What makes you think I didn't participate in the "great degree of academic debate"?
> Is there a clearer way of saying you're intellectually and morally lazy about a topic than calling it "virtue signaling"
It's a clear way of saying I've intellectually and morally considered it and it's nonsense. The only people who would get upset by it are those whose entire reasoning is emotional and hypocrite virtue signaling. Otherwise, they would provide examples of animal rights or answer my question that I laid out : If animals have rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, what do you do to a mama bear that kills a deer to feed her cubs?
Notice that the two replies to my legitimate comment are rather lacking in any argument or reason.
People (probably correctly) assume you're not a good faith conversant when you say things like "The only people who would get upset by it are those whose entire reasoning is emotional and hypocrite virtue signaling." I find that the phrase "virtue signaling" is used almost universally by people who themselves are deeply morally lacking and thus wish to portray other peoples' altruistic and empathetic moral positions as somehow false so they can feel better about their own lack of empathy, altruism, and charitability.
Nobody here said that animals have the rights enumerated in the United States Declaration of Independence (which by the way carries no legal weight).
In any event, the general postulations as to the issue you present are that ecologies themselves have intrinsic value and we needn't interfere with nature (there is an in fact a debate about this on the environmental side of the aisle). Indeed, "rights" themselves are never absolute and they aren't somehow abstract (again, if you actually engaged with the literature you may be more familiar with debates surrounding how to define rights, whether are only individual, etc). Most rights exist vis-a-vis x or are things that cannot be infringed upon by other rights-bearing actors or the government. Thus an animal can have a right to not suffer at human hands, but such a right is not susceptible to infringement by another animal.
> People (probably correctly) assume you're not a good faith conversant when you say things like
It's just two accounts. Lets not conflate that with "people" since most people are not very fond of virtue signaling for a reason. My advice, if you think someone isn't acting in good faith, just don't bother responding.
> Is there a clearer way of saying you're intellectually and morally lazy about a topic than calling it "virtue signaling"
It's a clear way of saying I've intellectually and morally considered it and it's nonsense. The only people who would get upset by it are those whose entire reasoning is emotional and hypocrite virtue signaling. Otherwise, they would provide examples of animal rights or answer my question that I laid out : If animals have rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, what do you do to a mama bear that kills a deer to feed her cubs?
Notice that the two replies to my legitimate comment are rather lacking in any argument or reason.