant to my case, allowing them to be cleanly discarded. Firstly, I am describing animal agriculture as it is: the enslavement of persons. This is not loaded language but a proposition that I have argued for soundly.
Secondly, Con weirdly claims that my definition has a secret intended use (there is a mystery plot behind the scenes) seemingly contradicting everything he pointlessly argued for: a sole application to persons. Thus con's examples of objects that he believes are slaves do not influence my case, nor are they relevant to anything I have discussed. "
Which, while different to how I would have gone about it, is a solid enough rebuttal. It definitely seems strange that Con brought up examples of slavery as Pro is saying these are irrelevant to the case and I agree.
Con's Round 2 was basically substanceless.
Con even pointed out how we are actually unfairly mean to humans in some ways when we should respect them as animals... This was ABSURD for Con to have raised. Con said that we care more for a distressed sow than for a distressed human mother if both harm their respective offspring, especially fatally. This actually is supporting Pro!
It was raised to show that there are moral differences between animals and humans but Pro never once said that he/she/they agrees with such distinction and Con didn't even prove that there aren't asshole farmers who treat the sow without mercy in such instance and I'm certain there are plenty. As for the reason why they may try to comfirt the sow, it's probably primarily becasue the sow will be profitable if kept alive usually. I have no idea how this was fair to bring up in Round 2, considering that this forces Pro to bring up new points to rebuke the new point.
Then Con goes on a seemingly incoherent series of bullet-points-yet-rants regarding the fact that because he feels that animals have absolutely no value in moral equations or can't be morally concerned (which again, Pro could give so many examples of evil and good amongst animals, even sheep and chickens let alone cows and horses, of course dogs, dolphins and primates... though they aren't farmed in the western world, they are animals).
I have no idea what I am meant to take away from it, just because Con doesn't believe they matter morally has no impact on Pro's case!
I don't even understand what logical fallacies Con says Pro committed.
Pro literally sees animals as people and thinks it's human supremacist terminology limiting our comprehension of that, akin to how whites used to define blacks as non-persons and how many cultures, especially Nazi culture, did this to Jews in the past. Con never addresses this, he just kind of says it's an unfair exaggeration as he supports the human-supremacist semantics.
(RFD part 4/4)
Con solely uses dictionaries, and wiki pages even used a wiki page for logical fallacies and the fallacy was a 'non-sequitur' that seemed to be irrelevant to the debate.
Con didn't even use science to prove animals lack sentience or use legal theory sources regarding why only humans are to be considered persons (there's plenty of abortion type academia articles to transcribe here for BOTH SIDES to use, surely).
Con's sources were continually simply definitions whereas Pro used humaneleague (wrongly in Round 1, correctly in Round 2) and educational/academic links to negate the entire 'popularity' angle of meat eating.
Con says that Pro's source backfires on him. The edu source does seem to have a quote that negates Pro's position, but Pro's third source, I went and read it, completely supports Pro's point and even specifically has a quote like:
"What is crucial about agents is that things matter to them. We thus cannot simply identify agents by a performance criterion, nor assimilate animals to machines... [likewise] there are matters of significance for human beings which are peculiarly human, and have no analogue with animals."
— Charles Taylor, "The Concept of a Person"
which negate the idea that just because some things are uniquely or peculiarly human doesn't allow us to identify agents capable of and experiencing personhood based on that.
Con did use an educational link solely to quote a person saying this:
"Of course, when it comes to animals there are serious moral constraints on how we may treat them. But we do not, in fact, give animals the same kind of autonomy that we accord persons"
Now, that does seem to be backfiring.
That renders the sourcing moot for both sides quite honestly. Con doesn't use any source brilliantly, since Con's backfiring only proved that we use 'person' in a way that doesn't necessarily apply to animals, it keeps failing to prove that we SHOULD be using it that way, whereas Pro gives many reasons why.
Therefore, I believe Pro won the debate.
Round 3 from both sides was just reiteration overall.
Votes are indeed needed here.
3 days left no votes
CON's R3 SOURCES:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/slavery
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/slavery?q=slavery
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slavery
https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/person
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity
https://info.debateart.com/terms-of-service/voting-policy
First, I saw that you (Bones) stated that he would be voting, so thanks for that. I just wanted to mention that there is only a week's time for voting, not very long. I know Ehyeh tends to vote more quickly on average.
CON's ROUND2 SOURCES:
https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/person
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/person
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/person?q=person
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persuasive_definition
https://mind.ilstu.edu/curriculum/what_is_a_person/what_is_a_person.html
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Philosophy/What_is_a_Person
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personhood
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savaging
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cannibal-mom-911-call-i-didnt-mean-to-do-it-he-told-me-to/
https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_definition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_fallacy
https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/ethics
https://biblehub.com/matthew/7-12.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiii
Will be voting.
CON's ROUND1 SOURCES:
https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/another
https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/person
https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/slave
https://www.debateart.com/debates/something%20that%20is%20owned%20by%20a%20person,%20business,%20etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/slavery
https://trulyexperiences.com/blog/veganism-statistics-usa/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_fallacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_fallacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbivore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnivore
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proslavery#American_pro-slavery_movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_husbandry
https://www.britannica.com/topic/tautology
https://info.debateart.com/terms-of-service/voting-policy
https://info.debateart.com/terms-of-service/voting-policy
Should of set the argument time to two hours. get him in his sleep.
Novice uses google, we're going to have to get a conduct point deduction for that (issa joke).
"by another person"
Oro could take this one down within 500 characters.