Animal Soldiers Affirmative

J(E)DI 2010 1
Lab CaCa Animal Soldiers Affirmative
Index
Index............................................................................................................................................... 1
1AC................................................................................................................................................. 3
Case 2AC's
Inherency Ext. ........................................................................................................................ 17
Harms Ext............................................................................................................................... 18
Solvency 2AC's
A2: Plan Costs To Much ....................................................................................................... 20
A2: No Alternatives For Demining....................................................................................... 21
A2: Military Dogs Have Nowhere To Go............................................................................. 22
Ethics 2AC's
A2: Non-Speciest Util Is Possible.......................................................................................... 23
A2: Consequentialism Inevitable.......................................................................................... 24
A2: DA Proves The Plan Unethical ...................................................................................... 26
A2: Dirty Hands ..................................................................................................................... 28
A2: Predictions Good............................................................................................................. 29
2AC/1AR Morality Cards ..................................................................................................... 33
Counterplan 2AC's
A2: Counterplan Solves Ethics ............................................................................................. 37
A2: Conditional/Consultation Counterplans....................................................................... 40
A2: Animal Welfare/Suffering Counterplans ..................................................................... 41
A2: Word PICs....................................................................................................................... 43
J(E)DI 2010 2
Index
Kritik 2AC's / Animal Rights Advantage Ext.

Perm - Solvency...................................................................................................................... 44
A2: Alternative Solves The Case .......................................................................................... 48
A2: Alt Solves The Case ........................................................................................................ 51
A2: Policymaking/Using The State Bad............................................................................... 52
A2: Biopower.......................................................................................................................... 54
A2: Psychoanalysis................................................................................................................. 55
A2: Must Break Down The Subject ..................................................................................... 56
A2: Ethics Bad........................................................................................................................ 57
A2: Topicality
Topicality Cards..................................................................................................................... 60
J(E)DI 2010 3
1AC
Observation 1: Inherency
The U.S. military is exploiting thousands of animals a year forcing them to work in some of
the most dangerous combat situations seen by the military.
Plourde 2004, (Shawn is a writer and animal rights activist, ‘What Did You Do in the War Fido?’,
http://www.thenausea.com/elements/special%20topics/crimesagainstanimals/animals%20in%20warfare/anim
als%20in%20warfare.html)
The list of animals placed in harm’s way during combat is depressingly long. Besides the many beasts of burden
deployed during many conflicts, there has also been an incredible variety of combat tasks where animals were—and
are—being put to use in ways that may result in their death. For example, dogs were utilized in Vietnam by American
troops to clear Vietcong tunnels and caves and to sniff out land mines and booby-traps. At any given time there were 4,000 dogs
employed in Vietnam for military purposes. All but 200 were left to the Vietcong, many of whom were tortured: The Vietcong intensely
disliked U.S. scout dogs—so much so that they often placed bounties on the dogs’ heads. It is estimated that these scout dogs probably
saved 10,000 servicemen’s lives as a result of their work in Vietnam.[4] Dogs have also been used in just about every war as
sentries, guarding forts, military bases and individual soldiers. In WWI, dogs were used in and around no-man’s land to deliver
messages and supplies. They were also appropriated to lay copper telephone wire around no-man's land for telephone
service, with the wire placed on rolls strapped on their backs. Many were of course shot at. Their history of service received
very little gratitude and recognition. To this day, dogs in the U.S. military do not retire. Military working dogs are considered
equipment, no different from a shell casing or a rifle. Unlike aircraft and ships, dogs are not sold as surplus,
nor are they retired. They are simply terminated as humanely as possible.[5] Cats were used in the trenches of WWI to
help eradicate the hordes of rats that were plaguing the troops, with thousands of them succumbing to mustard gas and daily shellfire.
One can argue that thousands of cats and dogs are euthanised in this country alone each year. However, animals that are euthanised meet
their death painlessly, unlike most animals involved in wars. Dolphins, sea lions—even whales—have been and still are
used to spot sea mines by the many navies around the world. In the past, the U.S and Soviet military have employed
dolphins to retrieve sea mines. Currently, there are 75 dolphins and 20 sea lions that have been trained and employed exclusively to spot
sea mines in the Persian Gulf. Once the mines have been detected, the animals leave a buoyant tag that is visible to the navy personnel
on ship.[6] Elephants have been employed in battle in great numbers in Africa, Asia and Europe. Their role was more or less
synonymous to that of a modern day tank. Elephants would plow through towards the enemy, causing mayhem in their ranks. Elephants
were quite difficult to disable due to their size and thick skin, which could be afflicted with several wounds and still maintain battle
readiness. Pigeons have been used throughout the history of warfare. Information such as the conquest of Gaul by Caesar was relayed to
Rome by pigeons, as was the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. The pigeon’s finest hour, however, came during the siege of Paris in 1870.
With the aid of photography, messages were copied on collodian, a primitive form of microfilm, thus allowing more messages to be
carried per flight by the carrier pigeons. During the four months of the siege, pigeons brought 150,000 official letters and a million
private letters into Paris[7]. As expected, a great many of these pigeons were shot at by the Prussian and pro-Prussian French Army
surrounding Paris. Pigeons as well as Parakeets have been used as warning devices against chemical and biological weapons in several
20th century wars. Pigeons and parakeets are currently being utilized by British troops in the Persian Gulf to warn against possible nerve
and chemical agents that might be employed by anti-coalition forces.[8] Monkeys have served in different conflicts in different ways. In
the current war in Iraq, Morocco has offered the U.S. military 2000 specially trained monkeys whose sole purpose is to detonate land
mines.[9] Whether the U.S. military accepted the offer is unclear. Animals operating in harm’s way in combat mostly have
one thing in common: although some of them were chosen because of abilities superior to humans, most
were deployed because the duties that they carried out were considered too dangerous for human combatants.
Thus the job fell to them, their lives amounting to less than that of humans.
J(E)DI 2010 4
1AC
Military exploitation of animals is grounded in widely held beliefs that animals are
property and only exist as disposable tools of war.
Plourde 2004, (Shawn is a writer and animal rights activist, ‘What Did You Do in the War Fido?’,
http://www.thenausea.com/elements/special%20topics/crimesagainstanimals/animals%20in%20warfare/anim
als%20in%20warfare.html)
The single greatest factor that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom is our unsurpassed intellect. Our intellect has
afforded us the ability to display an incredible degree of ingenuity, which has been used for both malevolent as well as benevolent
purposes. We have thought up such inventive ways to reach sublime heights of love and beauty, and thought up such ingenious ways to
hate and destroy ourselves, other animals and the environment. This analysis will consider how we, as a species, have, with
maniacal ingenuity, utilized animals in conflict, why this abuse of animals is detrimental to humanity, and, in
the end, what it says about human nature. A variety of solutions to rectify this horrendous phenomenon will
also be advanced. If we can see the humanity in other species, then maybe—just maybe—we might be able
to see the common humanity in our fellow human beings. This perspective could itself frame a path that leads
away from war and its destructive consequences. One may ask, “Why choose to examine the history of animals
in warfare at all?” Millions of men and women are killed, raped, maimed or mutilated through warfare every
year, not to mention the emotional and psychological damage. There is certainly no shortage of pain on the
human side of conflict and war. Many might say, “Really, what is the life of an animal compared to that of a
human? Can one really compare the suffering of an animal to that of a human?” First of all, let me clarify that I am
not an animal rights activist. I do not belong to any animal rights organizations; I do not break into research labs in the middle of the
night to liberate research animals from enslavement nor do I engage in any other activity that might label me as an animal rights activist.
That acknowledged, I still believe that there is something to be said against using animals in warfare. With the exception of
children, all humans with sound minds have a say as to whether or not they join a conflict—even if they are
conscripted against their will. It is true that by resisting conscription, they may risk jail, torture—even death.
In the end, however, it is still their choice. Animals do not choose to join a conflict. They do not have a voice
in the matter. They do not understand the basic geopolitical reasons why humans fight, nor can they
differentiate between humans of different ideological persuasions; yet they suffer the same destructive fate
that many human combatants suffer. Animals are seen – by many combatants -- simply as tools to wage war
on their enemies; they are not seen as living, breathing creatures with a mind who can feel pain.[1]When
human beings ignore this, it can lead to grave consequences. To see a living being simply as a tool is to dehumanize that
living creature. To dehumanize an animal is, in a sense, to dehumanize all human life. According to the Massachusetts Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, people who abuse their pets are five times as likely to commit a violent act against another person.
This research has been corroborated by many other organizations, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Child Study
Center at New York University. Immanuel Kant seems to have said it best: “He who is cruel to animals becomes hard in his dealings
with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.”
J(E)DI 2010 5
1AC
Animal soldiers are not a relic of the past. Troop surges in Afghanistan and de-mining
missions in Kuwait, Iraq, and South Korea have lead to a substantial increase in the
presence of military dogs.
LA Times 2010, (‘Along with troop surge in Afghanistan, a dog surge. Along with dog surge, a dog food dilemma’, January 25 th
)
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2010/01/along-with-troop-surge-in-afghanistan-a-dog-surge-along-with-dog-surge-a-dogfood-dilemma.html
KANDAHAR AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — The U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan has led to a dog surge -- and unexpected
problems in procuring high-quality dog food with enough protein and nutrients for hundreds of canines used to find explosives and
perform other energy-intensive missions. Along with about 37,000 U.S. and NATO troops, the number of military working
dogs being brought into the country to search for mines, explosives and to accompany soldiers on patrol is
increasing substantially, according to Nick Guidas, the American K-9 project manager for Afghanistan. Guidas, a civilian
contractor who primarily oversees dog operations in southern Afghanistan, said he has 50 dogs on operational teams and about 20 more
awaiting missions. He expects that number to go up to 219 by July. "It may go as high as 315 dogs in Afghanistan," he said Saturday at a
crowded kennel full of highly trained German and Dutch shepherds, Belgian Malinois and Labradors on this air base, the hub of U.S.
and international security forces' operations in the volatile Kandahar area. "Because of the surge there is more need for
working dogs. But one of my main problems is getting dog food," he said. "It's hard to convince people
sometimes that it's a priority, but it's a necessity if we are to keep these dogs working." Guidas said because
of the energy-intensive demands of their missions, the dogs require special food and can't just eat scraps. The
dog food, which is made commercially in the United States and has extra protein and nutrients to keep the dogs healthy while working in
the heat and cold, must be shipped to Pakistan and then trucked to Kandahar. But space on trucks is limited and prioritized. Food and
supplies for humans come first, and logistics planners are still adjusting for the eating needs of the bigger pack of dogs to be put to work.
"It doesn't get a higher priority than a Coke or some potato chips," Guidas said of the dog food. "It moves when it moves." Even so, the
dogs have become an essential component of many units because of their versatility. They can be trained to search for a wide variety of
explosives and parts used in making improvised bombs. In the last month alone, military dogs in southern Afghanistan have made 20
finds of unexploded devices, weapon caches and other materiel. The U.S. has about 2,800 military dogs, the largest canine force in the
world. It has used dogs in combat since World War I. The dogs don't come cheap. It costs about $40,000 per
dog a year, and each goes through about five months of training. This year, Guidas expects the cost of the
dog food that he needs to reach $200,000, up from about $80,000 last year. He said each dog can work for
five or six years, but the demands of the terrain and of the mission are harsh, particularly on the dogs' joints.
If a dog is injured or sick, it is not sent out on operations. Only two military dogs have been lost in southern Afghanistan in the last five
years, Guidas said. "We take very good care of these dogs," he said. "In some cases they are treated better than us."
J(E)DI 2010 6
1AC
Thus we present the following plan:
The United States federal government should end the military deployment of animals in
Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, and South Korea.
J(E)DI 2010 7
1AC
Advantage 1: Animal Rights
Actions like the plan are vital to the success of the animal rights movement. Enacting
legislation attacking specific forms of animal exploitation like military use strikes at the
heart of institutionalized animal exploitation.
Francione 1996, (Gary is a professor at The Rutgers University School of Law, ‘Animal Rights: The Future’, World Prat
Assembly, DLD: June 24th 2010, http://www.worldproutassembly.org/archives/2005/04/animal_rights_t.html)
But there are signs that the pendulum may, as a general matter, be swinging back. People are starting to realize that democracy has been hijacked by
corporate special interests. People are getting tired of the resurgence of racism and anti-semitism. People are getting tired of the rampant and disempowering
sexism that has pervades our culture. People are becoming increasingly aware that our "representatives" in Congress are nothing but pawns of the highest
bidder, and are so devoid of integrity that they will attack "welfare mothers" as a financial drain on an economy that spends more money on a few new war
toys than it spends on the entire system of welfare on a yearly basis. People want change. More and more people are becoming concerned about matters of
social justice and nonviolence generally. Many people opposed the Gulf War; we just were not told about them by media that just happened to be controlled
by the same corporations that make the bombs that we dropped on a lot of people and animals. Change will come, sooner or later. We can only hope that it
will be sooner rather than later. We can only hope that it will be nonviolent. We must ask ourselves, however, whether that hope is itself morally justifiable
in light of the violence that we have caused and tolerated to be caused by others who claim to act on our behalf. If
the animal rights movement
is to survive the backlash of animal exploiters, and if the movement is going to harness both its own internal
energy and the general level of political dissatisfaction, the movement needs to re-strategize and re-organize
in light of the New World Order. Now is the time to develop a radical--nonviolent but radical--approach to
animal rights as part of an overall program of social justice. The solution will not be simple, but we must
make a start. Consider the following suggestions: We must recognize that if animal rights means anything, it
means that there is no moral justification for any institutionalized animal exploitation. Many people believe
that as long as a person "cares" about animals, that caring makes someone an advocate of animal "rights." But
that is no more the case than merely "caring" for women makes one a feminist. Feminism requires justice for women, and justice
means, at the very least, the recognition that women have certain interests that cannot be sacrificed. Rape is prohibited; it is not left to whether or not a
potential rapist "cares" about women. Similarly, if animals have rights, then the interests protected by those rights must receive protection and cannot be
sacrificed merely because humans believe that the beneficial consequences for humans of such sacrifice outweigh the detriment for animals. We cannot talk
simultaneously about animal rights and the "humane" slaughter of animals. We need to reshape the movement as one of grassroots activists, and not
"professional activists" who populate the seemingly endless number of national animal rights groups. For many people, activism has become writing a
check to a national group that is very pleased to have you leave it to them. Although it is important to give financial support to worthy efforts, giving money
is not enough and giving to the wrong groups can actually do more harm than good. For the most part, support local groups that you work with or that
operate in your area. Significant social change has to occur on a local level. We need to recognize that activism can come in many forms. Many people think
that they cannot be good activists if they cannot afford to have big, splashy campaigns, often involving the promotion of legislation or big lawsuits. There
are many forms of activism, and one of the most potent is education. We were all educated, and we need to educate others--one by one. If each of us
succeeded in educating five people per year about the need for personal and social nonviolence, the results multiplied over ten years (including the people
educated by those with whom we have contact, etc.) would be staggering. Those
of us inclined should reach out to greater
audiences--on radio or television talk shows, in print media, in the classroom, or in the context of peaceful
demonstration--to teach about nonviolence as a paradigm of justice. But it is important to realize that these
issues are too important to leave to anyone else. We--each of us--has an obligation to seek justice for all
persons, human and nonhuman. And we--each of us--can help effect that justice on a daily basis by sharing
our ideas with those with whom we come in contact. Never underestimate the power of the individual and of
small groups: Fidel Castro liberated Cuba with literally a handful of comrades. If we decide to pursue legislation, we
should stop pursuing welfarist solutions to the problem. Animal welfare seeks to regulate atrocity by making cages bigger or by adding
additional layers of bureaucratic review to ensure that the atrocity is "humane." We should pursue legislation that seeks to
abolish particular forms of exploitation. For example, a carefully focused campaign to end federal funding for animal
use in psychological experiments, or for military purposes, may very well be received sympathetically by a public increasingly
skeptical of continued public funding of animal use. And any campaign should be accompanied by the political message of ultimate
abolition of all institutionalized exploitation. Animal advocates should always be up-front about their ultimate objective,
and use all campaigns as an opportunity to teach about nonviolence and the rejection of all institutionalized
animal exploitation. We should recognize that there is a necessary connection between the animal rights
movement and other movements for social justice. Animal exploitation involves species bias or speciesism,
and is as morally unacceptable as other irrelevant criteria such as race, sex, sexual orientation, or class, in
determining membership in the moral universe. But if we maintain that speciesism is bad because it is like
racism, sexism, or homophobia, then we have necessarily taken a stand on those other forms of
discrimination. And anyone who maintains that speciesism is morally wrong but that sexism or racism or homophobia are not, deserves the title of
misanthrope. We need to recognize that the movement to achieve animal rights is a movement that is related to, but different from, the political left. The
animal movement is related to the left because it necessarily supports other progressive and nonviolent
struggles for human liberation. The animal movement is different because it emphasizes the concept of nonviolence. Animal
advocates should stop worrying about being "mainstream." How long will it take us to understand that the mainstream is irreversibly polluted.
J(E)DI 2010 8
Animal advocates--indeed, many progressives--are afraid to be labeled as "extremists." But what does it mean to be an "extremist" when people like Newt
Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh are revered by millions? When a man of color in Harlem has a lower life expectancy than a man living in the poorest of
nations? When millions go without health care or even minimal shelter or adequate food in the wealthiest nation on earth? When billions of animals are
slaughtered yearly for absolutely no reason other than "it tastes good."? Perhaps it is time that animal advocates learned to be proud to be called
emphasize that the most important point is that we can no
"extremists." Perhaps we all need to be a bit more "extremist." In closing, I
longer look to others to solve the enormous problems that we confront. We must work with other like-
minded people, but we can never ignore or underestimate the ability--or the responsibility--of each person to
affect significant change on a personal and social level. And we cannot wait any longer for "moderation" to
work. Time is running out for us, for nonhuman animals, and for the planet.
J(E)DI 2010 9
1AC
This makes animal liberation a moral imperative, because a free and peaceful will never be
possible until we demand the end of human domination over animals.
Steven Best, Chair of Philosophy at UT-EP, no date given
[http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/ARNewEnlightenment.htm]
During this turbulent period of social strife, riots, mass demonstrations against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and worsening problems with
poverty, homelessness, and class inequality, Martin Luther King formulated a vision of a "world house." In this
cosmopolitan utopia, all peoples around the globe would live in peace and harmony, with both their spiritual and
material needs met by the fecundity of the modern world. But to whatever degree this dream might be realized, King's
world house is still a damn slaughterhouse, because humanism doesn't challenge the needless confinement, torture,
and killing of billions of animals. The humanist non-violent utopia will always remain a hypocritical lie until
so-called "enlightened" and "progressive" human beings extend nonviolence, equality, and rights to the animals with whom
we share this planet. The next logical step in human moral evolution is to embrace animal rights and accept its profound implications.
Animal rights builds on the most progressive ethical and political advances human beings have made in the last two hundred years.
Simply put, the argument for animal rights states that if humans have rights, animals have rights for the same reasons. Moral
significance lies not in our differences as species but rather our commonalities as subjects of a life. This is the challenge of animal rights:
can human beings become truly enlightened and overcome one of the last remaining prejudices enshrined in democratic legal systems?
Can they reorganize their economic systems, retool their technologies, and transform their cultural traditions? Above all, can they
construct new sensibilities, values, worldviews, and identities? The animal rights movement poses a fundamental
evolutionary challenge to human beings in the midst of severe crises in the social and natural worlds. Can we recognize
that the animal question is central to the human question? Can we grasp how the exploitation of animals is implicated in
every aspect of the crisis in our relation to one another and the natural world? Animal rights is an assault on human species
identity. It smashes the compass of speciesism and calls into question the cosmological maps whereby humans
define their place in the world. Animal rights demands that human beings give up their sense of superiority over other animals. It
challenges people to realize that power demands responsibility, that might is not right, and that an enlarged neocortex is no excuse to
rape and plunder the natural world. These profound changes in worldview demand revolutionizing one's daily life and recognizing just how personal the political is. I
teach many radical philosophies, but only animal rights has the power to upset and transform daily rituals and social relations. "Radical" philosophies such as anarchism or Marxism
uncritically reproduce speciesism. After the Marxist seminar, students can talk at the dinner table about revolution while dining on the bodies of murdered farmed animals. After the
animal rights seminar, they often find themselves staring at their plates, questioning their most basic behaviors, and feeling alienated from their carping friends and family. The
message rings true and stirs the soul. Let's be clear: we are fighting for a revolution, not for reforms, for the end of slavery, not for humane slavemasters. Animal rights advances the
most radical idea to ever land on human ears: animals are not food, clothing, resources, or objects of entertainment. Our goal is nothing less than to change entrenched
attitudes, sedimented practices, and powerful institutions that profit from animal exploitation. Indeed, the state has demonized
us as "eco-terrorists" and is criminalizing our fight for what is right. Our task is especially difficult because we must transcend the
comfortable boundaries of humanism and urge a qualitative leap in moral consideration. We are insisting that people not only
change their views of one another within the species they share, but rather realize that species boundaries are as arbitrary as those of race
and sex. Our task is to provoke humanity to move the moral bar from reason and language to sentience and
subjectivity. We must not only educate, we must become a social movement. The challenge of animal rights also is our
challenge, for animal rights must not only be an idea but a social movement for the liberation of the world's most oppressed beings, both
in terms of numbers and in the severity of their pain. As with all revolutions, animals will not gain rights because oppressors
suddenly see the light, but rather because enough people become enlightened and learn how rock the structures of
power, to shake them until new social arrangements emerge. Are we asking for too much? Justice requires only what is right, and is
never excessive. Is the revolution remotely possible? In a thousand ways, the revolution is gaining ground. From the near
nation-wide ban on cockfighting to making animal abuse a felony crime in 37 states, from eliminating the use of animals to train doctors
in two thirds of U.S. medical schools to teaching animal rights and the law seminars at over two dozen universities, from increasing
media coverage of animal welfare/rights issues to a 2003 Gallup Poll finding that 96% of Americans say that animals deserve some
protection from abuse and 25% say that animals deserve "the exact same rights as people to be free from harm and
exploitation" it is clear that human beings are beginning to change their views about other species. Human beings simply will
have to reinvent their identities and find ways to define humanity and culture apart from cruelty. Whether people realize it or not, this is
not a burden but a liberation. One no longer has to live the lie of separation and the opening of the heart can bring a profound healing.
Animal rights is the next stage in the development of the highest values modern humanity has devised96 those of equality, democracy,
and rights. Our distorted conceptions of ourselves as demigods who command the planet must be replaced with the far more humble and
holistic notion that we belong to and are dependent upon vast networks of living relationships. Dominionist and speciesist identities are
steering us down the path of disaster. If humanity and the living world as a whole is to have a future, human beings must
embrace a universal ethics that respects all life. Growth is difficult and painful, and the human species is morally immature
and psychologically crippled. Human beings need to learn that they are citizens in the biocommunity, and not conquerors; as citizens,
they have distinct responsibilities to the entire biocommunity. The meaning of Enlightenment is changing. In the eighteenth century it
meant overcoming religious dogma and tyranny; in the late twentieth century, it demanded overcoming racism, sexism, homophobia,
and other prejudices; now, in the twenty-first century, it requires overcoming speciesism and embracing a universal ethics that honors all
life. We can change; we must. The message of nature is evolve or die.
J(E)DI 2010 10
1AC
Only the animal liberation movement is capable of overcoming the worst aspects of the
capitalist and ecological crisis.
Steven Best, Chair Philosophy at UT-EP 2006

[The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, vol.2, no.3, (June 2006)]
From the perspective of ID, one could support animal liberation as a dynamic social movement that challenges large sectors of the
capitalist growth economy by attacking food and medical research sectors. The ALM is perhaps today the most vocal critic of capitalist
logic and economies, drawing strong connections between the pursuit of profit and destruction of the social and natural worlds. It is a
leading global, anti-capitalist force. If the ALM could gain wider public support, it could provoke a capitalist monetary crisis,
as it works to bring about improved human health and medical care. Most generally, the ALM has the potential to affect a
cultural paradigm shift, one that broadens ethical horizons to include nonhuman animals and leads human species identity
away from the dominator paradigm so directly implicated in the ecological crisis. One could argue that animal
liberation makes its strongest contributions to the extent that it rejects single-issue politics and becomes part of a broader anti-capitalist
movement. This is certainly not the present case for the overall AAM, which might be viewed as a kind of “popular front” organization
that seeks unity around basic values on which people from all political orientations ―from apolitical, conservative, and liberal
persuasions to radical anarchists― could agree. “But, to my mind,” argues Takis Fotopoulous, “this is exactly its fundamental weakness
which might make the development of an antisystemic consciousness out of a philosophy of “rights,” etc. almost impossible.” Animal
liberation is by no means a sufficient condition for democracy and ecology, but it is for many reasons a necessary condition of
economic, social, cultural, and psychological change. Animal welfare/rights people promote compassionate relations toward animals,
but their general politics and worldview can otherwise be capitalist, exploitative, sexist, racist, or captive to any other psychological
fallacy. Uncritical of the capitalist economy and state, they hardly promote the broader kinds of critical consciousness that needs to take
root far and wide. Just as Leftists rarely acknowledge their own speciesism, so many animal advocates reproduce capitalist and statist
ideologies. It seems clear, however, that all aspects of the AAM – welfare, rights, and liberationist – are contributing to a profound sea-
change in human thought and culture, in the countless ways that animal interests are now protected or respected. Just as the civil
rights struggles sparked moral progress and moved vast numbers of people to overcome the prejudices and
discrimination of racism, so for decades the AAM is persuading increasing numbers of people to transcend the
fallacies of speciesism and discard prejudices toward animals. Given the profound relation between the human domination of animals
and the crisis – social, ethical, and environmental – in the human world and its relation to the natural world, groups such as the ALF is in
a unique position to articulate the importance of new relations between human and human, human and animal, and human and nature.
The fight for animal liberation demands radical transformations in the habits, practices, values, and mindset of all
human beings as it also entails a fundamental restructuring of social institutions and economic systems predicated on
exploitative practices. The goal of ecological democracy is inconceivable so long as billions of animals remain under the grip of despotic
human beings. The philosophy of animal liberation assaults the identities and worldviews that portray humans as conquering Lords and
Masters of nature, and it requires entirely new ways of relating to animals and the earth. Animal liberation is a direct attack on the power
human beings—whether in pre-modern or modern, non-Western or Western societies— have claimed over animals since Homo sapiens
began hunting them over two million years ago and which grew into a pathology of domination with the emergence of agricultural
society. The new struggle seeking freedom for other species has the potential to advance rights, democratic consciousness,
psychological growth, and awareness of biological interconnectedness to higher levels than previously achieved in history.
The next great step in moral evolution is to abolish the last acceptable form of slavery that subjugates the vast
majority of species on this planet to the violent whim of one. Moral advance today involves sending human supremacy to the same
refuse bin that society earlier discarded much male supremacy and white supremacy. Animal liberation requires that people
transcend the complacent boundaries of humanism in order to make a qualitative leap in ethical consideration, thereby moving the
moral bar from reason and language to sentience and subjectivity. Animal liberation is the culmination of a vast historical learning
process whereby human beings gradually realize that arguments justifying hierarchy, inequality, and discrimination of any kind are
arbitrary, baseless, and fallacious. Moral progress occurs in the process of demystifying and deconstructing all myths ―from ancient
patriarchy and the divine right of kings to Social Darwinism and speciesism― that attempt to legitimate the domination of one group
over another. Moral progress advances through the dynamic of replacing hierarchical visions with egalitarian visions and developing a
broader and more inclusive ethical community. Having recognized the illogical and unjustifiable rationales used to oppress blacks,
women, and other disadvantaged groups, society is beginning to grasp that speciesism is another unsubstantiated form of oppression and
discrimination. The gross inconsistency of Leftists who champion democracy and rights while supporting a system that enslaves billions
of other sentient and intelligent life forms is on par with the hypocrisy of American colonists protesting British tyranny while enslaving
millions of blacks. The commonalities of oppression help us to narrativize the history of human moral
consciousness, and to map the emergence of moral progress in our culture. This trajectory can be traced through the
gradual universalization of rights. By grasping the similarities of experience and oppression, we gain insight into the nature of power, we
discern the expansive boundaries of the moral community, and we acquire a new vision of progress and civilization, one based upon
ecological and non-speciesist principles and universal justice. Articulating connections among human, animal, and earth liberation
movements no doubt will be incredibly difficult, but it is a major task that needs to be undertaken from all sides. Just as Left humanists
may never overcome speciesism, grasp the validity and significance of animal liberation, or become ethical vegans, so the animal rights
movement at large may never situate the struggle for animal liberation in the larger context of global capitalism.The human/animal
liberation movements have much to learn from one another, although will be profound differences. Just as those in the
Inclusive Democracy camp have much to teach many in the animal liberation movement about capital logic and global capitalism
J(E)DI 2010 11
domination, so they have much to learn from animal liberation ethics and politics. Whereas Left radicals can help temper antihumanist
elements in the ALM, so the ALM can help the Left overcome speciesist prejudices and move toward a more compassionate, cruelty-
free, and environmentally sound mode of living. One common ground and point of department can be the critique of instrumentalism
and relation between the domination of humans over animals – as an integral part of the domination of nature in general – and the
domination of humans over one another. Such a conversation, dialogue, or new politics of alliance, of course, is dependent
upon the Left overcoming the shackles of humanism, moving from an attitude of ridicule to a position of respect, and
grasping the significance of animal rights/liberation
J(E)DI 2010 12
1AC
Advantage 2: Ethics
Viewing animals as property is intrinsically wrong and must be rejected because animals
are not objects lacking dignity or feelings.
Bartlett 2002, (Steven J. completed his undergraduate work at the University of Santa Clara, received his master's degree from the
University of California, Santa Barbara, and his doctorate from the Université de Paris.,‘Roots of Human Resistance to Animal Rights:
Psychological and Conceptual Blocks’
http://www.animallaw.info/articles/arussbartlett2002.htm)
Animals are property. These three words--and their legal implications and practical ramifications--define the most significant
doctrines and cases . . . and the realities for current practitioners of animal law. [FN1] For many people in our society, the
concept of legal rights for other animals is quite "unthinkable." That is because our relationship with the
majority of animals is one in which we exploit them: we eat them, hunt them and use them in a variety of ways that are
harmful to the animals. The idea that these animals feel pain and that they have interests which call out for
recognition is too close for comfort. . . . [A]s long as animals are property, we will face severe limitations in our ability to
protect them and their interests. . . . In all legally relevant ways, other animals possess the qualities that compel us to put aside
convention and convenience, and realize that we have ignored and violated their rights for far too long. Animals are not "things"
and a legal system which treats them as mere property is intrinsically flawed. [FN2] Advocates of animal rights and of
change in the legal status of animals have been eloquent on animals' behalf, but they have tended almost universally to ignore the most
fundamental forces that tend to compromise or block the realization of their goals. Efforts on behalf of change that remain blind in this
way are handicapped from the outset. They are likely to be ineffectual because they fail to confront, engage, and defeat the realities that
define the experience and outlook of those who oppose these efforts. As will be made clear in this comment, these realities are deeply
rooted both in the psychological mindset of the human majority and in the conceptual system that the majority accepts unquestioningly.
[FN3] To date, discussions of the legal status of nonhuman animals have focused on such issues as property and standing, but none has
centered attention squarely upon the human psychological and conceptual frameworks that frequently are brought into play, as though
by an automatic and uncontrollable reflex. Legislation and the common law are the products of human activity, and they bear the
unavoidable imprint of human mentality. One author has recently written that "[t]o label something property, is, for all intents
and purposes, to conclude that the entity so labeled possesses no interests that merit protection and that the
entity is solely a means to the end determined by the property owner." [FN4] Such a point of view brings attention to
the issues of property and, ultimately, of legal personhood. However, we need to ask, are these issues the most basic if we wish to
understand the difficulty of the struggle experienced by advocates of animal rights? Another author recently has urged that legal
discourse take shape around three concerns: "recognition of the social value of nonhuman animals through tort litigation, recognition in
statutory language of nonhuman animals' self-interest in their own lives and breaking down the species barrier by challenging and
restructuring standing doctrines." [FN5] Here, the perspective is widened further, but it is still not sufficiently basic in focus to be
cognizant of the obstacles that often frustrate animal rights advocates. What is at stake, according to another writer, is "one
of the most urgent moral issues of our time." [FN6] It is an issue that certainly deserves our attention and care,
and a deeper level of analysis. There are, as readers of these pages are well aware, legal and moral
consequences that follow from a view that judges nonhuman animals to be no more than inanimate,
disposable things. While many of the legal consequences have been articulately summarized, the fundamental problem has yet to be
brought to light. [FN7] A problem may be defined as a gap between a present state and a desired goal state. [FN8] For advocates of
animal rights, the desired goal state is articulately expressed by Joyce Tischler, Executive Director of the Animal Legal Defense Fund,
writing: Those of us at the heart of the animal law movement envision a world in which the lives and interests of all sentient beings are
respected within the legal system, where companion animals have good, loving homes for a lifetime, where wild animals can live out
their natural lives according to their instincts in an environment that supports their needs--a world in which animals are not exploited,
terrorized, tortured or controlled to serve frivolous or greedy human purposes. [FN9] This goal stands at some distance from
the present state of affairs, and so a gap is identified and a problem defined. It is imperative that we
understand what forces define the present state if we are to construct a bridge to the future described by Tischler.
The present state of affairs is inadequately understood because it has only partially been grasped in terms that have become familiar: the
property status of nonhuman animals, the concept of juristic personhood, standing doctrines, and so on. [FN10]
J(E)DI 2010 13
1AC
You have an ethical obligation to vote for the plan. The logic reducing animals to objects is
the same logic that has justified the slaughter of millions of humans. Earth is doomed until
we stop viewing living beings as property. Rejecting the militaries use of animals rejects the
utilitarian logic driving animal exploitation in the status quo.
Bartlett 2002, (Steven J. completed his undergraduate work at the University of Santa Clara, received his master's degree from the
University of California, Santa Barbara, and his doctorate from the Université de Paris.,‘Roots of Human Resistance to Animal Rights:
Psychological and Conceptual Blocks’
http://www.animallaw.info/articles/arussbartlett2002.htm)
In the traditional homocentric view, the rational and affective value of a nonhuman animal is nothing more than its value to human
beings. [FN65] Among homocentric theorists, it is common to value the life of a nonhuman animal by means of a
cost-benefit analysis "heavily weighted in favor of even the most frivolous human benefit." [FN66] Certainly,
utilitarian seeing-eye dogs and military and police dogs are often deeply mourned by their owners/handlers at least
in part because of their usefulness--but seldom, one must admit, solely because of it. Certainly, for many
people, the emotional value of a nonhuman animal is inversely proportional to its human utilitarian value: the
deaths of farm animals and barn cats are seldom mourned with extreme sorrow. The utilitarian valuation of nonhuman
animals, built on what one author calls "the rhetoric of human specialness," [FN67] characteristically leads to moral atrocities
toward those animals to whom there is generally little to no empathetic human response. Some authors have
found parallels to this psychically numbed outlook in the unaffected emotional response of bystanders to the
Holocaust. One author has suggested, "[o]ur treatment of animals is, in disturbing ways, like the treatment of
Jews in the Holocaust, particularly with respect to the capacity of normal, good people to rationalize and
deny that suffering is taking place." [FN68] Another author has likewise remarked: What do they know--all these scholars, all
these philosophers, all the leaders of the world--about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the worst transgressor of
all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures were created merely to provide him with goods, pelts, to be tormented,
exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an eternal Treblinka. [FN69]
Hannah Arendt called the response of ordinary people to moral atrocity "the banality of human evil." [FN70] Ordinary people do in fact
tolerate, avert their eyes, comply with, or deny atrocities of which they are aware. Psychologically oriented Holocaust studies make this
normal though morally repugnant human characteristic compellingly evident. [FN71] Similarly, and without recourse to metaphor,
there is an unmistakable banality of human evil in the relationship of the human species toward other species.
Even the most morally thick-skinned will find it hard to read firsthand accounts of the meat industry's treatment of animals. [FN72]
The whole creation groans under the weight of the evil we humans visit upon these mute, powerless
creatures. It is our hearts, not just our heads, that call for an end to it all, that demand of us that we overcome,
for them, the habits and forces behind their systematic oppression. [FN73] These descriptions of human atrocity toward
other species provide some of the hardest evidence of the ordinary person's willingness to treat other creatures with unalloyed cruelty
and disdain for their sentience, and of the emotional numbing that dulls compassion, which habitual atrocity produces. [FN74] Nothing
will be found in these accounts that points to the existence of particular difficulties that the meat industry encounters in recruiting
individuals willing to carry out their orders, or of psychological injury claims made by slaughterhouse workers and meat packers.
[FN75] The situation is entirely similar with respect both to the ease with which ordinary human beings can be
inducted into the armed forces and ordered to commit acts of barbarity, or the absence of difficulty with
which human executioners can be found to do their socially appointed work in prisons. What needs to be
called into question are these very phenomena that involve ordinary humanity's willingness to engage in acts
of barbarism and cruelty, to which the majority has become psychologically habituated and deadened. The
study of such phenomena is the focus of the psychology of human destructiveness, about which there is now a considerable body of
literature. [FN76] However, to my knowledge none of the psychologists who have studied human destructiveness has extended the
research conclusions in this field to our species' exploitation and abuse that result from humanity's diet, animal experimentation, fashion,
sport, and religious practice. Much of humanity's destructive psychological attitude toward animals is found in its
purely utilitarian point of view, as expressed by the blind or dumb belief that "animals do not experience
pain.
J(E)DI 2010 14
1AC
You are not voting for the plan, because it magically solves every instance of animal
exploitation. Instead, vote for our policy, because it is intrinsically good. Reject the
negatives future based disadvantages, because their utilitarian and consequential rational
will always recreate human domination over the non-human.
Eric Katz, Director of Science, Technology, and Society Program at the New Jersey Institute of Technology,
1997
[Nature as Subject p. 3-10]
At the end of his analysis of arguments for' the preservation of the irreplaceable,' John N. Martin discovers that he is puzzled by the
peculiar two-sided use of utilitarian reasoning in debates over the environment. His conclusion is that 'the vast majority of
preservationist cases can be explained by a version of utilitarianism," and by the term explained he seems to mean
"justified." However, he continues, "Given that the major foes of preservation are utilitarians, this consequence is surprising. It looks as
if the foes may be defeated by turning their own theory against them and using it more carefully." Martin is thus proposing that with
more careful philosophical groundwork, a complete utilitarian justification of the environmentalist-preservationist position can be
formulated, routing once and for all the anti-environmentalist forces of development. I argue that Martin's view is wrong, that
utilitarianism in its most basic forms cannot explain or justify the preservationist position in the preservation vs. development debate
although it often appears to do so. In fact, the widespread use of utilitarian arguments to justify policy decisions about the
protection of the environment is detrimental to preservation. The essential elements of utilitarianism only provide a justification for
the satisfaction of human need, for this satisfaction is the standard by which utilitarianism measures goodness or moral worth. But
human needs and the needs of the natural environment are not necessarily similar or in harmony; thus, any ethical theory-such as
utilitarianism-which tries to explain the preservation of the natural environment by means of the satisfaction of human wants, need, and
desires will be only contingently true: It will depend on the factual circumstances, the actual desires of the human community at any
given time. This empirical limitation does not bode well for the security of the preservationist argument. What then is the
preservationist position? Essentially, we can define it as an argument for the protection and presentation of some object or
state-of-affairs in an unaltered condition. Martin himself is concerned with irreplaceable entities, but environmentalists do not always
restrict themselves to that class of objects. Generally, they use the argument to justify the preservation of plants, wildlife, rock
formations, the land, ecological systems, wilderness areas, etc. Martin believes that the major problem in the application of utilitar-
ian ethical theory to this preservationist position lies in the justification of the importance of genetic properties. Any worthwhile
argument for preservation would have to explain why a perfect reproduction of a work of art or an artificially produced Yosemite
Valley is not as valuable as the original. The reason-of course is that the historical genetic properties of the object-the
process by which it was created cannot be separated from the nongenetic properties in a determination of the worth of the object.
Martin, however, claims that utilitarianism is unable to evaluate the genetic properties of an object because of its "blindness
to the past."3 When evaluating the consequences of an action in order to determine its moral worth, the utilitarian has his
"eyes [directed] towards the future." The sole concern of the utilitarian is whether a world in which a certain entity is presented
will be a better world than one in which the entity will not be preserved. According to Martin, the utilitarian is not interested in the
historical properties that the entity may possess, and thus how the entity came into being is a fact which is irrelevant to the moral
calculation. The utilitarian is forward-looking: the measurement of future utility is the criterion of goodness or moral value. Martin
admits to being troubled by this apparent inability of utilitarian moral theory to evaluate entities on the basis of genetic properties. As he
notes, it creates numerous instances in which preservationist intuitions are in conflict with utilitarian calculations. "The utilitarian
counts astroturf as the equal to grass; he allows roads and motels within the boundaries of national parks; he dams
rivers and lumbers forests. In all cases he is unswayed by genetic considerations." In order to alleviate this problem with
utilitarianism, Martin proposes a method by which genetic considerations are indirectly introduced into the utilitarian
calculation of benefit and harm. Since it is an obvious truth that people have special attitudes towards objects based on
genetic considerations," the utilitarian ought to consider these attitudes when calculating the utility of an act of
preservation. Thus Martin concludes that preservation may be a better policy of action, not because of any intrinsic worth
of the object being preserved, but because preservation-given present attitudes produces a more satisfied popula-
Hon.6 This indirect calculation of genetic properties of objects by means of an evaluation of the population's
attitudes-yields a number of problems. Martin notes three areas of possible controversy. The first is the "contingency of
[aJ preservationist obligation" which is based on human attitudes. Because the utilitarian bases his policy of preservation
on the satisfaction of certain human attitudes, the policy will be justified only as long as these attitudes remain in effect.
As Martin comments: "If people did not now and in the fixture care about Yosemite Valley, arguments for its
preservation based on genetic properties would not seem to carry any force. 117 Arguments for environmental
preservation, then, depend for their validity on the contingent existence of certain human attitudes. This reliance on
contingent human attitudes creates a second problem: the "possibility of deception." [IF the utilitarian argument for pres-
ervation rests on the satisfaction of human attitudes and feelings, then actual objects considered important need not be
preserved as long as people believe that they are. The belief that a certain object is "natural" or "real" will satisfy human
needs and increase social utility. As long as the population continues to be deceived, there will be no decease in the levels
of satisfaction. What is preserved, then, is the belief that objects with important genetic properties continue to exist-the
J(E)DI 2010 15
actual objects need not be preserved. Tourists to Paris, for example, do not have to know that the original Mona Lisa was
slashed by a knife-wielding intruder. Martin does not approve of this conclusion: "What we see here is that serving
people's feelings is sometimes not enough.,"' As traditional arguments against utilitarianism have stressed, there
are some values—such as truth and justice-which are important regardless of consequences. The prima faciae
value of truth would thus seem to override a utilitarian calculation about the benefits of deception in actual cases of preservation. Martin
thus calls for a further elaboration of utilitarian theory. Finally, Martin notes the actual "unpopularity of preservation." People seem to
get more satisfaction from using motor boats on lakes, damming rivers for hydroelectric power, and building access roads into national
parks than they would by preserving these natural resources in a pristine state. Thus it seems that "the utility derived from serving the
attitudes of those favoring preservation is an insignificant part of total utility." Given the actual state of contemporary society, utilitarian
arguments concerning preservation appear to dash with the intuitive judgments of environmentalists. This analysis of certain problems
in an indirect utilitarian argument for the preservation of objects with important genetic or historical properties is the key point of
Martin's essay. It is therefore surprising to discover that despite these problems, his conclusion is that a more careful use of utilitarian
arguments can buttress the environmental cause. I believe that the contrary conclusion is much more obvious: these problems reveal the
complete failure of utilitarian arguments to explain the subtlety and crucial importance of the environmentalist position on
preservation. Martin employs a standard version of utilitarianism in his analysis. In his argument a given world is better than an
alternative if and I if it possesses more social utility, and utility "is identified with satisfaction of citizen preferences.''~° The significant
fact about such ethical theory is that the criterion of moral value is the satisfaction human preferences--the satisfaction of human needs,
wants, and sires. Any natural resource, object, or ecological area will only be served, therefore, if its preservation satisfies some obvious
human need. Moreover, because of the utilitarian calculus, the satisfaction rived from the act of preservation will have to outweigh any o
satisfactions produced by the development or nonpreservation of resource, object; or area. Basing moral value or goodness on the
satisfaction, of human n and desires can only harm. the environmentalist goal of preserving natural entities. A result of this theory is that
the preservation of nature a policy of action has only secondary and contingent value. The primary value is the production of greater
amounts of social ut the satisfaction of human preferences and needs. The promulgatic environmentalist or preservafionist policy will
thus depend upoi contingent existence of relevant preservationist needs of the hu community. To use one of Martin's examples: the
chincona t~ee wi presented only as long as the human community needs the qui which is produced from it.n But this act of preservation
is only a tingent moral obligation: if no human need is satisfied by the 1 preservation, if, for example, an artificial source of quinine is
di~ ered, there will be no moral reason to preserve the spedes. Thu best result which an environmentalist can achieve by the use of a
tarian argument is an unstable, contingent justification of preserv~ Preservation will be the acceptable moral position only when ht
beings want it as a social policy. The problems associated with contingency which Martin rais, his discussion of the indirect utilitarian
argument forcibly demon,, the precarious nature of a utilitarian justification of environm preservation. I have noted these problems in the
previous sectio~ need not repeat them here. What Martin fails to see, however, is that even his "safe," nongenetic cases of preservation--
those involve conservation, cost-benefit analyses, externalities, and ecology"--are not sufficiently explained or justified by a direct
utilitarian approach. A good counterexample is the preservation of endangered species which are of little or no importance to humanity
or the world ecological system. The preservation of the snail darter, a freshwater fish whose protected status has halted the completion
of the Tellico dam, 13 cannot be explained rationally by the concept of utility. No cost-benefit analysis could favor the preservation of
the fish: the loss in dollars spent and energy unused is staggering. Nor can the presentation of the snail darter be justified in terms of
ecology: except for the interest of scholars in the field, the fish has no known beneficial effects on the human community or
environment. If utilitarian arguments are presented to fortify the environmentalist-preservationist position, absurd claims have to be
made. The environmentalist is forced to argue that the existence of a fish (or a plant, or a wilderness area) which is not utilized by the
human community has more social utility than the obvious economic gains resulting from the nonpreservation of the fish (or plant or
wilderness area) and the development of the affected region It seems clear that this kind of utilitarian argument for preservation will
rarely justify the environmentalist position. This point has been amply demonstrated by Martin 1-I. Krieger in an article entitled "What's
Wrong with Plastic Trees?" 14 described by Mark Sagoff as "a reductia ad absurdum of contemporary 'utilitarian' arguments for
preserving the environment."' 5 Krieger states that "Artificial prairies and wildernesses have been created, and there is no reason to
believe that these artificial environments need be unsatisfactory for those who experience them?' In fact, since "the way in which we
experience nature is conditioned by our society,' public choice and desire can be manipulated so that "people learn to use and want
environments that are likely to be available at low cost" Here then is the ultimate utilitarian position: environments
artificially created to produce the most human satisfaction, and human minds conditioned to enjoy the artificial environments.
Surely no greater amount of social utility could be imagined! Unfortunately, the effect of this theory on
environmental policy would be disastrous. Any or all natural objects and environments could be destroyed to further
the interests, to increase the satisfaction, of the human community. An artificial but satisfying utilitarian world clearly
demonstrates the flaw in Martin's analysis and the danger that analysis holds for the policy of preservation.
Utilitarianism, as Martin conceives it, only measures the moral worth or goodness of an action by the satisfaction of
human preferences and needs which is produced. These human ne are connected only contingently with the preservation
of any given natural object, resource, or ecological system. Humanity could even create an artificial, plasticized
world which produces more social utility than a world filled with natural objects and resources. As our space
program has demonstrated, humans can even survive in an artificial environment. The simple fact of the matter is that the
interests of humans are not necessarily connected with the preservation of the natural environment. Any ethical theory
which places its emphasis on the satisfaction of human needs can support a policy of preservation only on a contingent
basis. Obligations to preserve natural objects and resources are overridden whenever a greater amount of human
satisfaction be attained by nonpreservation. There is no danger then, as Martin believes, for the foes of enviromental
preservation from who use utilitarian arguments. On their side it essential premise of utilitarian theory that the satisfaction of
human desires and needs is the sole criterion of goodness or moral worth. No real danger lies in the use of utilitarian arguments by
preservation Basing arguments for environmental preservation on the premise utilitarian moral theory will only reveal the precarious
relationship which exists between the satisfaction of human needs and the preservation of natural objects. Once it is accepted that the
satisfaction human needs is the primary measure of value, the continued exist~ of the natural world is reduced to a mere
contingency. In conclusion, I would like to note two different approaches which preservationist might take to avoid Martin's "more
careful" formation of utilitarian arguments. These observations are not meant as fiished theories of environmental obligation, but as
J(E)DI 2010 16
suggestions for other work. (1) Utilitarianism might be salvaged for use in the environmental debate if it is stripped of its
bias towards the satisfaction of human needs and preferences. Bentham, it should be remembered, considered the pains and
pleasures of the animal kingdom to be of important to a utilitarian calculation. According to this kind of position, the wants
and desires of the wildlife in a given area would have to be considered prior to any development or destruction for the
purpose of human betterment. Unfortunately, the problems with this kind of broad utilitarianism appear
insurmountable, How does the satisfaction of animal needs compare in utility with the satisfaction of human needs? Can
we bring plant life into the calculation? What about nonliving entities, such as rock formations (e.g., the Grand Canyon) or
entire ecological areas? Does a marsh have an interest in not being drained and turned into a golf course, a need or desire to continue a
natural existence? It is clear that difficult-if not impossible-problems arise when we begin to consider utility for nonhuman
and nonsentient entities. (2) A second alternative, highly tentative, is a movement away from a "want-oriented
perspective" in ethical theory.2° Rather than evaluating the moral worth of an action by the consequences which satisfy
needs and desires in the human (or even nonhuman) world, we can look at the intrinsic qualities of the action, and
determine what kind of values this action manifests. The question which the debate over environmental
presentation raises is not "Does preservation of this particular natural object lead to a better world?" but rather "Do we
want a world in which the preservation of natural objects is considered an important value?" The question is not
whether the preservation of a certain entity increases the amount of satisfaction and pleasure in the world, but rather, whether these
pleasures, satisfactions, and needs ought to be pursued. The question, in short, is about what kind of moral universe ought to
be created.2' Only when the preservation of natural objects is seen to be an intrinsically good policy of action,
rather than a means to some kind of satisfaction, will a policy of environmental protection be explained and
justified. The development of an ethical theory which can accomplish this task will be a difficult undertaking, but it is the only
choice open to preservationists who wish to avoid the easy, self-defeating trap of utilitarianism.
J(E)DI 2010 17
Inherency Ext.
The number of dogs in military is large and increasing
Miles 4
[Donna, American Forces Press Service, United States Department of Defense,“ Military Working Dogs
Protect Forces, Bases During Terror War,” Sept. 3, 2004, p.
http://osd.dtic.mil/news/Sep2004/n09032004_2004090306.html]
Today, "a couple hundred" working dogs are serving with U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan as
patrol dogs and explosives and drug detectors, Rolfe said, adding that contractors use additional dogs in
the theater. Nearly 2,000 more working dogs provide similar services at U.S. bases and operating posts
around the world. Meanwhile, the military is increasing its reliance on working dogs. Before Sept. 11,
2001, Rolfe said Air Force security forces trained about 200 working dogs a year for the Defense
Department. That number is up to more than 500, with the vast majority of dogs being trained as
sentries and bomb-sniffers
The number of military dogs is going up.
Lyle 2009,
[Air Force Tech. Sgt. Amaani Lyle, Special to American Forces Press Service, American Forces Press
Service, United States Department of Defense, “Adoption Program Lets Working Dogs Become Pets”
August 31, p. http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=55678]
The stateside and overseas demand for military working dogs, especially explosive-detector dogs, has
spiked since Sept. 11, 2001, and the average retirement age has dropped from 10 and a half to 8 and a
half due to the rigors of the their jobs, Jordan said. The military has added combat-tracker and off-
leash specialized search dog capabilities to the program. Most field dogs have deployed at least once,
often multiple times, while dogs adopted from the schoolhouse rarely have deployed, Jordan said. She
added that any given dog’s experiences warrant a thorough assessment of their temperament and acclimation
back into a home.
Military dogs are either trained for detection or for patrol.
Foliente 2009
[Army Sgt. Rodney Foliente, Special to American Forces Press Service, United States Department of
Defense, “‘Battle Buddies’ Provide Companionship, Security in Iraq” January 27, 2009, p.
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=52819]
Establishing a dedicated working dog takes hours of hard work; the selection process is a lengthy one.
Hand picked, these dogs undergo several tests before being chosen to join the U.S. military. They receive
between 110 and 120 days' training at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, and become either explosive-
detection/drug dogs or patrol dogs. They go through several certifications once they reach their
installations, where they'll remain throughout their career.
J(E)DI 2010 18
Harms Ext.
Dog deployments to Middle East are up
Davenport 2009,
[ Christian, Washington Post Staff Writer, Washington Post, “Recruited to Serve and Sniff -- Again; Ace
Bomb and Weapons Detectives, More Military Dogs Being Sent Overseas,” March 29, 2009, p. Lexis]
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't just forcing thousands of soldiers and Marines to deploy for two and three tours. The sacrifice is
being shared by a key, and growing, part of the U.S. military: highly trained German shepherds and Belgian Malinois. In a war with no
front lines, they have become valuable at sniffing out makeshift bombs, which cause most U.S. casualties. The use of dogs in war,
whether as scouts, sentries or trackers, goes back hundreds of years. But since Sept. 11, 2001, the Defense Department
has increased the number of military dogs from 1,320 to 2,025, and many have served multiple tours.
Dogs have been killed in the field
Davenport 2009,
At Andrews Air Force Base, which has the largest K-9 unit in the region, two dog teams recently deployed.
In addition to military dogs, 38 contractor dog teams are in Afghanistan and about 140 dogs across Iraq.
Since the 2001 terrorist attacks, 11 military dogs have been killed in combat, Tremmel said.
Dogs cannot handle psychological stress of combat
Davenport 2009,
During his six-month tour in Iraq last year, Timi, a 5-year-old German shepherd, found about 100
pounds of explosive material, Evans said, including a 130mm shell full of homemade explosives.
Timi "is all business," he said. "A real foot soldier." Tough and no-nonsense, he has always been more
reserved than the other dogs. He took his time eating. He seemed to look at people out of the corners of his
eyes, Evans said, following them. "He's calculating." But a few months into the deployment, Timi started
thrashing about in his sleep, Evans said. "It was almost like he was having a seizure in his sleep," Evans
said. "This was not like he was chasing a little bunny rabbit. He was kicking the . . . kennel down. . . . When I
got him out of it, he'd have that bewildered look, and it would take him a minute to know where he was.
Then he'd fall back asleep, and it would happen again and again." For two years, Walter Burghardt, chief
of behavioral medicine at the Department of Defense Military Working Dog Veterinary Service, has
been studying the effects of combat on dogs. Although he doesn't like to use the term post-traumatic
stress disorder with dogs, war can affect them emotionally, he said. In some cases, antidepressants have
worked, he said, as have more playtime and more time performing the tasks they were trained to do.
J(E)DI 2010 19
Harms Ext.
Dogs are suffering from lack of food.
Associated Press 2005
[“Army Capt.: Iraqi Police Dogs Need Food”, January 05, 2005, p. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,143410,00.html]
The commander of an Army Reserve detachment in Iraq is begging friends back home to send food for Iraqi
police dogs. Captain Gabriella Cook says in e-mails that the 13 dogs at the Iraqi Police Academy (search)
in Baghdad are living on table scraps and garbage. She says some of the dogs are sick — and there's no
way to get real dog food. Cook's unit — the 313th Military Police Detachment (search), based in Las Vegas
— arrived in the Iraqi capital last month. A Nevada veterinarian estimates that each of the police dogs needs
40 pounds or more of dry food per month.
Military Dogs Abused by Trainers
Reilly 2010,
[Corinne Reilly, journalist for the Virginian-Pilot, 3/6/2010, http://hamptonroads.com/2010/03/emails-navy-
dogs-deplorable-conditions-contractor]
The task probably seemed innocuous enough when a small team of U.S. Navy personnel accepted it last
fall. They would trek out to a private security contractor in Chicago to pick up 49 dogs, then transport
them to a nearby military base. But what they found when they arrived was shocking, according to
internal Navy e-mails: dirty, weak animals so thin that their ribs and hip bones jutted out.The dogs
were supposed to have begun working months earlier to sniff out explosives at Navy installations across the
country, including several in Hampton Roads. At least that was the plan when, for the first time, the Navy
decided to hire an outside contractor to supply K-9s and handlers to help protect dozens of its bases and
ships. But when the dog-handler teams showed up for work last spring, they couldn't find planted explosives
during military certification tests, according to the Navy. So the bases sent them back to the contractor,
Securitas Security Services USA. The Navy decided to cut its losses and ended the contract in July,
eventually agreeing to buy the 49 Securitas dogs and train and handle them on its own. It sent its team to get
the K-9s on Oct. 5. The Navy declined to discuss what its personnel discovered that day, but according
to e-mails obtained by The Virginian-Pilot, the animals appeared starved, neglected and dramatically
different from three months earlier, when they failed the military's certification tests. The e-mails say
the Navy picked the dogs up at a warehouse. In one message, a civilian official described their
condition as "deplorable." In another, he wrote that he feared the dogs would have died if the military
hadn't come to get them. In fact, the Navy said later, at least two of the dogs did not survive. Several
others were deemed too sick to ever be of use. Nearly a year after they were supposed to have begun
working, the remaining K-9s still are not patrolling Navy installations as intended.
J(E)DI 2010 20
A2: Plan Costs To Much

We have new highly effective mine detecting technologies that can be mass produces at a
price of around $10,000
Woollacott ‘10 [Emma Woollacott, degree from university of New York in Psycology had been doing freelance reporting for over 3
years, TG Daily, Team turns to eBay to build low-cost land mine detector, Wed 16th Jun 2010 8:12 am,
(http://www.tgdaily.com/general-sciences-features/50231-team-turns-to-ebay-to-build-low-cost-land-mine-detector)]
US Army-sponsored researchers have built a land mine detection system for a hundredth of the cost of
traditional systems - using parts they bought in online auctions. A team at the Colorado School of Mines has
built a system using microwave-based sensors to detect vibrations in the ground. unlike most current
detection systems, the microwave device can see through foliage. Made from off-the-shelf parts - including
some obtained through online auctions - the system costs about $10,000. This compares to $1 million or
more for standard laser-based Doppler remote detection systems. "Land mines are an enormous problem
around the world for both military personnel and civilians," says physics professor John Scales. "We've
developed an ultrasound technique to first shake the ground and then a microwave component to detect
ground motion that indicates location of the land mine. We hope that the two components together enable us
to detect the land mines in a safe fashion, from a distance." Other low-cost techniques for detecting land
mines have included training dogs and even rats to detect chemicals within the explosives. Another approach
has even involved the development of biosensor plants that change color when growing in contaminated soil.
"The reason so many people are working on this problem from so many angles," says Scales, "is there is no
one scheme that works well all the time. You need an arsenal of tools."
Bomb-detecting dogs expensive; robots a viable alternative

Madhani ‘10
[Aamer Madhani, USA Today Baghdad correspondent, “Dogs take a lead in Iraq’s terror war,” 3/22/2010,
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2010-03-22-iraqdogs_N.htm]
The recent embrace by Iraqi security officials has been welcomed by the U.S. military, which is paying $12,000 for each
dog. For years, U.S. military commanders have been urging the Iraqi forces to incorporate more dogs into their security program. The
Iraqi security forces first formed a K-9 unit in the 1970s, but it was scarcely used. "We were there, but we only had a few dogs and we
did little more than train," said Hajea, who joined the police in 1986 after being trained as a veterinarian. The American advice to bulk
up the K-9 units was initially met with resistance. Instead of using dogs, Iraq's Interior Ministry instead invested tens of
millions of dollars in the ADE-651, a British-manufactured bomb detection device that is ubiquitous at
checkpoints throughout the country.
J(E)DI 2010 21
A2: No Alternatives For Demining

A new Laser that detects landmines has been developed and is being used in the NATO
force in Afghanistan
Wade ‘10 [Mike Wade, prize-winning history graduate of Edinburgh University and freelance journalist for over 5 years, Times
Online, Remote-controlled laser ‘nose’ to detect IED’s is developed by scientists, June 10, 2010, (
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article7147032.ece)]
A remotely-controlled “sniffer dog” that can detect improvised explosive devices — the deadly IEDs that
have caused high casualties among Nato troops in Afghanistan — has been developed by scientists. The
technology, which utilises cheap plastic materials to create a laser beam, is described as an artificial nose and
is able to detect the microscopic vapors emitted by explosives, enabling landmines and IEDs to be identified
and neutralised. Scientists at the University of St Andrews believe that the new system could be used as a
screening device at airports, as well as playing a key role on the battlefield. “If the gold standard in detection
is a sniffer dog, this essentially creates an artificial nose that can sniff out the smells that hang around hidden
explosives,” Dr Graham Turnbull, a lecturer in physics and astronomy, said. Using a thin film of polyfluorene — a special kind of
light-emitting plastic — the team created a laser beam that absorbs ultraviolet light and re-emits it as a green or blue beam. “By
controlling the light emissions — rather than being fluorescence, which is light emitted in all directions — you can engineer laser light
in a well-defined output beam,” Dr Turnbull added. The St Andrews team found that the laser light dims within seconds
when the beam comes into contact with even the tiniest explosives vapor. The laser sensor can be reset by a
blast of nitrogen gas. “Floating above a landmine in Iraq or Afghanistan, there is a very weak, dilute plume
of vapours of explosive molecules that gives off the smell of a bomb,” Dr Turnbull said.
“When the light-emitting laser comes into contact with this very low concentration of explosive vapours, the
output power of the laser drops, reporting the presence of the explosive molecule. The lasers can rapidly
sense these TNT-like molecules at extremely low concentrations, as low as a few parts per billion. “On a
dusty road in Afghanistan there are relatively few things that might affect the laser output and it certainly
could have potential in that area.” Other bomb detection systems have utilised fluorescence as a means of identifying explosive
materials. “There is a higher sensitivity in laser light to a smaller number of explosive molecules, and these molecules have a significant
effect on the output of the polymer,” said Dr Turnbull, who co-authored the work with Professor Ifor Samuel and Dr Ying Yang, of the
Organic Semi-Conductor Centre at the university. The Ministry of Defence currently deploys a number of robotic bomb disposal
devices including the Dragon Runner, a machine that resemble Pixar’s Wall-E animation. It has been devised to enabled trained bomb
disposal personnel to remotely disable explosive devices without placing them in danger. About 100 of the devices were
ordered by the MoD this year for £12 million. Another robotic land-mine method, the Talisman Route Proving and Clearance
System is currently being introduced at a cost £96 million, and requires heavily armoured Mastiff2 and Buffalo vehicles. The St Andrew
detection system, though it would require an investment in remotely-controlled vehicles, is built around inexpensive plastics, widely
used in the electronics industry, and Dr Turnbull said he had no doubt that there was “scope for such a viable
system”. The MoD would not comment on the St Andrews research but a spokesman said: “We continue to invest in
counter-IED equipment and will always seek to take advantage of any developments in technology.”
Low- cost Demining robots ready for use

Space Daily 2004,
(Newsletters :: SpaceDaily Express June 10, 2004, Low-Cost Robot Could Locate Land Mines In Rugged
Terrain http://www.spacedaily.com/news/robot-04p.html)
Four Johns Hopkins undergraduate engineering students have designed and built a remote-controlled robotic
vehicle to find deadly land mines in rugged terrain and mark their location with a spray of paint. The prototype
has been given to professional explosive detection researchers as a model for a low-cost robot that
humanitarian groups and military troops could use to prevent mine-related deaths and injuries. The four
undergraduate inventors, all seniors, were Edoardo Biancheri, 22, of Rio De Janeiro, Brazil; Dan Hake, 21, from Wilton, Conn.; Dat
Truong, 22, from Methuen, Mass.; and Landon Unninayar, 22, from Columbia, Md. Hake, Truong and Unnimayar were mechanical
engineering majors who graduated from Johns Hopkins last month. Biancheri plans to complete his undergraduate studies in December
with a double major in mechanical engineering and economics. Working within a sponsored budget of $8,000, the students spent about
$5,000 to design and build their prototype. They estimate the vehicle could be mass-produced for $1,000 or less,
not including the cost of more sophisticated detection sensors.
J(E)DI 2010 22
A2: Military Dogs Have Nowhere To Go

AFTER DOGS SERVE, THEY ARE GIVEN TO LAW ENFORCEMENT OR ADOPTED
Military Working Dog Foundation, Inc. ‘10
Military Working Dog Foundation, Military Working Dog Foundation, Inc. - Adoptions, Information,
Resources, 2010, http://www.militaryworkingdogs.com/
Periodically, these military working dogs become available for distribution to law enforcement agencies and
local police departments. Some working dogs are made available for adoption to the public because they are
no longer capable of performing their military duties
Once the dog becomes a pet it is no longer part of the military.
Lyle 2009
[Air Force Tech. Sgt. Amaani Lyle, Special to American Forces Press Service, American Forces Press Service, United States
Department of Defense, “Adoption Program Lets Working Dogs Become Pets” August 31, p.
http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=55678]
Although the program will expedite processing for dogs out of the state and country, the general
clarified why adopters must bear the brunt of transport for adopted dogs returning from overseas.
"Once that dog is adopted, it becomes a pet, and therefore loses its [military working dog] status," she
explained, so it would be inappropriate for the Defense Department to transport that pet.
Military dog adoption is a quick and effective process.
Lyle 2009,
[Air Force Tech. Sgt. Amaani Lyle, Special to American Forces Press Service, American Forces Press Service, United States
Department of Defense, “Adoption Program Lets Working Dogs Become Pets” August 31, p.
http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=55678]
Although the adoption process at the Military Working Dog schoolhouse at Lackland Air Force Base,
Texas, is rigorous and contingent on demand and eligibility, families can adopt dogs somewhat quickly,
said Air Force Maj. Gen. Mary Kay Hertog, the Pentagon-based executive agent of the military working dog
program. "Families can normally complete the adoption process in less than 30 days if they and the
dogs meet the eligibility requirements," Hertog said. "The Robby Law changed the way the [Defense
Department] does business, and we go to extraordinary lengths to make sure dogs are adopted out."
J(E)DI 2010 23
A2: Non-Speciest Util Is Possible

Utilitarianism undermines the case for animal liberation—it allows specieism to come through the back door
Tom Regan, Professor emeritus of philosophy at North Carolina State University,, 2001
[Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology p. 46-48]
Singer's argument has a further deficiency, which involves the principle of utility. First, Singer does not show
that the differential treatment of animals runs counter to the utilitarian objective of bringing about the
greatest possible balance of good over evil. To show this Singer would have to give an elaborate, detailed
description, not only of how animals are treated, a part of the task which he does complete with great skill,
but an analysis of what, all considered, are the consequences for everyone involved. He would have to
inquire how the world's economy depends on present levels of productivity in the animal industry, how many
people's lives are directly and indirectly involved with the maintenance or growth of this industry, etc. Even
more, he would have to show in detail what would probably be the consequences of a collapse or slowdown
of the animal industry's productivity. Secondly, Singer needs to make a compelling case for the view that not raising animals
intensively or not using them routinely in research leads to better consequences, all considered, than those which now result from
treating animals in these ways. Singer is required to show that better consequences would result, or at least that it is very probable that
they would. Showing that it is possible or conceivable that they might is insufficient. It comes as a disappointment, therefore, that we do
not find anything approaching this kind of required empirical data. What we find, instead, a passages, where he bemoans (rightly, I
believe) the fact that animals are fed protein-rich grains which could be fed to malnourished human beings. The point, however, is not
whether these grains could be fed to the malnourished it is whether we have solid empirical grounds for believing that they would l made
available to and eaten by these people, if they were not fed to anima and that the consequences resulting from this shift would be better,
all things considered. I hope I am not unfair to Singer in observing that these calculations are missing, not only here, but, to my
knowledge, throughout the bulk of his published writings. This, then, is the first thing to note regarding Singer and the principle
utility: he fails to show, with reference to this principle, that it is wrong to treat animals as they are now
being treated in modern farming and scientific research. The second thing to note is that, for all we know and
so long as we rely on the principle of utility, the present treatment of animals might actually be justified. The
grounds for thinking so are as follows. On the face of it, utilitarianism seems to be the fairest, least
prejudiced view available. Everyone's interests count, and no one's counts for more or less than the equal
interests of anyone else. The trouble is, as we have seen, that there is no necessary connection, no
preestablished harmony between respect for the equality of interests principle and promoting the utilitarian
objective of maximizing the balance of good over bad. On the contrary, the principle of utility might be used
to justify the most radical kinds of differential treatment between individuals or groups of individuals, and
thus it might justify forms of racism and sexism, for these prejudices can take different forms and find
expression in different ways. One form consists in not even taking the interest of a given race or sex into
account at all; another takes these interests into account but does not count them equally with those of the
equal interests of the favored group. Another does take their interests into account equally, but adopts laws
and policies, engages in practices and customs which give greater opportunities to the members of the
favored group, because doing so promotes the greatest balance of good over evil, all considered. Thus, forms
of racism or sexism, which seem to be eliminated by the utilitarian principle of equality of interests, could
well be resurrected and justified by the principle of utility. If a utilitarian here replies that denying certain
humans an equal opportunity to satisfy or promote their equal interests on racist or sexual grounds must
violate the equality of interests principle and so, on his position, is wrong, we must remind him that
differential treatment is not the same as, and does not entail, violating the equality of interests principle. It is
quite possible, for example, to count the equal interests of blacks and whites the same (and thus to honor the
equality principle) and still discriminate between races when it comes to what members of each race are
permitted to do to pursue those interests, on the grounds that such discrimination promotes the utilitarian
objective. So, utilitarianism, despite initial appearances, does not provide us with solid grounds on which to
exclude all forms of racism or sexism.'
J(E)DI 2010 24
A2: Consequentialism Inevitable

Cost-benefit analysis is NOT inevitable—we can make judgments without reducing nature
to calculation
Steven Kelman, Professor of Public Management at Harvard, 2002
[Environmental Ethics p. 455-458]
In situations involving things that are not expressed in a common measure, advocates of cost benefit analysis argue
that people making judgments "in effect" perform cost-benefit calculations anyway. If government regulators promulgate a regulation
that saves 100 lives at a cost of $1 billion, they are "in effect" valuing a life at (a minimum of) S10 million, whether or not they say that
cost-benefit analysis "in effect" is
they are willing to place a dollar value on a human life. Since, in this view,
inevitable, it might as well be made specific.This argument misconstrues the real difference in
the reasoning processes involved. In cost-benefit analysis, equivalencies are established in
advance as one of the raw materials for the calculation. One determines costs and benefits, one determines
equivalencies (to be able to put various costs and benefits into a common measure), and then one sets to toting things up-waiting, as it
were, with bated breath for the results of the calculation to come out. Theoutcome is determined by the
arithmetic; if the outcome is a close call or if one is not good at long division, one does not know how it will turn out until the cal-
culation is finished. In the kind of deliberative judgment that is performed without a common measure, no
establishment of equivalencies occurs in advance. Equivalencies are not aids to the decision process. In fact, the
decision maker might not even be aware of what the "in effect" equivalencies were, at least before they are revealed to him afterwards
The decision maker would see himself as simply having made a
by someone pointing out what he had "in effect" done.
deliberative judgment; the "in effect" equivalency number did not play a causal role in the decision but at most merely
reflects it. Given this, the argument against making the process explicit is the one discussed earlier in
the discussion of problems with putting specific quantified values on things that are not
normally quantified-that the very act of doing so may serve to reduce the value of those
things.
J(E)DI 2010 25
A2: Non-Speciest Util Is Possible

Utilitarian calculus is mutually exclusive with an ethic that gives dignity to both “human”
and “nonhuman” animals
Stephen Clark, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, 1999
]The Political Animal p. 6-8]
The catch with such 'utilitarian' calculation has been that once it aspires to count up the amount of good or
evil, it is strictly incalculable. Once self-styled experts claim to have an 'objective' methodology for making
decisions, the road to tyranny is open. Chesterton identified many of the evils implicit in appeals to the
'general" (which is no-one's) good. As he remarked, "nobody could pretend that the affectionate mother of a
rather backward child deserves to be punished by having all the happiness taken out of her life [by removing
her child to 'special care']. But anybody can pretend that the act is needed for the happiness of the
community. One of his common themes is the misuse of medical judgement to incarcerate eccentrics: no-one
who has attended to what has happened in this century can think this concern absurd. Canavan (1977), in her
account of his radical populism, has identified one episode in particular, involving Cyril Burt (whom
Chesterton criticised): in an article of 1950 Burt recalled how 'with the advent of compulsory education' there
was medical concern about 'mental deficiency', which was perhaps attributable to small skull size. Burt
remarks without comment or apology that of those children of the poor subjected to craniectomy to 'remedy'
this 'fault' 25 per cent died and the rest showed no mental improvement.5 The reader, she goes on to say: can
perhaps understand Chesterton's anger at a system of social reform that delivered the defenceless poor of the
country into the hands of doctors who could try out their theories on these human guinea pigs and take
children from their parents on grounds of arbitrarily assessed 'mental deficiency' - in order to subject them to
appalling and futile operations as a result of which twenty-five per cent died and even those who survived
showed no improvement. (Canavan 1977) The older ethical system urged us to live as decent human beings,
and might easily have made the wider demand explicit: to allow or to help non-human creatures to live as
decent a life according to their kind. The righteous man would have a care for his beasts, but would expect to
see them suffer for good causes, ones that promoted virtuous living. The newer system denied that°anything
should ever be made to suffer, except to reduce the sum total of suffering. That dangerous concession made it
right, after all, to make animals suffer if human suffering could thereby be reduced (or a reduction expected).
And moralists retained enough of the outlook of a status society to believe, without thinking much about it,
that our suffering was of another order than theirs. Animal pains and pleasures must be merely physical.
Humans would suffer agonies (it was implied) if they could not have their favourite foods, or watch their
favourite sports, or find out fascinating truths about the world. Humans suffer (it was asserted) far more pain
at bruises, wounds, infections, cancers. So though we might regret giving pain to 'animals', it must be better
than allowing 'humans' to have those pains instead. An exactly similar piece of self-deception allows us to
suppose that 'savages' and the poor don't feel as 'we' do. Even those who claim to be good democrats in fact
exclude large numbers of their fellow subjects, reckoning them 'immature', 'insane' or 'imbecile'. In
demanding that 'they' obey 'us' we expect a deference from them that they may be ill-disposed to give - an
unwillingness that proves their imbecility, no doubt. 'The objection to an aristocracy is that it is a priesthood
without a god'6 -without, that is, anything to defer to (which more accurately defines a modem democracy).
Good citizens like ourselves defer to no-one - but there are plenty of people whom we expect, half-
consciously, to defer to us.
J(E)DI 2010 26
A2: DA Proves The Plan Unethical

You are only responsible for your action, not the indirect results of the alternative. That
means their case impacts don’t matter if we win our ethic.
Alan Gewirth, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago, 1982

[Human Rights p. 218-219, 225-230]
It is a widely held opinion that there are no absolute rights. Consider what would be generally regarded as the most plausible candidate:
the right to life. This right entails at least the negative duty to refrain from killing any human being. But it is contended that this duty
may be overridden, that a person may be justifiably killed if this is the only way to prevent him from killing some other, innocent
person, or if he is engaged in combat in the army of an unjust aggressor nation with which one's own country is at war. It is also
maintained that even an innocent person may justifiably be killed if failure to do so will lead to the deaths of other such persons. Thus an
innocent person's right to life is held to be overridden when a fat man stuck in the mouth of a cave prevents the exit of speleologists who
will otherwise drown, or when a child or some other guiltless person is strapped onto the front of an aggressor's tank, or when an
explorer's choice to kill one among a group of harmless natives about to be executed is the necessary and sufficient condition of the
others' being spared, or when the driver of a runaway trolley can avoid killing five persons on one track only by killing one person on
another track. And topping all such tragic examples is the catastrophic situation where a nuclear war or some other
unmitigated disaster can be avoided only by infringing some innocent person's right to life.
Despite such cases, I shall argue that certain rights can be shown to be absolute. But first the concept of an
absolute right must be clarified. Suppose a 'clandestine group of political extremists have obtained an arsenal
of nuclear weapons; to prove that they have the weapons and know how to use them, they have kidnapped a
leading scientist, shown him the weapons, and then released him to make a public corroborative statement.
The terrorists have now announced that they will use the weapons against a designated large distant city
unless a certain prominent resident of the city, a young politically active lawyer named Abrams, tortures his
mother to death, this torturing to be carried out publicly in a certain way at a specified place and time in that city. Since the gang
members have already murdered several other prominent residents of the city, their threat is quite credible. Their declared motive is to
advance their cause by showing how powerful they are and by unmasking the moralistic pretensions of their political opponents. Ought
Abrams to torture his mother to death in order to prevent the threatened nuclear catastrophe? Might he not merely pretend to torture his
mother, so that she could then be safely hidden while the hunt for the gang members continued? Entirely apart from the fact that the
gang could easily pierce this deception, the main objection to the very raising of such questions is the moral one that they seem to hold
open the possibility Of acquiescing and participating in an unspeakably evil project. To inflict such extreme harm on one's mother would
be an ultimate act of betrayal; in performing or even contemplating the performance of such an action the son would lose all self-respect
and would regard his life as no longer worth having.~ A mother's right not to be tortured to death by her own son is
beyond any compromise. It is absolute. This absoluteness may be analyzed in several different interrelated dimensions, all
stemming from the supreme principle of morality: The principle requires respect for the rights of all persons to the necessary conditions
of human action, and this includes respect for the persons themselves as having the rational capacity to reflect on their purposes and to
control their behavior in the light of such reflection. The principle hence prohibits using any person merely as a means to the well-being
of other persons. For a son to torture his mother to death even to protect the lives of others would be an extreme violation of this
principle and hence of these rights, as would any attempt by others to force such an action. For this reason, the concept appropriate to it
is not merely 'wrong' but such others as 'despicable', 'dis-honourable', 'base', 'monstrous'. In the scale of moral modalities, such concepts
function as the contrary extremes of concepts like the supererogatory. What is supererogatory is not merely good or right but goes
beyond these in various ways; it includes saintly and heroic actions whose moral merit surpasses what is strictly required of agents. In
parallel fashion, what is base, dishonourable, or despicable is not merely bad or wrong but goes beyond these in moral demerit since it
subverts even the minimal worth or dignity both of its agent and of its recipient and hence the basic presuppositions of morality itself.
Just as the supererogatory is superlatively good, so the despicable is superlatively evil and diabolic, and its moral wrongness is so rotten
that a morally decent person ~rill not even .consider doing it. This is but another way of saying that the rights it would violate must
remain absolute. 6. There is, however, another side to this story. What of the thousands of innocent persons in the distant
city whose lives are imperiled by the threatened nuclear explosion? Don't they too have rights to life which,
because of their numbers, are far superior to the mother's right? May they not contend that while it is all very well for Abrams to
preserve his moral purity by not killing his mother, he has no right to purchase this at the expense of their lives, thereby treating them as
mere means to his ends and violating their own right~? Thus it may be argued that the morally correct description of the alternative
confronting Abrams is not simply that it is one of not violating or violating an innocent person's right to life, but rather not violating one
innocent person's right to life and thereby violating the right to life of thousands of other innocent persons through being partly
responsible for their deaths, or violating one innocent person's right to life and thereby protecting or fulfilling the right to life of
thousands of other innocent persons. We have here a tragic conflict of rights and an illustration of the heavy price exacted by moral
absolutism. The aggregative consequentialist who holds that that action ought always to be performed which maximizes utility or
minimizes disutility would maintain that in such a situation the lives of the thousands must be preferred.
An initial answer may be that terrorists who make such demands issue such threats cannot be trusted to keep their word not to drop the
bombs if the mother is tortured to death; and even if they now do keep their word, seceding in .this case would only lead to further
escalated demands and threats. It may also be argued that it is irrational to perpetrate a sure evil in order to forestall what is so far only a
possible or threatened evil. Philippa Foot has sagely commented on eases of this sort that if it is the son's duty to kill his mother in order
to save the lives of the many other innocent residents of the city, then anyone who wants us to do something we think wrong has only to
threaten that otherwise he himself will do something we think worse. Much depends, however, on the nature of the "wrong" and the
"worse". If someone threatens to commit suicide or to kill innocent hostages if we do not break our promise to do some relatively
J(E)DI 2010 27
unimportant action, breaking the promise would be the obviously right course, by the criterion of degrees of necessity for action. The special difficulty of
the present case stems from the fact that the conflicting rights are of the same supreme degree of importance.
It may be contended, however, that this whole answer, focusing on the probable outcome of obeying the terrorists' demands, is a consequentialist argument
and, as such, is not available to the absolutist who insists that Abrams must not torture his mother to death whatever the consequences. This contention
imputes to the absolutist a kind of indifference or even callousness to the sufferings of others that is not warranted by a correct understanding of his position.
He can be concerned about consequences so long as he does not regard them as possibly superseding or diminishing the right and duty he regards as
absolute. It is a matter of priorities. So long as the mother's right not to be tortured to death by her son is unqualifiedly respected, the absolutist can seek
ways to mitigate the threatened disastrous consequences and possibly to avert them altogether. A parallel case is found in " the theory of legal punishment:
the retributivist, while asserting that punishment must be meted out only to the persons who deserve it because of the crimes they have committed, may also
uphold punishment for its deterrent effect so long as the latter, consequentialist consideration is subordinated to and limited by the conditions of the former,
antecedentalist consideration. Thus the absolutist can accommodate at least part of the consequentialist's substantive concerns within the limits of his own
principle. Is any other answer available to the absolutist, one that reflects the core of his position? Various lines of argument may be used to show that in
refusing to torture his mother to death Abrams is not violating the rights of the multitudes of other residents who may die as a result, because he: is not
morally responsible for their deaths. Thus the absolutist can maintain that even if these others die they still have an absolute right to life because the
infringement of their right is not justified by the argument he upholds. At least three different distinctions may be adduced for this purpose. In the
unqualified form in which they have hitherto been presented, however, they are not successful in establishing the envisaged conclusion. One distinction is
between direct and oblique intention. When Abrams refrains from torturing his mother to death, he does not directly intend the many ensuing deaths of the
other inhabitants either as end or as means. These are only the foreseen but unintended side-effects of his action or, in this case, inaction, hence, he is not
morally responsible for those deaths. Apart from other difficulties with the doctrine of double effect, this distinction as so far stated does not serve to
exculpate Abrams. Consider some parallels. Industrialists who pollute the environment with poisonous chemicals and manufacturers who use carcinogenic
food additives do not directly intend the resulting deaths; these are only the unintended but foreseen side-effects of what they do directly intend, namely, to
provide profitable demand-fulfilling commodities. The entrepreneurs in question may even maintain that the enormous economic contributions they make.
to the gross national product outweigh in importance the relatively few deaths that regrettably occur. Still, since they have good reason to believe that deaths
will occur from causes under their control, the fact that they do not directly intend the deaths does not remove their causal and moral responsibility for them.
Isn't this also true of Abrams's relation to the deaths of the city's residents? A second distinction drawn by some absolutists is between killing and letting die.
This distinction is often merged with others with which it is not entirely identical, such as the distinctions between commission and omission, between
harming and not helping, between strict duties and generosity or supererogation, for the present discussion, however, the subtle differences between these
may be overlooked. The contention, then, is that in refraining from killing his mother, Abrams does not kill the many innocent persons who will die as a
result; he only. lets them die. But one does not have the same strict moral duty to help persons or to prevent their dying as one has not to kill them; one is
responsible only for what one does, not for what one merely allows to happen. Hence, Abrams is not morally responsible for the deaths he fails to prevent
by letting the many innocent persons die, so that he does not violate their rights to life. The difficulty with this argument is that the duties bearing on the
right to life include not only that one not kill innocent persons but also that one not le~ them die when one can prevent their dying a~ no comparable cost. If,
for example, one can rescue a drowning man by throwing him a rope, one has a moral duty to throw him the rope. failure to do so is morally culpable.
Hence, to this extent the son who lets the many residents die when he can prevent this by means within his power is morally responsible for their deaths. A
third distinction is between respecting other persons and avoiding bad consequences, respect for persons is an obligation so fundamental that ~ cannot be
overridden even to prevent evil consequences from befalling some~ persons. If such prevention requires an action whereby respect is withheld~ from
persons, then that action must not be performed, whatever the conk sequences. One-of the difficulties with this important distinction is that it is unclear.
May not respect be withheld, from a person by failing to avert from him some evil consequence? How can Abrams be held to respect the
thousands of innocent persons or their rights if he lets them die when he could have prevented this? The distinction also fails to provide
for degrees of moral urgency. One fails to respect a person if one lies to him or steals from him; but sometimes the only way to prevent
the death of one innocent person may be by stealing from or telling a lie to some other innocent person. In such a case, respect for one
person may lead to disrespect of a more serious kind for some other innocent person.. 7. None of the above distinctions, then, serves its
intended purpose of defending the absolutist against the consequentialist. They do not show that the son's refusal to torture his mother to
death does not violate the other persons' rights to life and that he is not morally responsible for their deaths. Nevertheless, the
distinctions can be supplemented in a way that does serve to establish these conclusions.
The required supplement is provided by the principle of the intervening action. According to this principle, when
there is a causal connection between some person A's performing some action (or inaction) X and some other
person C's incurring a certain harm Z, A's moral responsibility for Z is removed if, between X and Z, there
intervenes some other action ¥ of some person B who knows the relevant circumstances of his action and
who intends to produce Z or who produces Z through recklessness. The reason for this~ removal is that B's
intervening action Y is the more direct or proximate cause of Z and, unlike A's action (or inaction), ¥ is the
sufficient condition of Z as it actually occurs. X An example of this principle may help to show its
connection with the absolutist thesis. Martin Luther King Jr. was repeatedly told that because he led
demonstrations in support of civil rights, he was morally responsible for the disorders, riots, and deaths that
ensued and that were shaking the American republic to its foundations. By the principle of the intervening
action, however, it was King's opponents who were responsible because their intervention operated as the sufficient
conditions of the riots and injuries. King might also have replied that the Republic would not be worth saving if the price that had to be
paid was the violation of the civil rights of black Americans. As for the rights of the other Americans to peace ~and order, the reply
would be that these rights cannot justifiably be secured at the price of the rights of blacks, It follows from the principle, of the
intervening action that-it is not the son but rather the terrorists who are morally as well as causally responsible for
the many deaths that do or may ensue in his refusal to torture his mother to death. The important point is not that he lets these persons
die rather than kills them, or that he does not harm them but only fails to help them, or that he intends their deaths only obliquely but not
directly. The point is rather that it is only through the intervening lethal actions of the terrorists that his refusal eventuates in the many
deaths. Since the moral responsibility is not the son's, it does not affect his moral duty not to torture his mother to death, so that her
correlative right remains absolute.
J(E)DI 2010 28
A2: Dirty Hands

Dirty hand thinking slips into rationalization for murder—subsidies kill animals “others”
for our own good
Michael McDonald, Chair of Applied Ethics at the University of British Columbia, 2000
[Cruelty & Deception: The Controversy Over Dirty Hans in Politics p. 195-196]
Nevertheless, especially with bloody hands, it is important to distinguish between two cases. The first is one
in which the blood on the hands politicians, business leaders, or others is the blood of those to whom they
have a direct contractual or fiduciary relationship. That is, the blood is our blood, where our refers to us and
our fellow citizens, employees, shareholders, partners, etc. The second is the case in which leaders get their
hands bloody to benefit us; the blood on their hands is that of outsiders and not insiders. In the case in which
the hands of leaders are covered with the blood their followers, I will assume that their power and authority as leader
depends significantly on the trust given them by their followers. Now one possibility is that there is not a real, but only an
apparent, betrayal of trust. On Baler's trust test, followers might not withdraw their trust even though they knew that the
blood was literally their own or that of their fellow citizens, workers, comrades-in-arms, etc. Altruism, self-interest, or a
combination of the two could motivate such a dirty-hands escape clause in t social contract between leaders and
followers. Thus, in the event of a maritime disaster, passengers would want the ship's captain and crew to save least some
of them rather than letting all perish. That is, there may be bu into some fiduciary relationships emergency or catastrophe
clauses which allow a partial, albeit bloody, exit for some, but not all, of us. But this exit may well not be open. A leader
might not have won, a: would not now retain, the allegiance of followers if these knew that the leader intended to
sacrifice them or their comrades. Indeed, the evidence might be overwhelming that they gave no such license. What is to
be s~ then? I don't think appeals to higher goods, or better overall consequence suffice. After all, such a leader's power is
in large part constituted by trust. In this situation, bloody hands really are a betrayal of the trust relationship because the
leader has no moral warrant for bloodying his hands. But what about the other case--the one in which the proposal is to
let leaders cover their hands with the blood of others, i.e., of non-followers outsiders to the social unit in question? Let
me assume that neither lead, nor followers collectively have a fight to the outsiders' blood (e.g., it is in self-defense or a
just war). So if our leader does this, he acts wrongfully. It is not clear that this is an act of betrayal, for it is possible that
the bloody deed may fulfill rather than betray the bonds between leader and followers. Alternatively, it may break these
bonds. Followers as moral individuals might not have given their trust had they known that it was to be used such a
bloody way--even though this may well be to their individual a collective advantage. So in order to decide if the blood of
innocent others is on the heads hands of all or some of the people as well as on their leaders, we need to look at the nature
of the trust relationship as it historically unfolds between leaders and followers. This case of bloody hands is genuinely
unlike the other cases discussed in this paper. In them, the choice of a dirty-handed option by a leader at least raises the
possibility of the abuse of trust or the destruction of reciprocity. However, when the blood on the hands of the leader is
that of outsiders, for insiders it may well be the fulfillment of trust and reciprocity. The dark specter of ethnic, class,
ideological, or religious warfare falls into this category when, for example, group solidarity manifests itself
in the removal and murder of minorities. In this paper, I have expressed my disquiet with dirty- and bloody-
handed leaders. Part of my disquiet is based on scepticism about the extent to which the dirty-handed option
is the right thing to do, all things considered. I think it is all too easy to slip from the dirty-hands "dilemma"
to the dirty-hands "rationalization." The main source of my disquiet is with the violtion of the reciprocity and
trust that followers place in their leaders. In the case of bloody hands, my worries are, if anything, even
greater, for the fulfillment of trust in the cause of evil must never be regarded as morally justifiable.
J(E)DI 2010 29
A2: Predictions Good

You should distrust scenarios because they weave complex and unstated variables into
plausible-sounding stories. Tests involving thousands of forecasters prove that even
professionals routinely ignore realistic probabilities for causal narratives when told a good
story.
Tetlock, 2005 (Philip, Ph.D. (Psych), Yale, Professor of Leadership at Berkeley Haas School of Business,
Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? , pp. 190-4)
Chapter 7 reports the first systematic studies of the impact of a widely deployed debiasing tool, scenario exercises, on the judgmental
performance of political experts in real-world settings.1 Such exercises rest on an intuitively appealing premise: the value of breaking
the tight grip of our preconceptions on our views of what could have been or might yet be. I am also convinced from personal experience
that such exercises, skillfully done, have great practical value in contingency planning in business, government, and the military. But the
data reported in this chapter make it difficult to argue that such exercises—standing alone—improve either the empirical accuracy or
logical coherence of expert's predictions. For scenario
exercises have no net effect on the empirical accuracy and
logical coherence of the forecasts of roughly one-half of our sample (the hedgehogs) and an adverse net
effect on the accuracy and coherence of the forecasts of the other half (the foxes). The more theory-
driven hedgehogs find it easier to reject proliferating scenario branching points summarily, with a brusque "It
just ain't gonna happen." The more open-minded foxes find it harder to resist invitations to consider
strange or dissonant possibilities—and are thus in greater danger of being lured into wild goose
chases in which they fritter away scarce resources contemplating possibilities they originally rightly dismissed. For the first time in
this book, foxes become more susceptible than hedgehogs to a serious bias: the tendency to assign so much likelihood to so many
possibilities that they become entangled in self-contradictions. THE POWER OF IMAGINATION In the last fifteen years, there has
been an intriguing convergence between experimental efforts to correct judgmental biases and the entrepreneurial efforts of scenario
consultants to improve contingency planning in business and government. Experimental psychologists have found that many judgmental
shortcomings can be traced to a deeply ingrained feature of human nature: our tendency to apply more stringent standards to evidence
that challenges our prejudices than to evidence that reinforces those prejudices. These psychologists have also stressed the value of
busting up this cozy arrangement. And they have had some success in correcting overconfidence by asking people to look for reasons
that cut against the grain of their current expectations,2 in correcting belief perseverance by highlighting double standards for evaluating
evidence,3 and in correcting hindsight bias4 by asking people to imagine ways in which alternative outcomes could have come about. Of
course, these demonstrations have all been in controlled laboratory conditions. The results tell us little about the mistakes people make in
natural settings or about the adverse side effects of treatments.
Reassuringly, scenario consultants—who cannot be quite so readily dismissed as detached from reality—hold
strikingly similar views on the causes of, and cures for, bad judgments They appeal to clients to stretch their
conceptions of the possible, to imagine a wider range of futures than they normally would, and then to
construct full-fledged stories that spell out the "drivers" that, under the right conditions, could propel our
world into each alternative future. Scenario writers know that it is not enough to enumerate pallid possibilities. They must
make it easy "to transport" ourselves into possible worlds, to get a feeling for the challenges we would face. They urge us to abandon the
illusion of certainty: to adopt the stance "I am prepared for whatever happens." Scenario consultants should not, of course, be the final
judges of their own effectiveness. When pressed for proof, the consultants have thus far offered only anecdotes, invariably self-
promoting ones, drawn from a massive file drawer that holds an unknown mix of more or less successful test cases. Their favorite
success story is Royal Dutch Shell in the early 1970s. The Shell group was looking for factors that could affect the future price of oil.
They suspected that the Arabs would demand higher prices for their oil, but they could not say when. But they needed the ability to read
the mind of Anwar Sadat, or a spy in the Egyptian high command, to predict the Yom Kippur war in October 1973. They knew only that
storm clouds loomed on the horizon. The United States was exhausting its known reserves. American demand for oil was growing. And
OPEC was flexing its muscles. A large fraction of the world reserves was controlled by Middle Eastern regimes that bitterly resented
Western support for Israel. One of their scenarios now sounds eerily prescient: massive price shocks that transformed the oil business
and contributed to the "stagflation" of the 1970s. Schwartz claims that mentally preparing Shell managers for this medium-term future
gave them a critical advantage against their less imaginative competitors. Although scenario writers eschew prediction, they take
parental pride when one of their progeny proves prophetic. In addition to the bull's-eye OPEC scenario, the Shell group advertises its
success in anticipating, in 1983 when U.S.-Soviet tensions were running high, radical reform inside the Soviet Union. The Shell futurists
persuaded top executives to consider the possibility that the Soviet Union would open its massive untapped resources for development
by multinational companies, that the cold war would thaw, and that Europeans would be willing to buy most of their natural gas from the
soon-to-be-former Soviet Union. The Shell team also advanced a scenario in which OPEC unity fractured as new supplies came on-line
and as demand for oil remained flat. They can thus claim to have foreseen not only the rise of OPEC in the 1970s but also its partial fall
in the 1980s. These bull's-eyes are less impressive, however, when we remember that consultants write so many scenarios
that they are guaranteed to be right once per gig. For instance, James Ogilvy and colleagues constructed
three scenarios for China in 2022 that covered a broad waterfront of possibilities.8 The first envisioned a
prosperous, democratic China that becomes, in absolute terms, the world's largest economy and boasts of a
per capita income equivalent to today's Taiwan. The second depicted a China that is dominated by an
oligarchic network of extended families and is so beset by regional factions that it teeters on the edge of civil
J(E)DI 2010 30
war. A third anticipated corruption and inequitable distribution of wealth becoming so pervasive that a
populist military leader seizes control (after conquering oil-rich territory in Russia's Far East). The authors
advised investors to test the viability of their business plans against each scenario because none could be ruled out. There
are good reasons to be wary here. Portfolio diversification theory in finance would not command such wide professional acclaim if it had
not advanced beyond the folk aphorism "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." And scenario consultants cannot expect more than
fleeting fame if their advice reduces to "anything is possible" so "be prepared for anything." There is also the concern that advocates of
scenario methods make good livings hawking their wares and have little incentive to explore the negative side effects of leading people
down too many overembellished paths. Absent the regulatory equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration to set standards for
cognitive self-improvement products, it is hard to say whether consumers are wasting their hard-earned dollars on scenario snake oi1.9
There is, then, a need for a disinterested assessment. The starting point for our assessment is support theory, the final work of the
extraordinary psychologist, Amos Tversky. Support theory posits the likelihoods people attach to outcomes to be monotonic functions of
the relative strength of the arguments people can muster for those outcomes. If I feel that the arguments for one set of possibilities are
five times more powerful than those for another, that 5:1 ratio will translate into a higher subjective probability (how much higher must
be estimated empirically). More controversially, the theory also posits that people are quite oblivious to the complex
possibilities implicit in characterizations of events and, as a result, prone to violate a core assumption of formal
probability theory: the "extensionality" principle. Odd though it sounds, the expectation is that people will often judge the likelihood of a
set of outcomes to be less than the sum of the likelihoods of each member of that set. "Unpacking" stimulates us to imagine sub-
possibilities, and arguments for those sub-possibilities, that we would have otherwise overlooked. Thus, unpacking a set of events (e.g.,
victory in a baseball game) into its disjoint components, A1 U A2 (e.g., victory by one run or victory by more than one run), typically
increases both its perceived support and subjective probability.10 Support theory raises a warning flag: people should quickly become
discombobulated, and routinely violate extensionality, when they do what scenario consultants tell them to do: decompose abstract sets
of possibilities—say, all possible ways a leader might fall—into increasingly specific and easily imagined sub-possibilities that specify
in scenario-like detail the various ways in which that outcome might happen.11 According to Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky,
such confusion derives from the difficulty that people have in reconciling the tension between "inside" and "outside"
approaches to forecasting-12 Unpacking scenarios encourages people to adopt an inside view: to
immerse themselves in each case and judge the plausibility of pathways to outcomes by drawing on
their detailed case-specific knowledge of the forces at work. People usually find more support for
these case-specific predictions than they would have if they had based their judgments on an outside
view, if they had stepped back from the details of individual cases and grouped them into summary
categories (base rates). This is because the outside view is anchored in external referents that stop
people from being swept away by "good stories." For example, revolutions are rare events even in
the "zone of turbulence," and the outside view reminds us that, no matter how good a story one can
tell about impending regime collapse in North Korea or Saudi Arabia, one should adjust one's
inside perspective likelihood estimates by outside perspective base rates for comparable outcomes in sets of comparable
cases. Of course, in the end we might decide that confusion is a price worth paying if scenario exercises shield us from cognitive biases
such as overconfidence and belief perseverance. The best way to combat powerful theory-driven biases could be by activating
countervailing biases rooted in our imaginative ability to suspend disbelief and to mobilize support for even far-fetched possibilities.13
DEBIASING JUDGMENTS OF POSSIBLE FUTURES In the 1990s, we conducted a series of small-scale
experiments designed to assess whether the hypothesized benefits of scenario exercises outweighed the
hypothesized costs. The largest two of these experiments drew participants from the forecasting exercises
on Canada and Japan (for details, see Methodological Appendix). Canadian Futures Scenarios This experiment
compared the likelihood judgments that expert and dilettante, fox and hedgehog, forecasters made before they did any scenario
exercises, after they completed scenario exercises, and finally, after they completed "reflective equilibrium" exercises that required
reconciling logical contradictions between their pre- and postjudgments by ensuring their probabilities summed to 1.0. Figure 7.1 lays
out the scenarios that were judged (a) possible futures involving either a continuation of the status quo (federal and provincial
governments agree to continue disagreeing over constitutional prerogatives) or a strengthening of Canadian unity (in which agreements
are reached); (b) possible futures in which a secessionist referendum in Quebec succeeds, and controversy shifts to the terms of divorce.
replicated the well-established finding that "merely imagining" outcomes
Figure 7.2 shows that we
increases the perceived likelihood of those outcomes: pre-scenario judgments of probability were uniformly smaller than
post-scenario judgments.14 We also broke new ground. We discovered that the imagination effect was greatest under three conditions:
(a) forecasters were experts rather than dilettantes; (b) forecasters were imagining departures from the status quo (the breakup of Canada
rather than continuation of the status quo; (c) forecasters were foxes rather than hedgehogs. These results took us a bit aback. Our guess
has been that expertise would make it easier to winnow out far-fetched scenarios. But the net effect of expertise—especially expertise
coupled to an imaginative cognitive style—was
to make it easier to get swept away by "change scenarios" that
prime rich networks of cause-effect associations. It is hard to make a convincing correspondence or
coherence case that these scenario exercises improved judgment. If we adopt the correspondence definition
that good judges assign higher probabilities to things that happen than to things that do not, the exercises
clearly led forecasters astray. Before the exercise, experts judged continuation of Confederation more
likely than disintegration; afterward, they flipped. If we adopt the coherence definition that good judges must
be logically consistent, it gets even harder to discern the benefits of scenario exercises. Before the exercise,
binary complementarity held: the judged probability of Canada holding together plus that of Canada falling
apart summed to nearly exactly 1.0 for both experts and dilettantes. After the exercise, the average
J(E)DI 2010 31
probability of these futures summed to 1.58 for all experts and 2.09 for fox experts. Probability
judgments became increasingly sub-additive and in violation of the "extensionality" norm of
probability theory. Why do we find this? Unpacking is mentally disruptive and scenarios are extreme
forms of unpacking. One takes a vague abstraction, all possible paths to Canada's disintegration,
and explores increasingly specific contingencies. Quebec secedes and the rest of Canada fragments:
the Maritimes—geographically isolated—clings to Ontario, but Alberta flirts with the United States
rather than bonding with the other western provinces that have broken with Ontario. One knows in
the back of one's mind that the cumulative likelihood of all these contingent linkages holding true
is vanishingly small. But the images are vivid, the plotlines plausible, and it becomes increasingly
taxing to keep all the other logical possibilities in focus.
J(E)DI 2010 32
A2: Predictions Good

We can NOT be sure about their impact—their knowledge in indirect, and it might be
biased or wrong
Nick Bostrom, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford and Milan Cirkovic, Professor of
Cosmology at University of Novi Sad, 2008
[Global Catastrophic Risks ed. Bostrom p. 19]
In assessing the probability, we must consider not only how unlikely the outcome seems given our best
current models but also the possibility that our best models and calculations might be flawed in some as-yet
unrealized way. In doing so we must guard against overconfidence bias (compare Chapter 5 on biases).
Unless we ourselves are technically expert, we must also take into account the possibility that the experts on
whose judgments we rely might be consciously or unconsciously biased. For example, the physicists who
possess the expertise needed to assess the risks from particle physics experiments are part of a professional
community that has a direct stake in the experiments going forward. A layperson might worry that the
incentives faced by the experts could lead themw to err on the side of downplaying the risks. Alternatively,
some experts might be tempted by the media attention they could get by playing up the risks. The issue of
how much and in which circumstances to trust risk estimates by experts is an important one, and it arises
quite generally with regard to many of the risks covered in this book.
J(E)DI 2010 33
2AC/1AR Morality Cards

Animal liberation is a moral imperative.
Steven Best, Chair of Philosophy at UT-EP, no date given
[http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/ARNewEnlightenment.htm]
So, as for those who have burned their paper-thin veneer of detached, objective scholarly commitment and
ripped off the straightjacket of academic normalization, I stand alone. Or at least among a crowd large
enough to dance on the head of a pin. Some academics have written about animal and earth liberation issues,
and some defend animal liberation tactics amidst beer-induced bravado, but few make the transition from
scholarship of animal liberation to public advocacy, which I think is crucial. And of course I have in mind
here a particularly type of peddle-to-the-metal advocacy that flouts corporate/speciesist laws and defends
pretty much whatever it takes to break down the doors that hold animals captive to the most brutal bastards
Satan could conjure up, including criminal action and sabotage tactics – and of course the ALF will emblazon the night with a fire bomb but not harm a hair on a vivisector’s head, apropos to
their nonviolent credo. But the peaceniks regurgitate the repressive and speciesist discourse of the corporate-state complex and demonize the tough tactics all-too often needed to liberate an animal as “terrorist” or
“violence.” But no sooner do they bray these platitudes of betrayal do they sink in the quicksand of hypocrisy and inconsistency. For any schoolchild knows that sometimes sabotage and even “violence” are necessary to
stop evil.
Let’s face facts: academics on the whole are a cowardly bunch of self-serving narcissists, spineless sycophants who eschew controversy and pathetically ingratiate themselves with administrators and bureaucrats. First,
they are normalized into silence and conformity in order to win their bid for tenure, a highly political process that dispatches iconoclasts, non-conformists, and proponents of radical or controversial ideas. After enduring
5 years of submissiveness and self-repression, newly tenured professors theoretically have the right to speak their minds freely, but by then they often are thoroughly conditioned and co-opted, and there are always
further rewards and punishments dangled in front of them, meted out according to the speech-acts they choose. These superfluous gasbags and oxygen thieves could possibly redeem themselves if they began each day by
“Cowardice asks the question: Is it safe? Expediency

studying the spine-shivering words of Dr. Martin Luther King (who didn’t fear losing his life, let alone a job):
asks the question: Is it politic? Vanity asks the question: Is it popular? But conscience asks the question: Is it
right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but
one must take it simply because it is right.”
The speciest line is arbitrary—as demonstrated by animal psychology
Animal Liberation Front no date given

[http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/animalrights.htm]
1. You are equating animals and humans, when, in fact, humans and animals differ greatly.
Reply: We are not saying that humans and other animals are equal in every way. For example, we
are not saying that dogs and cats can do calculus, or that pigs and cows enjoy poetry. What we are
saying is that, like humans, many other animals are psychological beings, with an experiential welfare
of their own. In this sense, we and they are the same. In this sense, therefore, despite our many
differences, we and they are equal.
Exploiting animals is a moral choice—not an evolutionary necessity

Brian Luke, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dayton, 2007
[Brutal: Manhood and the Exploitation of Animals p. 5]
Complementing the picture of a sympathetic barrier between humans and other animals is the image of a natural competition between
species. Animal
exploiters commonly justify their actions by portraying life as a struggle in which
only those who are willing and able to aggress against others can live and thrive. According to this perspective,
people have survived to this point because humanity, particularly male humanity, has developed a predatory nature.I argue in chapter 2
that this defense cannot withstand scrutiny. Men's psychology and' physiology are not those of a natural
predator but of something rather more ambiguous. We have the capacity to destroy other animals; but we
tend to feel uneasy about it. We can live on animal-based foods, but in modern society we do better overall the more we
reduce the amount of animal fat in our diets. In general we are very capable of thriving without making use of large-
scale industries of animal exploitation such as hunting, animal farming, and animal experimentation. The reality is that the
human exploitation of animals is freely chosen, not a necessity imposed by our inherent nature.
J(E)DI 2010 34

Of course our account of values comes from humans, but that does NOT mean we should
only give values to humans.
Keekok Lee, Visiting Chair in Philosophy at Lancaster University, 1999
[The Natural and the Artefactual p. 247-249]
The first may be called 'axiological anthropocentricism,' the view that only humans are
(intrinsically) valuable. The second may be called 'existential anthropocentrism,' the view that
humans who alone can be participants in communication as moral subjects--are necessarily
socially and normatively constituted. The former is incompatible with a nonanthropocentric
account of nature; the latter is perfectly compatible with such an account.-~7 Existential
anthropocentrism is, undoubtedly, correct; all accounts of nature are necessarily socially constructed in
the sense that humans who articulate them are themselves socially and normatively constituted beings. Like
the thesis closely related to it, namely, that all accounts of nature are anthropogenic as they emanate
from humans, it is true but innocuous, provided it is not understood to mean that all knowledge is
reducible to the sociology of knowledge, to embrace philosophical or normative relativism, or that reality or
nature does not exist outside the activities of such socially and normatively constituted beings and
their representations of reality or nature. In other words, all accounts of nature are necessarily anthropogenic
as well as anthropocentric in the existential sense, but not necessarily anthropocentric in the axiological sense
just identified. But Vogel does not endorse axiological anthropocentrism, only existential anthropocentrism.
Animals eating other animals is irrelevant—we still have a capacity to make a moral choice
ALF no date given

[http://www.animalliberationfront.com/ALFront/FAQs/ARFAQ.htm]
#36 In Nature, animals kill and eat each other; so why should it be wrong for humans? Most animals who
kill for food could not survive if they did not do so. That is not the case for us. We are better off not eating
meat. Also, we do not look to other animals for standards in other areas, so why should we in this case?
Predatory animals must kill to eat. Humans, in contrast, have a choice; they need not eat meat to survive.
Humans differ from nonhuman animals in being capable of conceiving of, and acting in accordance with, a
system of morals; therefore, we cannot seek moral guidance or precedent from nonhuman animals. The AR
philosophy asserts that it is just as wrong for a human to kill and eat a sentient nonhuman as it is to kill and
eat a sentient human. To demonstrate the absurdity of seeking moral precedents from nonhuman animals,
consider the following variants of the question: "In Nature, animals steal food from each other; so why
should it be wrong for humans [to steal]?" "In Nature, animals kill and eat humans; so why should it be
wrong for humans [to kill and eat humans]?" --DG SEE ALSO: #23, #34, #64
J(E)DI 2010 35

The language or intelligence standard is arbitrary and justifies exterminating coma
victims.
David Meyer no date given

[http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/PhilosophyOfAR.htm]
Another justification is that humans are more intelligent. This seems true but it is humans who define
the meaning of intelligence. In the same way that we experience difficulty finding a measure of
intelligence that is valid across human cultural lines, it is impossible to find a standard measure of
overall intelligence which we can apply to creatures with whom we cannot easily communicate. If we
define intelligence as living harmoniously and in a sustainable balance with our environment, humans
would rank among the least intelligent species. There are things we do as a species such as destroying our
living environment and ourselves through war, greed, and hate, that are highly unintelligent. We know of no
other animal that does this. Using general intelligence to define moral standing also creates a problem
regarding those humans who, as a result of accident or birth defect, are rendered extremely
unintelligent. If raw intelligence is the litmus test for who can be exploited, the mentally retarded and
brain-injured should join the ranks of those in the circuses and on the scientists' experiment tables
(they once were, but we've moved beyond that). People often cite more specific aspects of intelligence as a
distinction between humans and other animals. None of these distinctions are absolute. Humans are capable
of abstract thought. We can make no true judgment of the ultimate level of cognitive capabilities animals
possess. We cannot speak their language. People with companion cats and dogs know that these animals can
clearly think and reason. Time and Newsweek magazines featured cover stories on the mounting scientific
evidence that many animals are capable of thought, reasoning, and even intentional deception.
IT’S HYPOCRITICAL AND IRRATIONAL TO SAY THAT ANIMALS DO NOT HAVE

THE SAME RIGHTS AS HUMANS.
Taylor ‘03
Angus, philosopher of Animal Rights and professor at the University of Victoria, Animals and Ethics: an
overview of the philosophical debate, “Do Animals Have Moral Rights?” 6.24.2010. p. (61)
Salt’s book was later to make a strong impression on Peter Singer, even though the utilitarian Singer is a not
a believer in moral rights as such. What is important for Salt is not the issue of whether ethics should employ
the language of rights. What concerns him is whether we have any justification for treating animals in a
fundamentally different manner than we treat human beings. Animals, says Salt, have moral rights if humans
do. By this he means that to ascribe rights to humans but not to animals is to be logically inconsistent. For
instance, if we claim that because suffering is generally to be avoided human beings must not be made to
suffer unnecessarily, we cannot then turn around and without further ado claim that it is acceptable to make
non-humans suffer unnecessarily. If we claim that the capacity for self-awareness gives those human beings
who have it a right to life, we cannot then turn around and say that self-aware non-humans have no right to
life. We must apply our moral principles (whatever they may be) consistently if we are not to be irrational.
J(E)DI 2010 36

Sentience and rationality do NOT make humans special—all life is of equal value
Nicholas Agar, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Victoria University, 2001

[Life’s Intrinsic Value p. 71-73]
Goodpaster (1979) has this to say about the place of sentience in the biological world: "Biologically, it appears that sentience
is
an adaptive characteristic of living organisms that provides them with a better capacity to anticipate, and so avoid, threats to
life. This at least suggests, though of course it does not prove, that the capacities to suffer and enjoy are ancillary
to something more important rather than tickets to considerability in their own right." The human capacity for
pain and pleasure did not arise as an end in itself. We get biological priorities right if we say that it is of
secondary importance to one or other or some combination of autopoietic and naturally selected ends. We can parallel this
type of biocentric argument with Charles Darwin's response to utilitarianism.16 Happiness
should not be morality's end, said Darwin, as to think so was to invert the proper evolutionary
relationship between survival and reproduction on the one hand and happiness on the other. Emotional states
such as happiness and suffering were of value only insofar as they promoted the survival prospects of community members.'7 In parallel
with Darwin's charge that Mill gets the wrong way around the relationship between happiness and survival and reproduction,
biocentrists accuse various exponents of the psychological view of inverting the proper
biofunctional relationship between the goods illuminated by the biocentric approach and
sentience or rationality. Biocentrists are not of one mind on the issue of what strength of ethical conclusion to draw from this
observation. The less thoroughgoing option is to insist that while biological goods must be accepted as the universal requirement for
value, the presence of rationality or sentience adds value. Goodpaster (1978) leaves this option open by distinguishing between moral
considerabiity and moral significance. Though a human and an ant cannot be distinguished in terms of their moral considerability, we
are permitted to say that being folk psychological will make the human more morally significant.'8
This compromise position sits uneasily with the general tenor of Goodpaster's biological argument. Compare the reasoning with Taylor's
more thoroughgoing approach. He advocates a biocentric egalitarianism rejecting any moral specialness for sentience-assisted pursuit of
fundamental biological ends. Had the environment posed different challenges to our distant ancestors, then armored plates or acute night
vision might have evolved in the place of rationality. These are all means to identical biological ends. Taylor complains of any attempt
to reserve a special place for mental traits: It
is not difficult to recognize a begging of the question.
Humans are claiming human superiority from a strictly human point of view, that is, from a
point of view in which the good of humans is taken as the standard of judgement. All we
need to do is look at the capacities of nonhuman animals (or plants for that matter) from the judgement of
their good to find a contrary judgement of superiority. The speed of the cheetah, for example, is a sign of its
superiority to humans when considered from the standpoint of the good of its species.'
J(E)DI 2010 37
A2: Counterplan Solves Ethics

The appeal to extrinsic impacts like [ ] means you as a judge do not achieve
the shift in ethical frames necessary to overcome speciesism.
Katherine Perdlo, PhD, 2007
[Journal of Critical Animal Studies 5.1]
Animal rights campaigners disagree as to whether empirical arguments, based on facts such as those
concerning nutrition, or ethical arguments, based on values such as the wrongness of hurting sentient
beings, have greater validity and potential effectiveness. I want to address the issue in terms of “extrinsic”
and “intrinsic” arguments – a distinction that corresponds only partly to the empirical and ethical couplet – and to make the case
that animal rights campaigns are most effectively advanced through intrinsic appeals. “Extrinsic
arguments” are those that seek to promote an aim and its underlying principle by appealing to
considerations politically, historically, or logically separable from that aim and that principle. “Intrinsic
arguments” appeal to considerations within and inseparable from the aim and principle. In this case, the aim is animal liberation and the
For example, the claim that vegetarianism (ideally, veganism) helps
principle is the moral equality of species.
reduce animal suffering is an intrinsic argument, but it can also be justified on extrinsic grounds
through appeal to its environmental benefits. You can separate vegetarianism from the benefit to the environment,
since it is logically possible that the one might not lead to the other, and environmentalism is an independent political cause. But you
cannot separate vegetarianism from the benefit to animals, since the word vegetarianism, whatever its etymology, is used to mean
abstention from meat or from all animal products. You might say that “benefit to animals” is an independent issue in that there are
other means of ameliorating animal suffering besides vegetarianism, or you might promote vegetarianism only for human health
benefits. But in terms of animal rights campaigning, vegetarianism is advanced for the intrinsic reasons that it benefits the animals
themselves.The case for intrinsic arguments rests not on a concern for ideological purity, but on the
need to reach a public that, although partly responsive to our ideas in some areas, has stopped far short of
the acceptance needed to make significant breakthroughs. At some point in the encounter with
us, the reaction sets in of either, “Yes, it’s terrible, but it’s justified if it saves human lives,” or, “Yes,
it’s terrible and unjustifiable, but we have more important [i.e. human] things to worry about.”
We need to tackle speciesism head-on, instead of relying on less challenging extrinsic
arguments – “widely-accepted and existing frames” in Yates’s (2006) formulation – which tacitly
consign “animal rights” and its policy demands to a marginal, indeed “extreme,” position.
Besides disowning animal rights, extrinsic arguments contain inconsistent or evasive
implications that can leave the audience doubtful and confused without being able to pin down what is wrong.
It is true that extrinsic arguments have had some positive effect. If, for non-animal rights reasons, even one person has turned vegan or
decided to oppose vivisection, while another has taken a small step in the right direction, such as by giving up “red meat,” there are
nonetheless 2! ! benefits for animals and the planet. But what
is truly needed to free billions of animals is a
qualitative transformation in people’s thinking. Without a moral paradigm shift, the public
may never be motivated to overcome either its own self-interest in using animals or governments’ aggressive protection of
animal-abusing industries.
J(E)DI 2010 38
A2: Counterplan Solves Ethics

Justifications not centered on the intrinsic dignity of nature destroy your ability to
overcome speciesism.
J. Baird Callicott, Professor of Philosphy at UNT, 2002

[Environmental Ethics p. 548-550]
Bryan Norton, another environmental antiphilosopher, thinks that theoretical environmental ethics is not only an irrelevant subterfuge,
but that it is also downright pernicious. Environmental ethicists arguing with one another about whether nature has intrinsic as well as
instrumental value and about whether intrinsic value is objective or subjective divide environmentalists into deep and shallow camps.
While these two camps spend precious time and energy criticizing one another, their common enemy, the hydra-headed forces of
environmental destruction, remains unopposed by a united and resolute counterforce. But according to Norton a long and
wide anthropocentrism "converges" on the same environmental policies-the preservation of biological
diversity, for example-as nonanthropocentrism. Hence the intellectual differences between anthropocentrists and
nonanthropocentrists, deep ecologists and reform environmentalists are, practically speaking, otiose. Environmental philosophers, in
Norton's view, should therefore cease spinning nonanthropocentric theories of the intrinsic value of nature and, as Norton himself does,
concentrate instead on refining environmental policy. Norton opts for anthropocentrism because it is the more conservative alternative.
Most people are anthropocentrists to begin with, and when the instrumental value of a whole and healthy environment to both present
and future generations of humans is fully accounted, anthropocentrism, he believes, is sufficient to support the environmental policy
agenda. 3 Norton's"convergence hypothesis," however, is dead wrong. If all environmental values are
anthropocentric and instrumental, then they have to compete head-to-head with the economic
values derived from converting rain forests to lumber and pulp, savannahs to cattle pasture, and so on. Environmentalists,
in other words, must show that preserving biological diversity is of greater instrumental value to present and future generations than
lucrative timber extraction, agricultural conversion, hydroelectric empoundment, mining, and so on. For this simple reason, a persuasive
philosophical case for the intrinsic value of nonhuman natural entities and nature as a whole would make a huge practical difference.
Warwick Fox explains why. Granting an entity intrinsic value would not imply "that it cannot be interfered with under any
circumstances."' Believing, as we do, that human beings are intrinsically valuable does not imply that human beings ought never be
uprooted, imprisoned, put at grave risk, or even deliberately killed. Intrinsically valuable human beings may-ethically may-be made to
suffer these and other insults with sufficient justification. Therefore, Fox points out, the mere fact that moral agents must be able to jus-
recognizing the intrinsic
tify their actions in regard to their treatment of entities that are intrinsically valuable means that
value of the nonhuman world has a dramatic effect upon the framework of environmental
debate and decision-making. If the nonhuman world is only considered to be instrumentally valuable then people are
permitted to use and otherwise interfere with any aspect of it for whatever reasons they wish (i.e., no justification is required). If anyone
objects to such interference then, within this framework of reference, the onus is clearly on the person who objects to justify why it is
more useful to humans to leave that aspect of the nonhuman world alone. If, however, the nonhuman world is considered to be
intrinsically valuable then the onus shifts to the person who wants to interfere with it to justify why they should be allowed to do so:
anyone who wants to interfere with any entity that is intrinsically valuable is morally obliged to be able to offer a sufficient justification
for their actions. Thus recognizing the intrinsic value of the nonhuman world shifts the onus of justification from the person who wants
to protect the nonhuman world to the person who wants to interfere with it-and that, in itself, represents a fundamental shift in the terms
of environmental debate and decisionmaking.5 Just as Sayre seems to think of moral norms as hanging alone in an intellectual void, so
Norton seems to think of environmental policies in the same way. We environmentalists just
happen to have a policy agenda-saving endangered species, preserving biodiversity in all its forms, lowering CO2
emissions, etc. To rationalize these policies-to sell them to the electorate and their representatives-is the intellectual task, if there is any.
(Much of Norton's research for his book, Unity Among Environmentalists, consisted of interviewing the Washington based lobbyists for
"big ten" environmental groups.Such cynicism may be characteristic of lobbyists who are hired to pitch a
policy, but starting with a policy and looking for persuasive reasons to support it is not how sincere environmentalists outside the
Beltway actually think.) People
just don't adopt a policy like they decide which color is their
favorite. They adopt it for what seems to them to be good reasons. Reasons come first,
policies second, not the other way around. Most people, of course, do not turn to philosophers for something to
believe-as if they didn't at all know what to think and philosophers can and should tell them. Rather, philosophers such as Thoreau,
Muir, Leopold, and Roiston give voice to the otherwise inchoate and articulate thoughts and feelings in our changing cultural Zeitgeist.
A maximally stretched anthropocentrism may, as Norton argues, rationalize the environmental policy agenda, but anthropocentrism may
no longer ring true. That is, the claim that all and only human beings have intrinsic value may not be consistent with a more general
evolutionary and ecological worldview. I should think that contemporary
environmental philosophers would
want to give voice and form to the still small but growing movement that supports environmental
policies for the right reasons-which, as Fox points out, also happen to be the strongest reasons. Granted, we may not have
the leisure to wait for a majority to come over to a new woridview and a new nonanthropocentric, holistic environmental ethic. We
environmentalists have to reach people where they are, intellectually speaking, right now. So we might persuade Jews, Christians, and
J(E)DI 2010 39
Muslims to support the environmental policy agenda by appeal to such concepts as God, creation, and stewardship; we might persuade
humanists by appeal to collective enlightened human self-interest; and so on. But that is no argument for insisting, as Norton seems to
do, that environmental philosophers should stop exploring the real reasons why we ought to value other forms of life, ecosystems, and
the biosphere as a whole. The eventual institutionalization of a new holistic, nonanthropocentric environmental
ethic will make as much practical difference in the environmental arena as the institutionalization of the
intrinsic value of all human beings has made in the social arena. As recently as a century and a half ago, it
was permissible to own human beings. With the eventual institutionalization of Enlightenment ethics-per-
suasively articulated by Hobhes, Locke, Bentham, and Kant, among others-slavery was abolished in Western
civilization. Of course, a case could have been made to slaveowners and an indifferent public that slavery
was economically backward and more trouble than it was worth. But that would not have gotten at the
powerful moral truth that for one human being to own another is wrong. With the eventual
institutionalization of a holistic, nonanthropocentric environmental ethic-today persuasively articulated by
Aldo Leopold, Arne Naess, Holmes Roiston, and Val Plumwood, among others-the wanton destruction of the
nonhuman world will, hopefully, come to be regarded as equally unconscionable.
J(E)DI 2010 40
A2: Conditional/Consultation Counterplans

Our ethical commitment to animal liberation must be unconditional
Tom Regan, Professor emeritus of philosophy at North Carolina State University, 2001
[Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology p. 54]
Consider racism and sexism. Imagine that slavery is an institution of the day and that it is built on racist or
sexist biases. Blacks or women are assigned the rank of slave. Suppose we are told that in extreme
circumstances even slavery might conceivably be justified, and that we ought not to object to it or try to bring
it down, even though no one has shown that it is actually justified in the present case. Well, I do not believe
for a moment that we would accept such an attempt to dissuade us from toppling the institution of slavery.
Not for a moment would we accept the general principle involved here, that an institution actually is justified
because it might conceivably be justified. We would accept the quite different principle that we are morally
obligated to oppose any practice which appears to violate rights unless we are shown that it really does not do
so. To be satisfied with anything less is to cheapen the value attributable to the victims of the practice.
Exactly the same line of reasoning applies in the case where animals are regarded as so many dispensable
commodities, models, subjects, etc. We ought not to back away from bringing these industries and related
practices to a halt just because it is possible that the harm caused to the animals might be justified. If we do,
we fail to mean it when we say that animals are not mere things, that they are the subjects of a life that is
better or worse for them, that they have inherent value. As in the comparable case involving harm to human
beings, our duty is to act, to do all that we can to put an end to the harm animals are made to endure. The fact
that the animals themselves cannot speak out on their own behalf, the fact that they cannot organize, petition,
march, exert political pressure, or raise our level of consciousness--all this does not weaken our obligation to
act on their behalf. If anything, their impotence makes our obligation the greater.~6
J(E)DI 2010 41
A2: Animal Welfare/Suffering Counterplans

Their focus on minimizing pain animal suffering reflects a speciesist anti-nature value
system
J. Baird Callicott, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point, 1989
[In Defense of the Land Ethic p. 15-16]
The "shift of values" which results from our "reappraising things unnatural, tame, and confined in terms
of things natural, wild, and free" is especially dramatic when we reflect upon the definitions of good
and evil espoused by Bentham and Mill and uncritically accepted by their contemporary followers. Pain
and pleasure seem to have nothing at all to do with good and evil if our appraisal is taken
from the vantage point of ecological biology. Pain in particular is primarily information. In
animals, it informs the central nervous system of stress, irritation, or trauma in outlying regions of the
organism. A certain level of pain under optimal organic circumstances is indeed desirable as an indicator of
exertion--of the degree of exertion needed to maintain fitness, to stay in shape, and of a level of exertion
beyond which it would be dangerous to go. An arctic wolf in pursuit of a caribou may experience pain in her
feet or chest because of the rigors of the chase. There is nothing bad or wrong in that. Or, consider a case of
injury. Suppose that a person in the course of a wilderness excursion sprains an ankle. Pain informs him or
her of the injury and by its intensity the amount-of further stress the ankle may endure in the course of
getting to safety. Would it be better if pain were not experienced upon injury or, taking advantage of recent
technology, anaesthetized? Pleasure appears to be, for the most part (unfortunately it is not always so) a
reward accompanying those activities which contribute to organic maintenance, such as the pleasures
associated with eating, drinking, grooming, and so on, or those which contribute to social solidarity like the
pleasures of dancing, conversation, teasing, and so forth, or those which contribute to the continuation of the
species, such as the pleasures of sexual activity and of being parents. The doctrine that life is the
happier the freer it is from pain and that the happiest life conceivable is one in which there is
continuous pleasure uninterrupted by pain is biologically preposterous. A living mammal which
experienced no pain would be one which had a lethal dysfunction of the nervous system. The
idea that pain is evil and ought to be minimized or eliminated is as primitive a notion as that
of a tyrant who puts to death messengers bearing bad news on the supposition that thus his well-
being and security is improved. More seriously still, the value commitments of the humane move-
ment seem at bottom to betray a world-denying or rather a life-loathing philosophy. The natural
world as actually constituted is one in which one being lives at the expense of others,as Each organism, in
Darwin's metaphor, struggles to maintain it own organic integrity. The more complex animals seem to
experience (judging from our own case, and reasoning from analogy) appropriate and adaptive psychological
accompaniments to organic existence. There is a palpable passion for self-preservation. There are desire,
pleasure in the satisfaction of desires, acute agony attending injury, frustration, and chronic
dread of death. But these experiences are the psychological substance of living. To live is
to be anxious about life, to feel pain and pleasure in a fitting mixture, and sooner or later to
die. That is the way the system works. If nature as a whole is good, then pain and death are also
good. Environmental ethics in general require people to play fair in the natural system. The neo-Benthamites
have in a sense taken the uncourageous approach. People have attempted to exempt themselves from the
life/de~ath reciprocities of natural processes and from ecological limitations in the name of a prophylactic
ethic of maximizing rewards (l~leasure) and minimizing unwelcome information (pain). To be fair, the
humane moralists seem to suggest that we should attempt to project the same values into the nonhuman
animal world and to widen the charmed circle--no matter that it would be biologically unrealistic to do so or
biologically ruinous if, per impossible, such an environmental ethic were implemented.
J(E)DI 2010 42
A2: Animal Welfare/Suffering Counterplans

The counterplan is animal welfare because it applies anti-cruelty statutes.
“Animal Rights vs. Animal Welfare” no date given

[http://www.sover.net/~lsudlow/ARvsAW.htm]
Know the difference Animal rights To end all human "exploitation" of animals - this includes,
but is not limited to, raising and slaughtering of livestock for human or animal consumption, eating meat, hunting, using animals for
any medical or veterinary research, zoos (regardless of how well managed), circuses, rodeos, horseshows, dogshows, animals
performing in TV commercials, shows or movies (regardless of how well treated any of the above are), guide-dogs for the blind, police
dogs, search & rescue dogs, and the practice of owning pets. Animal Welfare To prevent suffering and cruelty to
animals. And to provide care and good homes for pets in need. This often includes, but is not limited to, the funding and
running of animal shelters (to provide a sanctuary for abandoned, abused, homeless, or unwanted pets, and to place them in good
homes where possible, provide painless euthanasia for those that cannot be adopted, and to educate the public about the need for
spaying/neutering their pets to prevent more surplus animals ending up in shelters),enforcement of anti-cruelty
statutes (where their authority permits), initiating, lobbying for, and monitoring enforcement of legislation to ensure more
humane standards of care for livestock, laboratory animals, performing animals, and pets.
And you won’t solve our animal liberation impact.
Steven Best, Chair Philosophy at UT-EP 2006 [The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, vol.2, no.3, (June
2006)]
The ALM is only part, by far still the smallest part, of a growing social movement for the protection of animals I call the animal advocacy movement
(AAM). The AAM has three major different (and sharply conflicting) tendencies: animal welfare, animal rights, and animal liberation. The AAM movement
had humble welfarist beginnings in the early 19th century with the founding of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) in
Britain and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) in the US.[2] Welfare organizations thereafter spread widely
The goal of welfare organizations, however,
throughout these and other Western countries, addressing virtually every form of animal abuse.
has never been eliminating the institutions that exploit animals – be they research laboratories, factory farms,
slaughterhouses, fur farms, or circuses and rodeos – but rather reducing or ameliorating animal suffering
within such violent and repressive structures. Welfarists acknowledge that animals have interests, but they believe these can be
legitimately sacrificed or traded away if there is some overridingly compelling human interest at stake (which invariably is never too
trivial to defend against substantive animal interests). Welfarists
simply believe that animals should not be
caused “unnecessary” pain, and hold that any harm or death inflicted on them must be done “humanely.”[3] In
bold contrast, animal rights advocates reject the utilitarian premises of welfarism that allows the happiness, freedom, and lives of animals to be sacrificed to
some alleged greater human need or purpose. The philosophy of animal rights did not emerge in significant form until the publication of Tom Regan’s
seminal work, The Case for Animal Rights (1983). According to Regan and other animal rights theorists, a basic moral equality exists among human and
nonhuman animals in that they are sentient, and therefore have significant interests and preferences (such as not to feel pain) that should be protected and
respected. Moreover, Regan argues, many animal species (chimpanzees, dolphins, cats, dogs, etc.) are akin to humans by having the type of cognitive
characteristics that make them “subjects of a life,” whereby they have complex mental abilities that include memory, self-consciousness, and the ability to
conceive of a future. Arguments that only humans have rights because they are the only animals that have reason and language, besides being factually
wrong, are completely irrelevant as sentience is a necessary and sufficient condition for having rights. Sharply opposed to the welfarist philosophies of the
mainstream AAM and utilitarian philosophers like Peter Singer, proponents of animal rights argue that the intrinsic value and basic rights of animals cannot
be trumped by any appeal to an alleged greater (human) good. Animals’ interests cannot be sacrificed no matter what good consequence may result (such as
an alleged advance in medical knowledge). Just as most people believe that it is immoral to sacrifice a human individual to a “greater good” if it improves
the overall social welfare, so animal rights proponents persuasively apply the same reasoning to animals. If animals have rights, it is no more valid to use
them in medical experimentation than it is to use human beings; for the scientific cause can just as well – in truth, far better – be advanced through human
position of animal rights is an abolitionist position that
experimentation, but ethics and human rights forbids it. The
demands the end to all instances and institutions of animal exploitation, not merely reducing
suffering; like its 19th century predecessor, it demands the eradication of slavery, not better treatment
of the slaves. Yet, although opposed to welfarism in its embrace of egalitarianism, rights, and abolitionism, most animal rights
advocates are one with welfarists in advocating strictly legal forms of change through education and legislation. Like welfarists, animal
rights advocates typically accept the legitimacy of capitalist economic, political, and legal institutions, and rarely possess the larger
social/political/economic context required to understand the inherently exploitative logic of capital and the structural relationship
between market and state.
J(E)DI 2010 43
A2: Word PICs

The kritik obscures non-human oppression and is speciesist in its focus on the meaning of
humans discourse to other humans
Richard Kahn, Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations and Research at the University of North Dakota. 2005
[http://richardkahn.org/writings/ecopedagogy/representinganimalsreview.pdf]
When a young scholar at the Representing Animals conference went so far as to critique Goodall's work as "anthropomorphic," thereby
generating a heated debate, it became clear that the state of a new liberal arts field, Animal Studies, was a contested (if burgeoning)
disciplinary terrain in the United States. In 2000, a number of researchers clearly conceived of Animal Studies as akin to other counter-
hegemonic disciplines like Women's Studies.[2] In their view, Animal Studies scholars should be animal
advocates, the representative voices for non-human animals in an institutional structure
that both tends to exclude non-human animals and considers them voiceless. Some percentage
of other scholars, however, perhaps sought to partake in Animal Studies as if it were a form of
literary field and/or transdisciplinary fad. In this view, humanistic inquiry into the meaning of animals could take a
more stoic attitude as regards the contemporary plight of many non-human animals, as it was primarily concerned with
mapping the varying cross- cultural histories, semantics and aesthetics of animal images instead.
For those whose work on and with animals is self-consciously progressive and normative, such
maps tend to be seen as painfully anthropocentric. Thus, one conference participant, Charles Bergman, was deeply
enough moved to write an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education in which he directly addressed those scholars that he felt
merely pontificated about the intricacies of animal representations, such that they were
content to forget entirely about the animal presences that had helped give rise to them.
According to Bergman: the participants talked exclusively about what representations of animals
mean to us. They said virtually nothing about how our representations affect the animals, or the ethical issues involved in
representation. The actual animals seemed almost an embarrassment, a disturbance to the
symbolic field.[3]
J(E)DI 2010 44
Perm - Solvency
Reject their one-track strategy of rejecting _____________. Our policy helps help animals and raise
awareness, getting us one step closer to a society in which animals are free.
Norm Phelps, he has been an animal rights activist for more than twenty years, working with a number of animal protection
organizations, no date given
[http://www.veganoutreach.org/articles/normphelps.html]
I believe that there are at least five excellent reasons for animal rights advocates to reject the arguments of the one-track
activists and simultaneously pursue both abolition and reform—or at the very least, not oppose reformist efforts. Opening Windows on
Torture Chambers First, campaigns to relieve the worst suffering of animals on factory farms force the public to think
of animals as sentient, sensitive beings whose well-being is a matter of serious moral concern. This can only advance, not retard,
liberation. "Out of sight, out of mind," the saying goes. And reflecting this idea, Sir Paul McCartney has observed that if
slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be vegetarian. How many times have we all heard, "I don’t want to
hear about that!" And, "Don’t show me those pictures, or I won’t be able to enjoy my dinner!" Campaigns like those against battery
cages and gestation crates force people to hear the horror stories and look at the faces of suffering, whether they want to or not.
They open windows in the solid walls of slaughterhouses and confinement sheds. They show the public the truth about these death
camps, and even though these campaigns may not lead directly to a vegan world, they are slowly but surely changing the way the
public thinks about animals and their suffering. And this sea change in public attitude is an important entryway to a
vegan society. The critical point here is that most people are extremely resistant to moral criticism of things that they are personally
doing. They simply reject it out of hand and refuse to consider it. They have to be led up to it gradually, one step at a time.
Most people come to the animals’ cause by way of something that outrages their conscience that they are not doing
themselves, like fur, vivisection, or dogfighting, and then as they become more committed, they make the move to vegetarianism and
veganism. PETA, for example, receives the most calls regarding: 1) companion animals; 2) circus animals, 3) vivisection, and 4) fur.
Similarly, most people oppose the worst abuses of farmed animals (for which, at the beginning, they do not feel personally responsible),
and once they are committed to opposing a specific form of cruelty, such as battery cages, the consistency principle
can kick in (we all like to see ourselves as consistent; moral inconsistency causes intense psychological distress), making them far
more receptive to becoming vegan. The reform campaign throws open the door, so to speak, and once it is open, the need for
consistency drives the person to take the next step. This has been confirmed by the experience of the coalitions that conducted
the Florida and Arizona campaigns to ban gestation crates. A good number of animal advocates who weren’t yet vegetarians
became active in those campaigns and then stopped eating animals as a result. In fact, I know of at least one animal advocate who
now publicly speaks out against so-called "welfare campaigns" even though he became a vegan as a result of
getting involved in an anti-gestation crate ballot measure. In short, two-track activism works by first raising awareness and inspiring
people to take an active stand against cruelty, so that they see themselves as people who care about the suffering of animals. This makes them much more
receptive to a vegan message. In this way—while it may seem paradoxical to those who are wedded to theoretical consistency—reform campaigns have the
practical effect of challenging the concept of animals as mere food-producing commodities and leading people toward a vegan lifestyle.
Driving up the Cost of Doing Business
Another effect of reform campaigns is that they typically drive up the cost of animal products, which the animal agriculture industry sees as a potentially
serious threat to its viability. On its anti-animal rights website ActivistCash.Com, for example, the notorious Center for Consumer Freedom, a well-known
front for the animal abuse industries, warns that "HSUS spends millions on programs that seek to economically cripple meat and dairy producers." They are
referring primarily to the campaigns to ban battery cages, gestation crates, and veal crates. The Animal Agriculture Alliance, an industry trade group, makes
this dire prediction about the battery cage campaign. "Despite the national average price for "cage-free" eggs jumping 56 cents a dozen in the third quarter
of 2007 and now costing 84% more than regular eggs, animal rights groups in California are pushing forward with a ballot initiative to illegalize regular
production of eggs in California. The Animal Agriculture Alliance believes that the groups pushing this extreme initiative, led by the vegan-driven Humane
Society of the United States will endanger animals and eliminate a cost-effective source of protein for many people." (Emphasis added.) In the October
2007 issue of Egg Industry magazine, Gene Gregory, president of United Egg Producers of Atlanta, expresses the same concern. The article, which includes
the banner headline "If All Eggs Were Cage Free, Demand Would Fall," says that Gregory believes that, "if all egg production were to become cage free
egg production, demand for eggs would be reduced because some consumers can’t afford to pay two or three times more for their eggs. ‘People tend to have
a reference point for egg prices. If prices get too far out of line, they cut back.’" If the animal abuse industries recognize reform campaigns as a legitimate
threat to their profitability, why can some animal activists not see it? Suffering Matters Factory
farms constitute the most intense cruelty that the
human race is capable of. They are, in fact, concentration camps in which sentient, sensitive beings live out their all-too-brief lives
deprived of fresh air, sunlight, space in which to move about and stretch their legs or wings, and the ability to live in social communities
suited to their natures. Their suffering is so intense and unrelieved from birth to death that insanity is a regular
consequence of life in an animal factory. The helpless animals’ minds are simply crushed by pain and deprivation. The horror
of life in a confinement shed or battery cage beggars description. It is literally unspeakable. You and I cannot fathom what it
means to spend your entire life unable to move or do anything that would give your life meaning, and I cannot
reconcile myself to the idea that it is acceptable to leave billions of helpless animals in this kind of hell for the sake
of a utopia that neither these animals nor their children nor their grandchildren nor their descendents for many
generations will live to see. Since HSUS launched its battery cage campaign in 2005, not quite three years ago, the percentage of
laying hens confined in battery cages has declined from more than 98% to approximately 95%, a significant and measurable decrease in
suffering for millions of animals every year. By 2012, veal crates will largely be a thing of the past. (America’s largest veal producer,
Strauss Veal, will phase them out by 2010.) And it seems likely that gestation crates will be gone within the next decade. At the
J(E)DI 2010 45
beginning of this decade, that kind of progress was inconceivable. Today, thanks to so-called "welfarist" campaigns, it is rapidly
becoming a reality. And these changes advance the wellbeing of the animals and bring us closer to a compassionate society
in which animals’ basic interests are genuinely respected (obviously, this means that no one is eating, wearing,
experimenting on, or otherwise using animals for human ends). Condemning those who also work to ease suffering in the here and now
as if they were the enemy represents the triumph of ideology over compassion and common sense. If we cannot end suffering within the
lifetimes of those who suffer, we have a moral obligation to ease it as much as we are able. A friend of mine who is working on the
campaign to place a voter initiative on the California ballot in 2008 to ban veal crates, battery cages, and gestation crates tells me that a
small number of California activists are refusing to support the initiative or collect signatures because it is a "welfarist" measure. If
millions of animals on California’s factory farms are left to suffer in tiny cages because animal rights activists refuse to help them, that
would be a tragedy of mind-boggling proportions. Suffering matters, and I cannot turn my back on it. I hope you can’t either. Animals
Need All the Help They Can Get In developing a strategy for the animal rights movement, we have to take into account some very sobering history. As all
social justice movements must, veganism began with a small core of dedicated idealists and has been expanding steadily ever since. Serious vegan advocacy in the United States
began in 1960 when H. Jay Dinshah founded the American Vegan Society. It received a boost in the 1970s when Rev. Andrew Linzey published Christianity and the Rights of
Animals and Peter Singer published Animal Liberation (which does not develop a strictly vegan argument, but nonetheless had the effect of promoting veganism on a larger scale
than had hitherto been seen) and again when the International Vegetarian Union held its biennial convention in Orono Maine, which galvanized the American vegan/vegetarian
movement into an energetic outreach program. In the 1980s, PETA began reaching unprecedented segments of the public with a vegan/vegetarian message, Tom Regan published The
Case for Animal Rights (which does develop a vegan argument), and Victoria Moran published the groundbreaking and influential Compassion: The Ultimate Ethic: An Exploration
of Veganism. In the 1990s, PETA’s vegan/vegetarian campaigns expanded exponentially, Alex Hershaft’s FARM began focusing exclusively on vegan/vegetarian campaigns, and
Vegan Outreach took, well, vegan outreach, to a new level. With every year that goes by, vegan/vegetarian advocacy is growing in scope and sophistication, and it is succeeding
admirably in the essential work of planting the vegan ideal in the public mind, especially among young people, and demonstrating that a vegan lifestyle is easy, convenient, and does
not require personal sacrifice. As I said above, I believe that these efforts are and ought to be the core of the animal rights movement. But we cannot dismiss the fact that forty-seven
years after the beginning of the vegan movement and twenty-two years after the birth of the modern animal rights movement, the number of animals slaughtered for food in the
United States is continuing to rise. On October 15, 2007, USA Today reported that a Harris poll put the number of vegetarians at three-percent of the American population. Other
polls in recent decades have put it at between two- and four-percent. While it is impossible to get a clear picture—in part because the polling questions are not always consistently
worded, and in part because people often describe themselves as "vegetarian" when they eat fish, or when they eat meat "occasionally,"—it seems likely that the number of
vegetarians and vegans is increasing slowly, especially among people of college age and younger. This growing awareness among the young is an encouraging development. Vegan
advocacy is clearly gaining traction; but just as clearly, it is not going to empty the confinement sheds and shut down the slaughterhouses in the foreseeable future. On the other hand,
the campaign to move retailers away from battery eggs—which was inaugurated in 2005—has already improved the lives of millions of laying hens by freeing them from battery
cages. These animals will still suffer and be killed, but at least they will be able to walk, spread their wings, and lay their eggs in nests, all important behaviors that are permanently
denied to battery hens. In these circumstances, there is a desperate need to pursue a variety of nonviolent tactics that offer promise of contributing to both the wellbeing and the
, one-
liberation of animals. By attacking those who want to expand our approaches to animal advocacy as they try to hit upon the combination of tactics that will work best
track activists have abandoned reason and wedded themselves to blind faith. Their approach to activism reverses the
logical order of things. Instead of saying, "This strategy works; therefore, it is right," they say "This strategy is
ideologically pure; therefore, if we just stick with it, it will have to work eventually." In an article posted on Tribe of
Heart’s website, James LaVeck and Jenny Stein label activists who favor easing the suffering of farmed animals as "neocarns," by
analogy to the "neocons" who have brought our country and our world to the edge of destruction. Despite this nasty-cutesy wordplay
(which imitates Joan Dunayer’s "new speciesists," which, in turn, imitates Gary Francione’s "new welfarists"), it is one-track activists
who most resemble the neo-conservatives in their approach to strategy. The neocons’ insistence that we will win in Iraq if we continue
to blindly follow the same failed strategy ("Stay the course.") parallels the "abolitionists’" insistence that we will create a vegan society
in the foreseeable future if we just continue to restrict ourselves to the one-track activism that has thus far failed to reduce the
number of animals Americans consume. Rational advocacy requires that we constantly seek and evaluate feedback on how
well our campaigns are working and make frequent mid-course corrections, looking for just the right mix of tactics that will lead to
success. We may be ideological about the goal, but we must be pragmatic about the means. Letting our means be
determined by ideological preconceptions is a formula for self-righteous failure. One-Track Activism: It Sounds Better than it
is Mark Twain said that, "Richard Wagner’s music is better than it sounds." One-track activism sounds better than it is. It sounds
simple, straightforward, and theoretically consistent. But history is littered with examples of elegant theories that failed
utterly when applied to the real world. Such theories all too easily become an excuse for voicing noble platitudes
while evading the difficult, frustrating, messy, nuts and bolts work of transforming our vision into progress for
animals. Consider, for example, Harold Brown, whose presentation at FARM’s AR2007 can be seen on YouTube. In this talk, he
promoted one-track activism and declared that "welfarist" campaigns have no place in the animal rights movement, while twice
admitting, "I don’t have any answers." And indeed, he didn’t offer a single idea for making concrete progress. The closest he came was
to say, "I’m sure we can work out tactics and strategies to deal with the different aspects of animal exploitation." Devising
strategies and tactics that work in the real world is the most challenging part of animal rights advocacy. To brush
it aside so cavalierly is a cop out. It must be great fun to be "a big picture kind of guy" (as Brown described himself
not once, but twice), criticize people who are working hard in the trenches to alleviate the suffering of animals ("little picture
folks," perhaps, who lack the esthetically magnificent vision of the "big picture" people?) and decline to take responsibility for
proposing strategies and tactics. (As Brown cautioned activists, "We have to be careful not to get caught up in the minutiae, in
the little things.") God, as the saying goes, is in the details, in the little things, and a patronizing dismissal of the work that is needed to
translate "the big picture" into actual relief for suffering animals, is anything but helpful. Animals suffering and dying on factory
farms need a strategy that will make a real difference in their lives in the shortest time possible. They need a
two-pronged approach that combines vegan/abolitionist advocacy with campaigns for reform. One size doesn’t fit all, and it is this
combination of tactics that holds the most promise for the most wretched of humanity’s victims, now and for future generations.
J(E)DI 2010 46
Perm – Solvency
We solve the impact to their kritik by creating a transnational coalitional politics that
breaks down oppression by connecting animal to human liberation.
Steven Best, Chair Philosophy at UT-EP, no date given

[“Common Natures, Shared Futures: Toward an Interspecies Alliance Politics”]
The need for justice is universal. In his "Letter From Birmingham Jail," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is a
threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever
affects one directly affects all indirectly." Racism and sexism, for instance, have divided the working community and prevented them
fromw achieving the power of a united front against corporate exploiters. Human beings must see that this "inescapable network of
mutuality" includes nonhuman animals and that their plight is our plight, even if one cares only about human problems. In so many
ways, what we do to the animals, we do to ourselves. Any form of hierarchical consciousness can feed into and
reinforce another; and thus we must continually attack dualistic, discriminatory, and hierarchical frameworks until
the hydra-headed monster of prejudice and oppression is slayed entirely. The exploitation of farmed animals provides a
vivid illustration of the centrality of animal concerns to human issues and the vast interconnected effects of exploiting any single group.
After World War II, as animals became ever more intensively produced as food commodities, family farms were increasingly
replaced by factory farms. This monumental shift meant not only that animals would be raised indoors within intensive
conditions of confinement, creating unprecedented levels of suffering, but also that huge corporations were gaining
control of small scale farms and driving out families who cared for their land for generations. To work inside the filthy and dangerous
factory farms and slaughterhouses, corporations exploited immigrant labor and other destitute and desperate workers. To control
diseases and maximize growth, agribusiness pumped massive doses of antibiotics into the animals, helping to create widespread
resistance to important drugs. To make animals grow as large and fast as possible, they injected them with growth hormones and
eventually began to genetically engineer and clone them. Besides high doses of saturated fat, cholesterol and protein, the public was
consuming a plethora of dangerous chemicals. Factory farms also generate huge amounts of chemicals and waste which foul the air,
poison waterways, and destroy communities. Thus, because of its far-reaching consequences, injury to farmed animals brought immense
harm to farmers, workers, consumers, and the environment. Far from being irrelevant to social movements, animal rights can form
the basis for a broad coalition of social groups and drive changes that strike at the heart of capitalist exploitation
of animals, people, and the earth. One stellar example of a great social activist who grasped the whole picture was Cesar Chavez, noted
not only for being a vegetarian but also for opposing spectacles of animal cruelty such as the rodeo. There are limits to what animal
rights activists can support, however, as they would never endorse better wages for underpaid poultry workers. Instead, they would
advance the abolition of animal food industries and reemployment of workers in humane and ethically acceptable occupations.
Similarly, the animal rights community cannot join consumer groups to advocate organic meat or embrace the slow foods movement
that, although a critique of fast food culture and the corporate takeover of agriculture, nonetheless endorses meat consumption in organic
and free-range form. Invariably, when one reads about the plight of workers in slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants in Left
publications like In These Times or The Nation, moral and critical attention focuses solely on the workers, and the voice of outrage says
nothing about the animals as if the rivers of blood flowing out of these houses of horror would be acceptable given higher wages for the
workers. But if radical social movements have ignored animal concerns and missed the big picture, the animal rights movement has paid
insufficient attention to other social struggles and the logic of capitalism. Largely apolitical or single-issue in scope, many animal rights
advocates fail to grasp how the animal abuses they decry result from the profit imperative, and are part and parcel of a social system that
needs to be challenged and transformed in radical ways. To the extent that animal rights activists grasp the systemic nature of animal
exploitation, they should also realize that animal liberation demands that they work in conjunction with other radical social movements.
Animal activists need to realize that progressive social movements traditionally have viewed them with suspicion, as bearers of race and
class privileges who ignore issues of social oppression, and thus they need to begin to build bridges in the progressive community (as,
for example, people of color are a rare sight at animal rights protests and conferences). The need for alliances, and the great difficulty in
achieving them, is evident in the attempts to build bridges between the feminist and animal rights communities. As spelled out by Carol
Adams and other ecofeminists, the patriarchal ideologies of Western society reduce women to a subhuman status. Men have depicted
women as closer to animals than to humans, as humans have rational capacities that are allegedly lacking in women and animals.
Throughout our social landscape, one finds advertising images that link women�s bodies to animal bodies, equating both as meat to be
consumed by men. Women and animals both are targets of male violence. Meat eating and hunting are bound up with ancient patriarchal
values and institutions, and Adams argues that feminists who wish to be consistently anti-patriarchal should adopt a vegetarian lifestyle.
Ecofeminists advance an ethics of care that promotes holism, connectedness, and respect for animals and the earth. Thus, there appears
to be a natural affinity between core concerns of feminism and animal rights, as both have a common enemy in patriarchy. But the
reality of forging alliances has often proved difficult. Feminists have complained, rightly, that while a disproportionate number of people
in the animal rights community are women, the leaders overwhelmingly are men. For many feminists, the existence of sexist norms
within the animal rights community is most obvious in the case of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), the world's
largest animal rights organization that is infamous for featuring naked or scantily clad women in their demonstrations and
advertisements, thereby reproducing society's dominant images of women as sex objects rather than human subjects. PETA
unapologetically defends this tactic as necessary to gain media attention for their education campaigns that otherwise would be ignored,
but many feminists feel that PETA is sending out a mixed message that denounces one form of exploitation while endorsing another.
Beyond Identity Politics Some of these feminists respond by leaving the animal rights movement altogether and many animal rights
activists wish them fond farewell for what they view to be divisive concerns. This truly is unfortunate. For the last few decades, social
movements have taken the form of identity politics that are highly Balkanized, with each group pursuing its own agenda
relating to its specific form of identity (black, brown, female, environmental, gay, and so on). This development perhaps was necessary
J(E)DI 2010 47
for various cultures and groups to find their own histories and voices, but the fragmentary politics of identity now needs to be
replaced with a politics of alliance where each group not only recognizes its own particular mode of oppression and
champions its distinct identities and interests, but also grasps its theoretical and political relations to other groups and works
in a strategic unity against common forces of oppression such as capitalism. There are signs that such a movement is
emerging. Many commentators characterize the 1999 Battle of Seattle as a turning point in that a rich diversity of groups came
together to challenge a common enemy-global capitalism and the World Trade Organization. Dozens of coalitions worked harmoniously
in a united front of justice for all, as diverse groups such as teamsters (labor) and turtles (environmental and animal groups) stood
together. On numerous occasions since then, activists have gathered around the world in similar coalitions contesting the injustices of
global capitalism. As capitalism globalizes and unites various countries in new trade treaties such as the Free Trade Area of the
Americas (FTAA) which subsumes 34 countries of North and South America into a "free-trade" zone, activists are uniting into
alliances not only within their own countries, but also creating new global blocs of resistance across national
boundaries. Other hopeful recent signs of alliance include the Harvard Living Wage Campaign-created by students in solidarity with
janitors, dining service, and other underpaid workers at the university-and the student anti-sweatshop movement. One of the most
moving demonstrations of solidarity I have witnessed occurred at the 1996 national animal rights conference in Washington, D.C.,
where gay activists from ACT-UP denounced animal experimentation, rejected any medical advance for AIDS that was dependent upon
causing pain to other beings, and embraced interspecies solidarity. The challenge will be not only to come together on occasion for
dramatic protests against global capitalism, but to sustain alliances in a multifaceted attack on injustice. For this to work,
progressive social movements will have to include animal rights and veganism within their agendas and, indeed,
their lives-just as animal rights activists need to extirpate elitism, sexism, racism, homophobia, and other forms of prejudice from their
community. Activists will need to forge a shared vision and set of values beyond protest and critique, knowing both
what they want "freedom from" and "freedom to," the kind of society they can no longer tolerate and the nature of community they want
to build. To change the conditions for animals, we have to change the social institutions, and that demands
alliances with other progressive groups. The animal welfare/rights movement is showing increasing strength and
sophistication in its ability to pass city, state, and national legislation for animal protection, but it remains a single issue movement
devoid of roots in communities of workers, women, people of color, and church groups (who for better or worse are a key part of the
grass roots). But as they hopefully mature as a social movement, animal advocates are a powerful reminder that "social
justice" is a limited political concept and that no species is free until all species are free. The slogan of the future must not be
"We are all one race, the human race," but rather, "We are one community, the community of living subjects."
J(E)DI 2010 48
A2: Alternative Solves The Case

They don’t solve our aff because the Left is infected by a self-alienating anthropocentrism,
inevitably devolving into a new Stalinism.
Steven Best, Chair Philosophy at UT-EP 2006
[The International Journal of INCLUSIVE DEMOCRACY, vol.2, no.3, (June 2006)]
Animal liberation requires that the Left transcend the comfortable boundaries of humanism in
order to make a qualitative leap in ethical consideration, thereby moving the moral bar from reason and
language to sentience and subjectivity. Just as the Left once had to confront ecology, and emerged a far
superior theory and politics, so it now has to engage animal rights. As the confrontation with ecology
infinitely deepened and enriched Leftist theory and politics, so should the encounter with animal rights and
liberation. Speciesism is the belief that nonhuman species exist to serve the needs of the human species, that
animals are in various senses inferior to human beings, and therefore that one can favor human over
nonhuman interests according to species status alone.7 Like racism or sexism, speciesism creates a false
dualistic division between one group and another in order to arrange the differences hierarchically and justify
the domination of the “superior” over the “inferior.” Just as society has discerned that it is prejudiced,
illogical, and unacceptable for whites to devalue people of color and for men to diminish women, so it is
beginning to learn how utterly arbitrary and irrational it is for human animals to position themselves over
nonhuman animals because of species differences. Among animals who are all sentient subjects of a life,
these differences —humanity’s false and arrogant claim to be the sole bearer of reason and language— are no
more ethically relevant than differences of gender or skin color, yet in the unevolved psychology of the
human primate they have decisive bearing. The theory —speciesism— informs the practice —
unspeakably cruel forms of domination, violence, and killing. The prejudice and discriminatory
attitude of speciesism is as much a part of the Left as the general population and its most regressive
elements, calling into question the “radical,” “oppositional,” or “progressive” nature of Left positions and
politics. While condemning violence and professing rights for all, the Left fails to take into account
the weighty needs and interests of billions of oppressed animals. Although priding themselves on
holistic and systemic critiques of global capitalism, Leftists fail to grasp the profound
interconnections among human, animal, and earth liberation struggles and the need to
conceived and fight for all as one struggle against domination, exploitation, and hierarchy.
From the perspective of ecology and animal rights, Marxists and other social “radicals” have been extremely
reactionary forces. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels lumped animal welfarists into the same
petite-bourgeoisie or reactionary category with charity organizers, temperance fanatics, and naïve reformists,
failing to see that the animal welfare movement in the US, for instance, was a key politicizing cause for
women whose struggle to reduce cruelty to animals was inseparable from their struggle against male violence
and the exploitation of children.[10] In works such as his 1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Karl
Marx advanced a naturalistic theory of human life, but like the dominant Western tradition he posited a
sharp dualism between human and nonhuman animals, arguing that only human beings have
consciousness and a complex social world. Denying to animals the emotional, social, and psychological
complexity of their actual lives, Marx argued that whereas animals have an immediate and merely instinctual
relation to productive activity the earth, human labor is mediated by free will and intelligence. If Marxism
and other Left traditions have proudly grounded their theories in science, social radicals need to realize that
science – specifically, the discipline of “cognitive ethology” which studies the complexity of animal
emotions, thought, and communications – has completely eclipsed their fallacious, regressive, speciesist
concepts of nonhuman animals as devoid of complex forms of consciousness and social life.[11] While there
is lively debate over whether or not Marx had an environmental consciousness, there is no question he was a
speciesist and the product of an obsolete anthropocentric/dominionist paradigm that continues to mar
progressive social theory and politics. The spectacle of Left speciesism is evident in the lack of articles –
often due to a blatant refusal to consider animal rights issues ―on animal exploitation in progressive
journals, magazines, and online sites. In one case, for example, The Nation wrote a scathing essay that condemned the treatment of
workers at a factory farm, but amazingly said nothing about the exploitation of thousands of chickens
imprisoned in the hell of battery cages. In bold contrast, Gale Eisnitz’s powerful work, Slaughterhouse,
documents the exploitation of animals and humans alike on the killing floors of slaughterhouses, as she
J(E)DI 2010 49
shows the dehumanization of humans in and through routinized violence to animals.[12] As symptomatic of
the prejudice, ignorance, provincialism, and non-holistic theorizing that is rife through the Left, consider the
case of Michael Albert, a noted Marxist theorist and co-founder of Z Magazine and Z Net. In a recent
interview with the animal rights and environmental magazine Satya, Albert confessed: “When I talk about
social movements to make the world better, animal rights does not come into my mind. I honestly don’t see
animal rights in anything like the way I see women’s movements, Latino movements, youth movements, and
so on … a large-scale discussion of animal rights and ensuing action is probably more than needed … but it
just honestly doesn’t strike me as being remotely as urgent as preventing war in Iraq or winning a 30-hour
work week.”
While I do not expect a human supremacist like Albert to see animal and human suffering as even roughly comparable, I cannot fathom
privileging a work reduction for humans who live relatively comfortable lives to ameliorating the obscene suffering of tens of billion of
animals who are confined, tortured, and killed each year in the most unspeakable ways. But human
and animal rights and
liberation causes are not a zero-sum game, such that gains for animals require losses for humans. Like
most within the Left, Albert lacks the holistic vision to grasp the profound connections between
animal abuse and human suffering. The problem with such myopic Leftism stems not only from Karl Marx himself, but
the traditions that spawned him – modern humanism, mechanistic science, industrialism, and the Enlightenment. To be sure, the move
from a God-centered to a human-centered world, from the crusades of a bloodthirsty Christianity to the critical thinking and autonomy
ethos of the Enlightenment, were massive historical gains, and animal rights builds on them. But modern social theory and science
perpetuated one of worst aspects of Christianity (in the standard interpretation that understands dominion as domination), namely the
view that animals are mere resources for human use. Indeed, the situation for animals worsened considerably under the impact of
modern sciences and technologies that spawned vivisection, genetic engineering, cloning, factory farms, and slaughterhouses.
Darwinism was an important influence on Marx and subsequent radical thought, but no one retained Darwin’s emphasis on the
intelligence of animal life, the evolutionary continuity from nonhuman to human life, and the basic equality among all species.
Social ecologists and “eco-humanists” such as Murray Bookchin condemn the industrialization of animal abuse and killing but never
challenge the alleged right to use animals for human purposes. Oblivious to scientific studies that document reason, language, culture,
and technology among various animal species, Bookchin rehearses the Cartesian-Marxist mechanistic view of animals as dumb creatures
devoid of reason and language. Animals therefore belong to “first nature,” rather than the effervescently creative “second nature” world
of human culture. Like the Left in general, social ecologists fail to theorize the impact of animal exploitation on the environment and
human society and psychology. They ultimately espouse the same welfarist views that permit and sanctify some of the most unspeakable
forms of violence against animals within current capitalist social relations, speaking in the same language of “humane treatment” of
animal slaves used by vivisectors, managers of factory farms and slaughterhouses operators, fur farmers, and bosses of rodeos and
circuses. The
Left traditionally has been behind the curve in its ability to understand and address
forms of oppression not directly related to economics. It took decades for the Left to recognize
racism, sexism, nationalism, religion, culture and everyday life, ideology and media, ecology, and other
issues into its anti-capitalist framework, and did so only under the pressure of various liberation movements.
The tendency of the Marxist Left, in particular, has been to relegate issues such as gender, race, and
culture to “questions” to be addressed, if at all, only after the goals of the class struggle are
achieved. Such exclusionist and reductionist politics prompted Rosa Luxemburg, for one, to defend the
importance of culture and everyday life by exclaiming, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be a part of your
revolution!” Neo-Marxists, such as Frankfurt School theorists, grasped the importance of politics, culture, and ideology as important
issues related but not reducible to economics and class, and after the 1960s Leftists finally understood ecology as more than a “bourgeois
issue” or “diversion” from social struggles. In The Dialectic of Enlightenment, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno developed
important insights into the relationship between the domination of humans over nature and over one another, and sometimes
sympathetically evoked images of animals in captivity as important symbols of human arrogance and alienation from nature. Most
notably, Herbert Marcuse emphasized the importance of a “new sensibility” grounded in non-exploitative attitudes and relations toward
the natural world.
Although since the 1970s the Left has begun to seriously address the “nature question,” they have universally
failed to grasp that the “animal question” that lies at the core of social and ecological issues.[13] To make
the point about the interrelationships here in a simple but crucial way, consider that no society
can achieve ecological sustainability if its dominant mode of food production is factory
farming. The industrialized system of confining and fattening animals for human food consumption, pioneered in the US after
World War II and exported globally, is a main cause of water pollution (due to fertilizers, chemicals, and massive amounts of animal
waste) and a key contributor to rainforest destruction, desertification, global warming, in addition to being a highly inefficient use of
water, land, and crops.[14] Critiques of human arrogance over and alienation from nature, calls for a “re-harmonization” of society with
ecology, and emphases on a “new ethics” that focus solely on the physical world apart from the millions of animal species it contains are
speciesist, myopic, and inadequate. It’s as if everyone can get on board with respecting rivers and mountains but still want to eat,
experiment on, wear, and be entertained by animals. Left ecological concerns stem not from any kind of deep respect for the natural
world, but rather from a position of “enlightened anthropocentrism” (a clear oxymoron) that understands how important a sustainable
environment is for human existence. It is a more difficult matter to understand the crucial role animals play in sustaining ecosystems and
how animal exploitation often has dramatic environmental consequences, let alone more complex issues such as relationships between
violence toward animals and violence to other human beings. Moreover, it is far easier to “respect nature” through recycling, planting
J(E)DI 2010 50
trees, or driving hybrid cars than it is to respect animals by becoming a vegan who stops eating and wearing animal bodies and products.
Much more so than a shift in how one views the inorganic world, it is far more difficult, complex, and profound ―for both philosophical
and practical reason― to revolutionizeone’s views toward animals and adopt ethical veganism. In short, the
modern “radical” tradition ―whether, Marxist, socialist, anarchist, or other “Left” positions that include
anti-racism and feminism― stands in continuity with the entire Western heritage of
anthropocentrism, and in no way can be seen as a liberating philosophy from the standpoint of the
environment and other species on this planet. Current Left thought is merely Stalinism toward
animals. A truly revolutionary social theory and movement will not just emancipate members of one
species, but rather all species and the earth itself. A future revolutionary movement worthy of its name will
grasp the ancient conceptual roots of hierarchy and domination, such as emerge in the animal husbandry
practices of the first agricultural societies, and incorporate a new ethics of nature – environmental ethics and
animal rights – that overcomes instrumentalism and hierarchical thinking in every pernicious form.[15]
J(E)DI 2010 51
A2: Alt Solves The Case

They don’t solve our aff—Animal rights can’t be subordinated to other causes
Steven Best, Chair of Philosophy at UT-EP, 2007

[JCAS 5.2]
Lest one get the false impression that Phelps dismisses all causes but animal rights, he adds this qualification: “I am not for a moment
suggesting that animal advocates should not also be outspoken feminists, socialists, anarchists, or advocates for whatever other causes
they believe in. I am only saying that the animal rights movement as a movement needs to maintain its independence and keep its focus
on the animals.” Phelps does make a sound point – as I myself have often underscored --- that radical Left traditions are replete with
dogmatic humanists and speciesists who are blind to the moral, social, and environmental importance of animal rights and
vegetarianism. With their oppressors’ mentality, stunted moral philosophy, and fragmented political vision, Left humanists cannot grasp
the fact that animal liberation and human liberation are interdependent. Thus, there is in fact a problem with tying the rope of
animal liberation to the wagon of human liberation; in most cases Leftists, humanists, and “social revolutionaries”
are themselves animal oppressors who do not want to abandon their “privileges” and who want to
marginalize animal issues to the last priority of far “more important” goals such as reducing the work week, ending
the US Invasion of Iraq, and advancing human rights and human equality.In cases where animal liberationists join in alliance
politics and coalitions against war, militarism, imperialism, global warming, and other important causes, the voice of the
animals must never be drowned out by prevailing human interests that seek to emancipate humans first, with
the promise to bring along animals later (no doubt with the aid of a welfarist ethic). Animal and human liberation
projects work together, or not at all. Phelps’s single-issue politics transforms the relative autonomy of animal issues into a
radical autonomy that separates animal liberation from its larger social, political, and economic context. Phelps’ atomistic, single-issue,
two-party, liberal vision thwarts any effort to forge alliance movements against issues such as war, rainforest destruction, poverty, and
world hunger that affect humans and animals alike. Like Francione, Hall, and other “abolitionists,” Phelps uncritically accepts capitalism
as the political-economic structure that can carry us indefinitely into an ever-brighter and more prosperous future, one where animals –
the primary slaves of the present day crucial to the operations of global capitalism – will ultimately be free, if not completely then at
least from severe forms of cruelty and suffering.
J(E)DI 2010 52
A2: Policymaking/Using The State Bad

Changes in ethics are not enough—we must transform the state to create viable
alternatives to the dominant anthropocentric order.
Prue Taylor, Senior Lecturer of law and a founding member of the New Zealand Centre for Environmental
Law at the University of Auckland,1998
[An Ecological Approach to International Law: Responding to the Challenges of Climate Change
(Hardcover) p. 39-42, 45-48]
a new environmental ethic is a paradigm shift in moral philosophy because it is a value theory
As Miller states,
which 'can move us beyond our traditional views of human and patriarchal dominance of the natural order .-
A new ecological moral philosophy would encourage us to change and develop (i.e., shift) our consciousness
to one which recognises that we are an integral part of nature. Once we recognise this ecological reality, we
would be encouraged to place important limitations upon our actions, limitations which go beyond protection
of human interests to include the interests of other species. Thus our standards of 'how clean is clean?, which
currently focus predominantly on human welfare concerns, would be redefined to ensure ecosystem
protection. We would also be encouraged to redefine our decision-making processes from those which focus
on short-term, atomistic strategies to those which focus on long-term, holistic ones, and to work hard at
evaluating and resolving conflicts between human and non-human environmental interests. Thus stated the development
of a new ethic seems to offer hope for a better future. However, these expectations must be immediately qualified by
recognising that a new ethic (morality) is only one part of an overall survival strategy. We must address, in
concert, our existing concepts of economic growth and wealth, existing political structures and concepts of
democracy, the 'state' and 'world order', consciousness and spirituality, and the prevailing 'scientific' belief
system. All these aspects of human society play their part in the creation and continuance of the ecological
crisis.24 Many people are currently performing the task of redefining these concepts from the perspective of
ecology and ecocentrism. This book shall limit its task to redefining international environmental law. Turning now from the above discussion,
which looked at the ethical debate in general terms, we need to ask the following questions: What does the ethical debate mean in the context of
international environmental law:' How is it relevant? Law
is undoubtedly reflective of prevailing social attitudes and conven-
tional thinking and values. As Bosselmann states: The analysis of environmental politics and environmental law is especially suited to
verify the failure of conventional ways of thinking. Nowhere else are the socially cohesive standards and values so clearly expressed as
they are in the environmental programmes and laws of states. The anthropocentric ethic can, and will in following chapters, be clearly
identified in international environmental law. International environmental law will be seen to reflect and affirm this ethic. This can most
dearly be demonstrated by an analysis of the concept of territorial sovereignty, which is a conceptual cornerstone of international law,
from which international environmental law has emerged. It will also be demonstrated in following chapters that the consequences of
this are very serious indeed. In essence, the environment is not being adequately protected. Large holes exist in the fabric of the
law, through which environmental degradation is perpetrated. One might call them 'windows of continued
opportunity'. In more theoretical terms, it can be said that in affirming the anthropocentric ethic the law is
perpetuating the deepest cause of the environmental crisis! Its current responses to environmental problems
do no more than suppress symptoms. Can we continue to muddle through the environmental crisis with
legal tools which are clearly deficient and defective? The answer must be a resounding no! We must face the
need for a new conceptual foundation for international environmental law - one which goes beyond
anthropocentrism. Capra, in his book The Turning Point, in which he discussed the shift from the traditional
technocratic, mechanistic paradigm to a holistic, ecological paradigm, said:" The universe is no longer seen
as a machine, made up of a multitude of objects, but must be seen as one indivisible dynamic whole whose
parts are essentially interrelated and can he understood only as patterns of a cosmic process Finally, the former
United Nations Secretary General Javiez Perez de Cuellar, recognises the imperative of a turning point in humanity's relationship with nature:250 As we
approach the 1990s it is clear that a turning point has been reached. For the first time it is generally recognised that we must enter into a new relationship
with our planet - a kind of environmental compact whereby we, who get our life sustenance from our planet, will agree to work together to protect it. Some
commentators go so far as to suggest that the paradigm shift, from the anthropocentric paradigm to a new ecocentric paradigm, is now clearly under way
and evident in many European societies. Bosselmann's book im Namen der Natur: Dei' Wig vim ok&ogischen Recbtsstaat (In the Name of Nature: The
Concept of lko-Law), attempts to demonstrate that a far reaching change of consciousness is now occurring on both an individual and social level. In his
opinion sufficient evidence exists of: ' "Environmental protection" in its anthropocentric sense [being] replaced by a holistic concept of ecocentrism.'251
Bosselmann finds this evidence in a variety of areas including: political theory, law, science (quantum physics, evolutionary theory, ecology, new biology
etc.) spiritual and theological movements, economics and medicine He is by no means alone in this wide ranging - '5' search for evidence of a paradigm
shift.- - The above discussion suggests that a new principle of law, encompassing an ecocentric ethic, does not amount to the creation and
imposition of new ethic from out of the ether. On the contrary, it is a reflection of an emerging consciousness. 253 This is critical, after all:
'Iwle can not choose a new ethic as we would a new article of clothing. It is the result of changed attitudes. If ''54 the attitudes do nor exist, nor does the new
ethic, - The third general point about the above proposal emerges from the question: how can a new principle of international environmental law, which
encapsulates a new ethic, actually contribute to the adoption of such an ethic? Can it perform the most important task of all - can it bring about a change in
the attitudes and behaviour of humanity?25' The answer is probably no. If it is accepted that ethics are moral systems then it seems probable that new moral
legal principle can facilitate this process of evolution
systems can not be imposed, they must be allowed and encouraged to evolve. A
of humanity's attitudes and behaviour. It can stimulate movement toward new attitudes and behaviour by
J(E)DI 2010 53
provoking humanity to perceive the problems differently. It can be educational by promoting awareness of the
unity of the biosphere and the impact of human activity.256 As a consequence it may cause humanity to reassess its
understanding of the world and thus the; propriety -57 or justification of human behaviour in relation to the
environment'," but it cannot, alone, revolutionise environmental ethics. In short, it can help in the development of a
new ecological consciousness. In attempting to define that new consciousness, I share the concerns of so-called deep
ecology as summarised by Fox:25 Justice does not require equality. It does require that we share one another's fate. The lesson of
ecology is that we do share one another's fate in the shallow sense that we all share the fate of the earth. The message of deep ecology is that we ought to
care as deeply and as compassionately as possible about that fate - nor because it affects us but because it is as, Christopher Stone is optimistic about the
prospect of a new environmental ethic -
Nor should it be supposed that to define and proselytize an international
environmental ethic is too idealistic. It is true that the task of sensitizing humankind to the environment is hard, particularly in a world
pressed with ever more urgent demands for natural resources. But in some ways an international environmental ethic faces relatively less opposition than an
international ethic on human rights. The proponents of international norms on human rights and genocide collide with long-standing doctrines about
sovereignty and associated notions of what constitutes purely internal affairs. By contrast, there is no matter more fit for international accord than protection
of the environment, particularly of global attributes or components - such as weather patterns, ocean and atmosphere -that play so clear a role in the
indivisible fate of all nations and of all humankind.
J(E)DI 2010 54
A2: Biopower
Turn: we challnege the human/animal divide at the root of biopoltiics.
WADIWEL, 2 (Joseph W., doctorate candidate @ Univ. of Western Sydney, “Cows and Sovereignty”,
Borderlands, 1:2)
2. But how does the question of life itself relate to the life of the (non-human) animal? The
scene described in the fragment above could count as a spectacle of modern biopolitics. Certainly, if the
quarantined cows were substituted for humans, then it would be possible to detect with more clarity the
‘politics’ of this situation, and recognise the relation of life (and death) to these politics. That cows, and other
non-human animals, are not clearly eligible for consideration within a discussion of
biopolitics, is not due to any essential poverty in the potential scope of Foucault’s term. Rather, the
deficiency relates to the tradition of politics itself, at least in the West, which has, by and large,
exempted the non-human animal from agency as a political being. This tradition may be traced
concretely to Aristotle, and his pronouncement that ‘man’ distinguishes ‘himself’ from other animals through
the perfection of ‘his’ status as a ‘political animal’(1952: 446). Thus for Aristotle, ‘Man’ is not a
transcendent being who is unrelated to the animal life; rather, ‘man’ is defined as an animal with a
surplus ability over and above other animal life. Upon this reckoning, the gap between non-
human and human animals is the ability to vocalise principles related to expediency (or rationality) and
justice — a gap which, for all intents, defines the meaning of politics itself, at least in so far as it is
perfected by ‘man.’ For even if there were to be a non-human animal who, through a vocalisation, could
make itself understood, that being would still lack the ability to comprehend justice, which for Aristotle
characterises ‘man’ as the political animal par excellence (1952: 446). This assertion, that there is something
essential that separates humans from the rest of the animals, is hardly limited to Aristotle, and has remained
in various forms within Western philosophy; whether in the belief that ‘man’ possesses an ‘immortal’ soul
which animals lack; or that ‘man’ possesses a sort of exemplary consciousness which other living matter has
no access to. 3. If it were possible to close our eyes to the gap that we believe separates ourselves from other
animals, then the meaning of politics itself changes radically. In the modern context, bio-politics is not
only the operation of a range of instruments which direct the attention of power towards questions of
human life, but towards all life, in the broadest possible sense. This is evident when one considers the role
of the modern sovereign, which not only manages the life of its human subjects, but turns its attention to the
management of all animal and plant life within its domain.
J(E)DI 2010 55
A2: Psychoanalysis
They are a doomed political project. Their framework criticizes emancipation as a fantasy to be kritiked
rather than a struggle to be forged, proving the defeatism of their cynical methodology.
Paul Gordon 01
[ Race & Class v. 42 n. 4]
Cohen is in many ways representative of those `radicals' who, in response to the setback of the radical political project
of the 1960s and 1970s, abandoned not just the Marxist framework within which they had worked, but anything which they
saw as in any way connected to the idea of the Enlightenment. It is here, goes the thinking, that the roots of so much that is
wrong with radical politics are to be found, for it is with the Enlightenment that men (yes, men) begin to think that they, rather than
God or fate, may be able to make history. But for the postmodernists, this is not only hubris, it is a hubris that leads inexorably to the
nightmares of the twentieth century, in particular the Holocaust and the Gulag. Cohen adds to this the claim that the very notion of
ènlightenment' (his inverted commas) is deeply implicated in a practice of reason which is historically rooted in certain dominant
forms of European race thinking. Reason, he appears to be saying, is racist.57 The postmodernists' problem is that they cannot live
with disappointment. All the tragedies of the political project of emancipation ± the evils of Stalinism in
particular ± are seen as the inevitable product of men and women trying to create a better society. But, rather than engage
in a critical assessment of how, for instance, radical political movements go wrong, they discard the
emancipatory project and impulse itself. The postmodernists, as Sivanandan puts it, blame modernity for having failed
them: `the intellectuals and academics have fled into discourse and deconstruction and representation ± as though to
interpret the world is more important than to change it, as though changing the interpretation is all we could do in a
changing world'.58 To justify their flight from a politics holding out the prospect of radical change through self-activity,
the disappointed intellectuals find abundant intellectual alibis for themselves in the very work they champion,
including, in Cohen's case, psychoanalysis. What Marshall Berman says of Foucault seems true also of psychoanalysis; that it offers à
world-historical alibi' for the passivity and helplessness felt by many in the 1970s, and that it has nothing but
contempt for those naive enough to imagine that it might be possible for modern humankind to be free. At every
turn for such theorists, as Berman argues, whether in sexuality, politics, even our imagination, we are nothing but prisoners: there is no
freedom in Foucault's world, because his language forms a seamless web, a cage far more airtight than anything Weber ever dreamed
of, into which no life can break . . . There is no point in trying to resist the oppressions and injustices of modern life, since even our
dreams of freedom only add more links to our chains; however, once we grasp the futility of it all, at least we can relax.59 Cohen's
political defeatism and his conviction in the explanatory power of his new faith of psychoanalysis lead him to be contemptuous
and dismissive of any attempt at political solidarity or collective action. For him, `communities' are always ìmagined',
which, in his view, means based on fantasy, while different forms of working-class organisation, from the craft fraternity to the
revolutionary group, are dismissed as `fantasies of self-sufficient combination'.60 In this scenario, the idea that people might come
together, think together, analyse together and act together as rational beings is impossible. The idea of a genuine community of equals
becomes a pure fantasy, a `symbolic retrieval' of something that never existed in the ®rst place: `Community is a magical device for
conjuring something apparently solidarity out of the thin air of modern times, a mechanism of re-enchantment.' As for history, it is
always false, since `We are always dealing with invented traditions.' 61 Now, this is not only nonsense, but dangerous nonsense at
that. Is history àlways false'? Did the Judeocide happen or did it not? And did not some people even try to resist it? Did slavery
exist or did it not, and did not people resist that too and, ultimately, bring it to an end? And are communities
always ìmagined'? Or, as Sivanandan states, are they beaten out on the smithy of a people's collective struggle?
J(E)DI 2010 56
A2: Must Break Down The Subject

Breaking down the subject destroys the political struggle against non-human animals
subjugation.
Steve Baker no date given

[http://www.psyeta.org/sa/sa4.1/baker.html]
Birke names postmodernism as one of the strands of feminist criticism of science by which she has been
influenced, and she summarizes it thus: "Here, an important concern is to question any universalizing
claim (or `master narrative' such as positivist science), and to deconstruct boundaries (such as
subject/object...)" (p. 144). She cites Haraway's recent work as an important example here. Birke, however,
has "reservations about wholeheartedly taking postmodernism on board." Two of these reservations seem
especially pertinent. The first is a concern that postmodernism's preoccupation with texts, discourses,
and an apparently endless chain of representations and simulacra risks losing sight of the
realities of human cruelty and animal pain. The second is a concern that postmodernism's
celebration of the "death of the subject" in fact celebrates the death of a privileged white
male human subjectivity, and in doing so often complacently overlooks the fact that both
animals and women have, Birke argues, traditionally "been denied subjectivity" (p. 146). These
objections are not to be dismissed lightly. Contemporary theoretical perspectives, postmodern or
otherwise, will be of no use to animal advocates unless they can be framed in a way which
acknowledges the lived experience of both animals and humans, and which refuses to set
artificial boundaries as to who will count as the subject of one of the "different selves"
envisaged by Adams.
J(E)DI 2010 57
A2: Ethics Bad

Ethical demands are key to fighting humanist domination—their kritik is just a bunch of
high theory trying to hide the fact that is no strategy for liberation
Peter Singer 2007
http://animalrightskorea.org/essays/peter-singer-ethics-and-animals.html
Some people are skeptical about the impact of moral argument on real life. They believe that moral argument
is really a rationalization of what we wish to do, and rarely or never does it change anyone’s mind. The
animal movement offers a counterexample to this view. As James Jasper and Dorothy Nelkin observed in
The Animal Rights Crusade: The Growth of a Moral Protest, “Philosophers served as midwives of the animal
rights movement in the late 1970s.” This movement has led to significant reforms in the ways in which
experiments are performed on animals, and, especially in the European Union, to laws phasing out some of
the worst forms of factory farming, including keeping veal calves and sows in crates so small that they
cannot walk or even turn around, and keeping hens in very small wire cages without any kind of nesting box
to lay their eggs in, or enough room to perform basic instintual behaviors. These reforms in the European
Union will affect hundreds of millions of animals, and transform large industries – all because of an ethical
concern for the welfare of animals. Now it seems that the United States is beginning to follow Europe’s example. Following
referenda in Florida and Arizona that have banned some of the cruelest factory farm practices, the largest pig producer in the world,
Smithfield, has announced that it will voluntarily phase out keeping its sows in individual crates. Canada’s largest pig producer, Maple
Leaf, has now said it will do the same. Now big veal producers in the United States have also announced that they will be phasing out
the cruel individual stalls they have been using for veal calves. So here is an area of everyday life in which philosophy has played a truly
critical role in society, not only at the level of ideas, but in instigating significant changes in society. It is noteworthy that this modern
philosophical challenge to the way we think about nonhuman animals came from writers in what is sometimes called the “analytic”
tradition, that is, the tradition of English-language philosophy. Thinkers in the continental European tradition, the
tradition of Heidegger, Foucault, Levinas, and Deleuze, played no role at all. Despite the much-vaunted
“critical stance” that these thinkers are said to take to prevailing assumptions and social institutions, this
extensive body of thought has largely failed to grapple with the issue of how we treat animals. Why should this
have been so? Of course, it is possible to ask the same question of philosophy in the analytic tradition before the 1970s, and some of the
possible answers are common to all philosophical traditions. Just as it was convenient for the slave-traders and slave-owners to believe
that they were justified in treating people of African descent as property, so too it is convenient for humans to believe that they are
justified in treating animals as things that can be owned, and to deny that they have interests that give rise to moral claims upon us. But
there are other, more specific factors involved in the failure of the continental tradition to challenge orthodoxy regarding animals, even
when philosophers outside that tradition were actively engaged in debating the issue. One reason may be that the British tradition of
Hume, Bentham and Mill already had reached the conclusion that the capacity for experiencing pain and pleasure is what is crucial to
moral status. In contrast, the continental tradition, focused more on Kant, made the ability to reason, and with it the capacity for
autonomy, the crucial requirement. Still, it is astonishing that so few of Kant’s followers noticed that this gave rise to a problem about
the status of human infants and humans with profound intellectual disabilities. Clearly, if the ability to reason or to act autonomously, is
what makes human beings “ends in themselves” rather than just the means to the ends of others, then obviously some human beings are
just means to the ends of others, not ends in themselves. The real lesson to be learned from the failure of continental European
philosophy to grapple with the issue of the moral status of animals, is that to adopt a “critical stance” requires
us to be critical about vague rhetorical formulations that appear profound or uplifting, but do more to
camouflage weaknesses in reasoning than to hold them up for critical scrutiny. Philosophy should be less
respectful of the authority of the “great” philosophers of the past, and more ready to punch a whole in
inflated rhetoric that lacks clear argument – even if doing so makes us as unpopular as Socrates became when
he did the same thing in ancient Athens. My original New York Review essay, from which I quoted at the
beginning of this lecture, ended with a paragraph that saw the challenge of the animal movement as a test of
human nature: Can a purely moral demand of this kind succeed? The odds are certainly against it. The book
holds out no inducements. It does not tell us that we will become healthier, or enjoy life more, if we cease
exploiting animals. Animal Liberation will require greater altruism on the part of mankind than any other
liberation movement, since animals are incapable of demanding it for themselves, or of protesting against
their exploitation by votes, demonstrations, or bombs. Is man capable of such genuine altruism? Who knows? If this book
does have a significant effect, however, it will be a vindication of all those who have believed that man has within himself the
potential for more than cruelty and selfishness.
J(E)DI 2010 58
A2: Ethics Bad

Ethics does NOT degenerate into domination. Ethical action is based upon power biological
imperatives for empathy that can break down elite domination and speciesism.
Gary Olson, Chair, Department of Political Science, Moravian College, 2007

[http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/15381]
The nonprofit Edge Foundation recently asked some of the world's most eminent scientists, "What Are You
Optimistic About? Why?" In response, the prominent neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni, cites the proliferating
experimental work into the neural mechanisms that reveal how humans are "wired for empathy."
Iacoboni's optimism is grounded in his belief that as these recent findings in experimental cognitive science seep into
public awareness, ". . . this explicit level of understanding our empathic nature will at some point dissolve the massive
belief systems that dominate our societies and that threaten to destroy us." (Iacoboni, 2007) Only five years earlier,
Preston and de Waal predicted that science is on the verge of "an ultimate level description that addresses the evolution
and function of empathy." (Preston, 2002) While there are reasons to remain circumspect (see below) about the
progressive political implications flowing from this work, a body of impressive empirical evidence reveals that
the roots of prosocial behavior, including moral sentiments like empathy, precede the evolution of
culture. This work sustains Noam Chomsky's visionary assertion that while the principles of our moral nature have been poorly
understood, "we can hardly doubt their existence or their central role in our intellectual and moral lives." (Chomsky, 1971, 1988; 2005)
The emerging field of the neuroscience of empathy parallels investigations being undertaken in cognate fields. Some forty years ago
the celebrated primatologist, Jane Goodall, observed and wrote about chimpanzee emotions, social relationships, and "chimp culture"
but experts remained highly skeptical. Even a decade ago, scientific consensus on this matter was elusive, but all that's changed.
According to famed primate scientist Frans B.M. de Waal "You don't hear any debate now." In his more recent work, de Waal plausibly
argues that humanmorality—including our capacity to empathize—is a natural outgrowth or
inheritance of behavior from our closest evolutionary relatives. It's now indisputable that we
share moral faculties with other species. (de Waal, 2006; Kropotkin, 1902; Trivers, 1971; Katz,
2000; Gintis, 2005; Hauser, 2006) Following Darwin, highly sophisticated studies by biologists Robert
Boyd and Peter Richerson posit that large-scale cooperation within the human species—including with
genetically unrelated individuals within a group—was favored by selection. (Hauser, 2006, p. 416) There
were evolutionary (survival) benefits in coming to grips with others. If morality is rooted in biology, in the raw material or building
blocks for the evolution of its expression, we now have a pending fortuitous marriage of hard science and secular morality in the most
profound sense. The details of the social neuroscientific analysis supporting these assertions lie outside this paper but suffice it to note
that it's persuasive, proliferating, and exciting. (Jackson, 2004 and 2006; Lamm, 2007) That said, one of the most vexing problems
that remains to be explained is why so little progress has been made in extending this orientation to those outside certain in-group moral
circles. That is, given a world rife with overt and structural violence, one is forced to explain why our moral intuition doesn't produce a
more ameliorating effect, a more peaceful world. Iacoboni suggests this disjuncture is explained by massive belief systems, including
political and religious ones, operating on the reflective and deliberate level. These tend to override the automatic, pre-reflective,
neurobiological traits that should bring people together. Thus a few cautionary notes are warranted here. The first, then, is that social
context and triggering conditions are everything because where there is conscious and massive elite manipulation, it becomes
exceedingly difficult to get in touch with our moral faculties. As Albert cautions, circumstances may preclude and overwhelm our
perceptions, rendering us incapable of recognizing and giving expression to moral sentiments (Albert, n.d.; and also, Pinker, 2002). For
example, the fear-mongering of artificially created scarcity may attenuate the empathic response. The second is Hauser's
(2006) observation that proximity was undoubtedly a factor in the expression of empathy. In our
evolutionary past "there were no opportunities for altruism at a distance" and therefore the emotional
intensity was/is lacking. This can't be discounted but, given some of the positive dimensions of
globalization, the potential for identifying with the "stranger" has never been more robust. For examples of
help extended to strangers that wasn't available in our evolutionary past, including blood donations,
Holocaust rescuers, adoption, and filing honest tax returns, see Barber (2004). Finally, as Preston (2006-
2007; and also, in press) suggests, risk and stress tend to suppress empathy whereas familiarity and similarity
encourage the experience of natural, reflexive empathy. This formidable but not insurmountable challenge
warrants further research into how this "out-group" identity is created, reinforced, and its influence diluted.
The concept of empathy was first discussed by the German psychologist Theodore Lipps in the 1880s. He
introduced the term "einfuhlung" (in-feeling) as a way of describing one person's affective response to
another person's experience. Empathy is not synonymous with compassion, shared suffering or sympathy
with another's pain. Limited to the former, one would be paralyzed by "over-identification" and the inability
to distinguish oneself from the other's distress. At a minimum, it requires being able to grasp another's
feeling state, to put oneself in the place of another. This necessitates making a distinction between self and
others by employing the cognitive capacity for detachment in order to act on that perception. (Hardee,
J(E)DI 2010 59
2003) We know from neuroscientific empathy experiments that the same affective brain
circuits are automatically mobilized upon feeling one's own pain and the pain of others.
Through brain imaging, we also know that separate neural processing regions then free up the capacity to
take action. As Decety notes, empathy then allows us to "forge connections with people whose
lives seem utterly alien from us." (Decety, 2007) Where comparable experience is lacking, this "cognitive empathy" builds
on the neural basis and allows one to "actively projects oneself into the shoes of another person," by trying to imagine the other person's
situation. (Preston, in press) Empathy is "other directed" and recognizes the other's humanity. But, again, why the disjuncture? What
can we expect from this potentially transforming synthesis? Hauser, as I read his exposition of a "universal moral grammar," posits a
more neutral or benign process at work. Given a moral grammar hard wired into our neural circuit via evolution, this neural machinery
precedes conscious decisions in life-and-death situations. However, we observe "nurture entering the picture to set the parameters and
guide us toward the acquisition of particular moral systems." At other points he suggests that environmental factors can push individuals
toward defective moral reasoning, and the various outcomes for a given local culture are virtually limitless. (Hauser, 2006) For me, this
discussion of cultural variation fails to give sufficient attention to the socioeconomic variables responsible for shaping the culture.
Cohen and Rogers, in parsing Chomsky's critique of elites, note that "Once an unjust order exists, those benefiting from it have both an
interest in maintaining it and, by virtue of their social advantages, the power to do so." (For a concise but not uncritical treatment of
Chomsky's social and ethical views, see Cohen, 1991.) Clearly, the vaunted human capacity for verbal communication cuts both ways.
In the wrong hands, this capacity is often abused by consciously quelling the empathic response. When de Waal writes, "Animals are no
moral philosophers," I'm left to wonder if he isn't favoring the former in this comparison. (de Waal, 2000) One of the methods
employed within capitalist democracies is Chomsky and Herman's "manufacture of consent," a form of highly sophisticated thought
control. Potentially active citizens must be "distracted from their real interests and deliberately confused about the way the world
works." (Cohen, 1991; Chomsky, 1988) For this essay and following Chomsky, I'm arguing that the human mind is the primary target
of this perverse "nurture" or propaganda, in part because exposure
to certain new truths about empathy—hard
evidence about our innate moral nature—poses a direct threat to elite interests. That is, given the
apparent universality of this biological predisposition toward empathy, we have a potent scientific
baseline upon which to launch further critiques of this manipulation. First, the insidiously effective
scapegoating of human nature that claims we are motivated bg greedy, dog-eat-dog "individual self-interest is all" is undermined.
Stripped of yet another rationalization for empire, predatory behavior on behalf of the capitalist mode of production becomes ever more
transparent. Second, for many people, the basic incompatibility between global capitalism and the lived expression of moral
sentiments may become obvious for the first time. (Olson, 2006, 2005) For example, the failure to engage this moral sentiment has
radical implications, not the least being consequences for the planet. Researchers at McGill University (Mikkelson, 2007) have shown
that economic inequality is linked to high rates of biodiversity loss. The authors suggest that economic reforms may be the prerequisite
to saving the richness of the ecosystem and urge that ". . . if
we can learn to share the economic resources more
fairly with fellow members of our own species, it may help to share ecological resources with our fellow
species." While one hesitates imputing too much transformative potential to this emotional capacity, there is
nothing inconsistent about drawing more attention to inter-species empathy and eco-empathy. The latter
may be essential for the protection of biotic communities. Third, learning about the
conscious suppression of this essential core of our human nature begs additional troubling
questions about the motives behind other elite-generated ideologies, from neo-liberalism and
nationalism to xenophobia and the "war on terror." Equally alarming for elites, awareness of this reality
contains the potential to encourage "destabilizing" but humanity-affirming cosmopolitan
attitudes toward the faceless "other," both here and abroad. In de Waal's apt words, "Empathy
can override every rule about how to treat others." Finally, as de Waal admonishes, "If we could manage to
see people on other continents as part of us, drawing them into our circle of reciprocity and empathy, we would be building upon rather
than going against our nature." (de Waal, 2005) An ethos of empathy is an essential part of what it means to be human. We've been
systematically denied a deeper and more fulfilling engagement with this moral sentiment. I would argue that, paradoxically, the relative
absence of widespread empathic behavior is in fact a searing tribute to its potentially subversive power.
J(E)DI 2010 60
Topicality Cards
There are hundreds of dogs in Kuwait, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
The United States War Dogs Association 10

[United States War Dog Association website, “Past, Present, Future”, June 18, 2010, p. http://www.uswardogs.org/]
It has been estimated that these courageous canine heroes saved over 10,000 lives during the conflict in
Vietnam. Today all branches of our Armed Forces are utilizing Military Patrol Dogs specializing in
Drug and Bomb/Explosive detection. There are approximately 600-700 of these canines in the Middle
East in such places as Kuwait, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. They are being used to patrol Air
Bases, Military Compounds, Ammunition Depots and Military Check Points. They are guarding and
protecting our Military Personnel as they were trained to do, with Courage, Loyalty and Honor.
There is a dog unit in South Korea.
Wicke 2005
[Staff Sgt. Russell, 51st Fighter Wing Public Affairs, I-News Wire, “Military dogs dig into security”,
March 29, 2005, p. http://www.i-newswire.com/military-dogs-dig-into-security/a12457]
OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea (AFPN) -- Not all Air Force equipment has engines, wings or even
operating instructions. One unit here is responsible for equipment that has a mouth packed with sharp teeth
and a hide of fur. "Osan has the largest operational dog kennel in the Air Force," said Tech. Sgt. Jerry
Woodard, 51st Security Forces Squadron kennel master. "We have 23 dogs." Sergeant Woodard said by the
time the dogs are fully trained and working at Osan, they each are worth $30,000. "Although the Air Force
gives them each a stock number and considers them equipment, the dogs are partners to us," he said.
Dog deployments to Middle East are up
Davenport 9
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't just forcing thousands of soldiers and Marines to deploy for two and
three tours. The sacrifice is being shared by a key, and growing, part of the U.S. military: highly trained
German shepherds and Belgian Malinois. In a war with no front lines, they have become valuable at sniffing
out makeshift bombs, which cause most U.S. casualties.
The use of dogs in war, whether as scouts, sentries or trackers, goes back hundreds of years. But since Sept.
11, 2001, the Defense Department has increased the number of military dogs from 1,320 to 2,025, and
many have served multiple tours.

Animal Soldiers Affirmative

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J(E)DI 2010 1

Lab CaCa Animal Soldiers Affirmative

Kritik 2AC's / Animal Rights Advantage Ext.

Steven Best, Chair Philosophy at UT-EP 2006

The number of military dogs is going up.

Military dogs are either trained for detection or for patrol.

Dogs have been killed in the field

Dogs cannot handle psychological stress of combat

Military Dogs Abused by Trainers

A2: Plan Costs To Much

Bomb-detecting dogs expensive; robots a viable alternative

A2: No Alternatives For Demining

Low- cost Demining robots ready for use

A2: Military Dogs Have Nowhere To Go

Once the dog becomes a pet it is no longer part of the military.

Military dog adoption is a quick and effective process.

A2: Non-Speciest Util Is Possible

A2: Consequentialism Inevitable

A2: Non-Speciest Util Is Possible

A2: DA Proves The Plan Unethical

Alan Gewirth, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago, 1982

A2: Dirty Hands

A2: Predictions Good

A2: Predictions Good

2AC/1AR Morality Cards

“Cowardice asks the question: Is it safe? Expediency

The speciest line is arbitrary—as demonstrated by animal psychology

Animal Liberation Front no date given

Exploiting animals is a moral choice—not an evolutionary necessity

2AC/1AR Morality Cards

ALF no date given

2AC/1AR Morality Cards

David Meyer no date given

IT’S HYPOCRITICAL AND IRRATIONAL TO SAY THAT ANIMALS DO NOT HAVE

2AC/1AR Morality Cards

Nicholas Agar, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Victoria University, 2001

A2: Counterplan Solves Ethics

A2: Counterplan Solves Ethics

J. Baird Callicott, Professor of Philosphy at UNT, 2002

A2: Conditional/Consultation Counterplans

A2: Animal Welfare/Suffering Counterplans

A2: Animal Welfare/Suffering Counterplans

“Animal Rights vs. Animal Welfare” no date given

And you won’t solve our animal liberation impact.

A2: Word PICs

Steven Best, Chair Philosophy at UT-EP, no date given

A2: Alternative Solves The Case

A2: Alt Solves The Case

Steven Best, Chair of Philosophy at UT-EP, 2007

A2: Policymaking/Using The State Bad

A2: Must Break Down The Subject

Steve Baker no date given

A2: Ethics Bad

A2: Ethics Bad

Gary Olson, Chair, Department of Political Science, Moravian College, 2007

The United States War Dogs Association 10

There is a dog unit in South Korea.

Dog deployments to Middle East are up

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