Fawkes

Concepts such as 'rational' or 'conceptual' condense facts of reality about humans.  You could spend the rest of your life enumerating concrete specific instances for those concepts.  Look at the endless stream of ways in which humans are different from other animals, including specific instances of the facts which give rise to the moral principle of rights.  The more you do that, the less tempted you will be to apply 'conceptual' as some sort of percentage-based litmus test for rights, i.e. if an animal seems sorta conceptual then maybe it sorta has rights.  No, rights are moral principles which arise in a specific and unique context, and animals don't even come close to recreating that context.

If you recognize that the idea of animal rights is 'ridiculous', what makes you think you can change the minds of those who hold such a position?  Leaving aside the problem of 'proving' (showing the connection to self-evident facts of reality) the non-existence of something (i.e. something not in reality), how do you condense an education in the primacy of existence and proper formation and use of concepts to a single writing or conversation?

Better to take the opportunity to practice some philosophic detection and try to figure out where your opponent's most fundamental error is, and see if you can figure out an engaging way to encourage them to rethink it.

Concepts such as 'rational' or 'conceptual' condense facts of reality about humans.  You could spend the rest of your life enumerating concrete specific instances for those concepts.  Look at the endless stream of ways in which humans are different from other animals, including specific instances of the facts which give rise to the moral principle of rights.  The more you do that, the less tempted you will be to apply 'conceptual' as some sort of percentage-based litmus test for rights, i.e. if an animal seems sorta conceptual then maybe it sorta has rights.  No, rights are moral principles which arise in a specific and unique context, and animals don't even come close to recreating that context.

If you recognize that the idea of animal rights is 'ridiculous', what makes you think you can change the minds of those who hold such a position?  Leaving aside the problem of 'proving' (showing the connection to self-evident facts of reality) the non-existence of something (i.e. something not in reality), how do you condense an education in the primacy of existence and proper formation and use of concepts to a single writing or conversation?

Better to take the opportunity to practice some philosophic detection and try to figure out where your opponent's most fundamental error is, and see if you can figure out an engaging way to encourage them to rethink it.