Anthropocentrism K (1:25)

Link
The affirmative ascribes to a doomed, anthropocentric notion of rights belonging only to
humans, justifying this through the usage of Will Theory, where rights only belong to those
who can make competent decisions.

Kramer. Professor of Legal and Political Philosophy at Churchill College. Has a B.A. from Cornell, a J.D. from
Harvard, a Ph.D. and LL.D. from Cambridge. 2001. Do Animals and Dead People Have Legal Rights? Law Journal Library.
(Matthew H.

http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/caljp14&div=6&g_sent=1&collection=journals#31)

A striking corollary of the Will Theory is that animals,

infants, comatose people, senile people, and dead people do
not have any legal rights. Such creatures are not
competent to form or express their wishes with the elementary degree of
precision and reliability that would be necessary for the full-fledged exercise of any legal power of
enforcement/waiver. They are not able to grasp what is involved in the enforcing or waiving of a duty, and they are likewise
unable to communicate any decisions on such a matter in a minimally
satisfactory way-even if they could arrive at those decisions
adequately [regardless]. In short, they do not have any legal rights, because they are incapable of
being right-holders. (To be sure, a system of law might attach legal consequences to the silence of these inarticulate creatures; for example, any
failures to demand the enforcement of legal duties might be treated as waivers of the duties. Legal effects in such cases would occur purely by
default, and would therefore not derive from exercises of legal powers by animals and comatose people and infants and dead people.)

animals and mentally incapacitated people are not

competent to be the holders of legal powers, they are not
competent to be the holders of any [nor] entitlements that would be classified by [under]
the Will Theory as legal rights. Questions about the conferral of legal rights on animals and fetuses and mentally
Given that

incapacitated people are settled at a conceptual level, through an explication of the concept of "legal rights" which disallows the ascription of
such entitlements to those creatures. Of course, to rule out attributions of legal rights is not to rule out the possibility of laws that offer legal
protections for the creatures who are deemed to be incapable of holding rights. No advocate of the Will Theory contends that the interests of such
creatures are legally unprotected or ought to be legally unprotected. A Will Theorist will readily recognize (for example) that some animals are
legally shielded against many forms of mistreatment, and he may well take the view that the law in this respect is amply justified. What the Will
Theorist will add is simply that the legal safeguards against the mistreatment of the animals are not legal rights-or, at least, that they are not legal
rights held by the animals.

Impact
The anthropocentric idea that non-humans, sub-humans, or even dead humans do not
have intrinsic value is the root justification for genocide and oppression in the world

Damato and Chopra

91

19
(The American Journal International Law, 85 A.J.I.L. 21, Anthony, member
of the board of Editors of the Journal, and Sudhir, staff attorney for the EPA)
Thus, a combination of overinclusiveness and underinclusiveness renders the Cartesian thesis arbitrary and unpersuasive.

Throughout history, the denial that other persons

outsiders, minority groups as well as other
animals, have a consciousness equivalent to our
own has been the foundational philosophy for
genocide and enslavement. This kind of denial of
humanity to minority groups is the clearest form of
inhumanity. The base evil of genocide, torture, or
enslavement of minority or defenseless groups is
matched only by the pseudo-rationalization that
the victims are less than human. Charles Darwin saw
clearly the empathic connection between
opposition to slavery and opposition to cruelty to
animals. According to his son, The two subjects which moved my father perhaps more strongly than any others were cruelty to
animals and slavery. His detestation of both was intense, [*27] and his indignation was overpowering in case of any levity or want of feeling on
these matters. n32 Those who would deny whales the right to live use a similar rationalization. To be sure, whales are not human, but are they

[As such] the mindset that exults in the killing of

whales and the sports hunting of endangered wildlife
species overlaps with the mindset that accepts
genocide of [the] inferior human being. Conversely, the extension of
less than human?

rights to whales resonates deeply with the historical-legal extensions of equal rights to women and to minority groups. We believe that the phrase
human rights is only superficially species chauvinistic._n33 In a profound sense, whales and some other sentient mammals are entitled to
human rights or at least to humanistic rightsto the most fundamental entitlements that we regard as part of the humanitarian tradition. They are
entitled to those fundamental rights not because theyre less than human but because they are different from humans in various respects that
do not affect or qualify the rights in question. In this article we argue only for extending the single most fundamental of all human rightsthe
right to lifeto whales. n34

Alternative
The alternative, as such, is to reject the affirmative advocacy as a vote for them would be a
vote for anthropocentrism. Instead, vote negative as my framework prevents genocide by
recognizing that rights do not only apply to living, competent humans.