Take the con side and I'll win if we define systemic racism and blacks having a consistent disadvantage in life in the western world.
What this debate is set up to do is catch someone in a trap where they need to prove that the most severe issue causing police to treat non-whites harsher than whites in the US is active, conscious and wilful racism on their part.
All Con has to do is say it's accidental, unconscious and based on the fact that poor ghetto people are likely to be violent.
Con can push all examples of the same income bracket being treated differently to anomalies etc unless Pro can stack so many and that will drown them in a 10k-only debate where Con get full flexibility.
I am blocked and can't accept it but I'd lose anyway.
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.
"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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
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.
You have 0 respect for descriptions, be clear which physicalist theory you are backing:
Field theory, string theory, etc
is there a god allowed in your reality, to explain how despite all the chaos a completely unfathomable degree of harmony and constant 'laws' of physics, chemistry and biology are present in this reality?
I do not debate in bad faith, I make crystal clear what my aims are.
Bad faith is to pretend you are there for anything other than winning and be there only to win. You cannot be openly bad faith, it doesn't work.
I have told you multiple times that I will debate in complete good faith if you remove the win vs loss aspect of it. Make it unrated and I'll explore but do I want to waste my time and effort on 30k chars per Round under time pressure on a debate so rigged against me resolution-wise? No, not really especially when I know you will play as dirty as possible to win and live in denial that you do so.
You want a topic where you can bring multiple models of reality all wagered against simulation at once and you can fall back on them being equally probable while I need to prove simulation theory more probably than ALL at once.
That is inherently unfair and always going to favour you due to the structure of debating and limitations, that is if anyone bothers to vote on such a long and drawn out science+philosophy nerd debate.
no, that's a huge debate and voters don't vote on that. I have had enough ties to know what I'm talking about and I already know you are a debater who has zero respect to be loyal to descriptions or agreed upon semantics, so I want a resolution/topic that's very specific and allows me to work around your trickery.
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.
"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:
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.
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.
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.
Occam's Razor is what keeps a hillbilly as a poor farmer. If you always approach things entirely minimalistically, you never innovate or pursue deeper, hidden truths.
I don't remember supporting occam's razor but I will happily play the role of atheist irl and back that as it's a very politically-correct way to say 'I think most religions are full of shit' without getting tangled into discussions that can be used against you.
One thing is public tact, the other is private real thoughts. Occam's Razor is a scapegoat used to gaslight people who think more complex, the solution is only the 'simplest' solution when it comes to mathematics. In science and more complex real-world matters, optimal/correct solutions are only the simplest solution a minority of times.
No, I would want a clearer resolution that won't end up with you making me need to prove the code and computation behind the simulation are 'real' and just sit behind the 'he hasn't proven where the code is'.
I want the debate to be that you are a pure physicalist and I am arguing fundamentally a simulation alternative to typical dualism.
I proved many things in this debate, actual professors of theology would see how I actually pushed Christianity against itself here as it is indeed a deeply contradictory religion primarily due to the PSA event.
Find some and prove me wrong. It is 100% an intellect issue and I am done discussing it.
If I prove to you I argued things here, it only hinders me getting punished for weak debating. I need to study some things after I finish my current debates and take a hiatus. I want to see what I am doing wrong in wording so that certain types of brain can genuinely not see what I am 100% doing.
I also will avoid any debate that bans rebuttals in Round 1 so I can attack framework from the get-go as that seems to be something I keep getting hurt by when Pro sides outrule it.
I need to read much more into the debates had and see how voters interpret wording, maybe I will finally understand how and why voters believe Oromagi won debates that I think he lost and why they don't mind his bulletpoint zero eloquence style. After my analysing is complete, I will come out with a completely new debate style and structure things in a way that I know are optimal.
I currently am hampered by having a brain that works too fast to conclusions, I am in essense showing math sums where I make it too smooth and not step-by-step enough it seems.
I need to put less characters into eloquence and elaboration and dedicate them to rigid 'attack-defense' stuff. I am not sure how to do this as I do believe I'm doing that already but clearly I have got a lot wrong about people here.
Not really, you're literally saying I didn't do that I so utterly blatantly did ACCORDING TO THE OTHER PAIR OF VOTERS.
There is definitely a dysfunction in one pair of voters out of the 4 who have voted so far as they have so utterly opposite views of what I did in this debate, it's actually unbelievable.
I also need to grasp how certain voters' brains work as at the moment there is a serious issue with a regular voter that you think like which I can't grasp. He's regularly voted against me as of late over situations where he says I didn't say or do what I said or did, this is concerning for me.
I cannot talk further without insulting the intellect of you and Ehyeh.
It is clear to me I have a flaw in presenting things in a way others if a certain level of intelligence and comprehension can understand, it's caused me issues elsewhere. I tend to only be able to be able to communicated effectively with highly intelligent people or very patient and medium intelligent people (the patience helps, lets me explain myself).
I am not saying it's hierarchical, you could be intelligent in other ways but in terms of reasoning, I see a clear dysfunction.
I proved it not only untenable but impossible. It is ethically impossible, ethically unviable entirely so within the Christian ethical framework, even if they think otherwise and THAT was the framework I laid out.
Their own religion completely rules out the concept of being punished for another's sin or atoned for by another's repentance and sacrifice.
I proved so much about it to be utterly absurd and implausible if not impossible. The voters who voted for me saw it, clear as day.
Take the con side and I'll win if we define systemic racism and blacks having a consistent disadvantage in life in the western world.
What this debate is set up to do is catch someone in a trap where they need to prove that the most severe issue causing police to treat non-whites harsher than whites in the US is active, conscious and wilful racism on their part.
All Con has to do is say it's accidental, unconscious and based on the fact that poor ghetto people are likely to be violent.
Con can push all examples of the same income bracket being treated differently to anomalies etc unless Pro can stack so many and that will drown them in a 10k-only debate where Con get full flexibility.
I am blocked and can't accept it but I'd lose anyway.
It is easy to type until it is someone close to you that is victimised.
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.
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.
How can you not see the relevance of abortion to this debate btw? Are you actually that daft?
The debate is complete.
Delete my vote please. I have reconsidered something.
You have 0 respect for descriptions, be clear which physicalist theory you are backing:
Field theory, string theory, etc
is there a god allowed in your reality, to explain how despite all the chaos a completely unfathomable degree of harmony and constant 'laws' of physics, chemistry and biology are present in this reality?
I do not debate in bad faith, I make crystal clear what my aims are.
Bad faith is to pretend you are there for anything other than winning and be there only to win. You cannot be openly bad faith, it doesn't work.
I have told you multiple times that I will debate in complete good faith if you remove the win vs loss aspect of it. Make it unrated and I'll explore but do I want to waste my time and effort on 30k chars per Round under time pressure on a debate so rigged against me resolution-wise? No, not really especially when I know you will play as dirty as possible to win and live in denial that you do so.
I will happily debate you.
You want a topic where you can bring multiple models of reality all wagered against simulation at once and you can fall back on them being equally probable while I need to prove simulation theory more probably than ALL at once.
That is inherently unfair and always going to favour you due to the structure of debating and limitations, that is if anyone bothers to vote on such a long and drawn out science+philosophy nerd debate.
Easy FF vote, ty.
Okay, I searched '99%' that is my bad but I personally don't think it sway the vote on sources (enough).
no, that's a huge debate and voters don't vote on that. I have had enough ties to know what I'm talking about and I already know you are a debater who has zero respect to be loyal to descriptions or agreed upon semantics, so I want a resolution/topic that's very specific and allows me to work around your trickery.
that's a huge theory with a lot to be debated, which part of it is it you want to debate?
(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.
You can believe what you want, first learn the difference between 'have' and 'of' before lecturing me, ty.
please vote on the debate
Message received, time to play your game.
FF please vote
I do not care.
If you want to be convinced, make it a forum topic, if you want to be a sophist for the win, expect the same from me.
I do not debate honestly in the arena unless honesty benefits my win condition.
Occam's Razor is what keeps a hillbilly as a poor farmer. If you always approach things entirely minimalistically, you never innovate or pursue deeper, hidden truths.
I don't remember supporting occam's razor but I will happily play the role of atheist irl and back that as it's a very politically-correct way to say 'I think most religions are full of shit' without getting tangled into discussions that can be used against you.
One thing is public tact, the other is private real thoughts. Occam's Razor is a scapegoat used to gaslight people who think more complex, the solution is only the 'simplest' solution when it comes to mathematics. In science and more complex real-world matters, optimal/correct solutions are only the simplest solution a minority of times.
It is not, it is far more difficult to justify consciousness in a physicalist's reality.
No, I would want a clearer resolution that won't end up with you making me need to prove the code and computation behind the simulation are 'real' and just sit behind the 'he hasn't proven where the code is'.
I want the debate to be that you are a pure physicalist and I am arguing fundamentally a simulation alternative to typical dualism.
Don't set 30k char Rounds if you aren't ready for volume-heavy attacks.
Please do vote.
I hope you enjoy reading the debate.
Fairly simple vote if either of you wish to.
Change the word 'do' to 'should' and add 'all' (I know it's in your description) to the title and I will accept.
simple vote, please
Mall, you are genuinely funny to engage with at times.
what do you want me to do here? Want to pick a topic in the comments or what?
Easy and somewhat entertaining vote if you care to. :)
Welcome to my new style.
Novice, you are asking for a war.
The reason Undefeatable gives is based on his own argument for the resolution, not Mall's.
Please remove it and make him rejustify based solely on arguments.
kinky
I proved many things in this debate, actual professors of theology would see how I actually pushed Christianity against itself here as it is indeed a deeply contradictory religion primarily due to the PSA event.
Find some and prove me wrong. It is 100% an intellect issue and I am done discussing it.
If I prove to you I argued things here, it only hinders me getting punished for weak debating. I need to study some things after I finish my current debates and take a hiatus. I want to see what I am doing wrong in wording so that certain types of brain can genuinely not see what I am 100% doing.
I also will avoid any debate that bans rebuttals in Round 1 so I can attack framework from the get-go as that seems to be something I keep getting hurt by when Pro sides outrule it.
I need to read much more into the debates had and see how voters interpret wording, maybe I will finally understand how and why voters believe Oromagi won debates that I think he lost and why they don't mind his bulletpoint zero eloquence style. After my analysing is complete, I will come out with a completely new debate style and structure things in a way that I know are optimal.
I currently am hampered by having a brain that works too fast to conclusions, I am in essense showing math sums where I make it too smooth and not step-by-step enough it seems.
I need to put less characters into eloquence and elaboration and dedicate them to rigid 'attack-defense' stuff. I am not sure how to do this as I do believe I'm doing that already but clearly I have got a lot wrong about people here.
After I am done you will see the difference.
Not really, you're literally saying I didn't do that I so utterly blatantly did ACCORDING TO THE OTHER PAIR OF VOTERS.
There is definitely a dysfunction in one pair of voters out of the 4 who have voted so far as they have so utterly opposite views of what I did in this debate, it's actually unbelievable.
That is essentially what I said...
I have a lot to lose and little to gain.
I also need to grasp how certain voters' brains work as at the moment there is a serious issue with a regular voter that you think like which I can't grasp. He's regularly voted against me as of late over situations where he says I didn't say or do what I said or did, this is concerning for me.
Novice loves to vote against me anyway, it's just a question of justifying it.
It does net me the debate.
I cannot talk further without insulting the intellect of you and Ehyeh.
It is clear to me I have a flaw in presenting things in a way others if a certain level of intelligence and comprehension can understand, it's caused me issues elsewhere. I tend to only be able to be able to communicated effectively with highly intelligent people or very patient and medium intelligent people (the patience helps, lets me explain myself).
I am not saying it's hierarchical, you could be intelligent in other ways but in terms of reasoning, I see a clear dysfunction.
I proved it not only untenable but impossible. It is ethically impossible, ethically unviable entirely so within the Christian ethical framework, even if they think otherwise and THAT was the framework I laid out.
Their own religion completely rules out the concept of being punished for another's sin or atoned for by another's repentance and sacrifice.
I proved so much about it to be utterly absurd and implausible if not impossible. The voters who voted for me saw it, clear as day.
As a Christian, I would be curious what you'd vote here. I am aware you are biased against me but your vote would be appreciated regardless.