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Slavery and Owning Animals

  
  

Page: 12(3)

 
 
Irony of Ironies
15:24 / 14.12.03
Looking after a pet can make you a better person, by teaching you to value to and care for something other than yourself - it's particularly true for children, who can learn from looking after a pet to empathize with animals and thus become less likely to treat them cruelly.
As I type this, I'm lying on the sofa with a cat sprawled across me purring like a maniac. As far as I can see, my looking after him increases the amount of happiness in the world, both because it makes me happy to do so and because it makes him happier than he would be in a "wild" situation (if that would even be possible).
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
18:27 / 14.12.03
How? In what sense is the cat happier than the cat would be if wild? That is speculation. There is also an anthropomorphic tendency here- people are assuming that animals have the same emotions as humans, but that only humans are equipped to interpret and explain them. This seems to me to be a bit of a leap.

Now, using pets to teach people how to look after pets seems rather circular - why not skip the whole process? There doesn't seem to be a moral component in this, outside a circularity...
 
 
supplecow
04:21 / 15.12.03
I'm new to this thread, and I'll admit that I didn't read most of it. I did, however, notice Tom Coates' mention of rights extending beyond humanity. While I agree that the question is faulty because there are so many variables involved, I disagree that rights are reserved only for human beings. The dictionary may define a right as something that is reserved for a person and the laws may only explicitly lay out the rights of people, but a looser definition of 'rights' does apply to other living things (especially sentient ones) even though many people choose to disregard it. The idea that plants and animals have rights (in the loose sense) is implicit in animal protection laws and many environmental protection laws. With that established...

To answer the initial question, we need to look at why, for example, beating a dog with a baseball bat is against the law and owning it isn't. This is really basic because owning a dog or cat isn't harming it the way owning a person would harm that person. In the same vein, the difference between owning an animal and owning a person is that a person can be harmed by it--they would be pyschologically damaged at the thought of being owned (more importantly, at the inference that he or she is less than a human being because of it). An animal cannot be harmed in the same way because it "feels" only physical things. (No, I don't believe in animal psychology. I believe that's called projecting.)
 
 
sdv (non-human)
20:07 / 15.12.03
I have merely scan read this thread and cannot claim to have carefully considered the arguments underway - but as far as I'm aware the assumption of human superiority and greater worth than the non-human has still been left unchallenged - consequently then - please let me clarify: even the most interesting pro-Animal Rights philosophers (such as Peter Singer) leaves unchallenged the assumption that a 'human life worth living' has greator value than a non-human life.

However this assumption is incorrect and not acceptable - even following Singer's Utilitarian logic it should be clear that I value George the cat's more than I value the average unknown human being with aids - simply because I finance George but not the person with Aids.

This is not however my position which briefly can be summerised as follows: in abstract terms on the plain of difference on which all animals human and non-human exist (shortly to be joined by non-animal software persons no doubt) there is no difference in value between any singular being - unless that is you have a personal relationship with them. The point is that whether human or non-human each is of equivilant value...

The two ethical and moral keys here then are difference and equivilance and not animal as victim or property...

(A final point which is an afterthought - as some contemporary theories of evolution suggest it is probable that there is no such thing as a 'species'...)

regards
steve
 
 
Irony of Ironies
15:58 / 17.12.03
How? In what sense is the cat happier than the cat would be if wild? That is speculation.

There's two ways to answer that. The first is simply empirical: The quality of life of the cat is higher. It is free from diseases and parasites. It is regularly fed, and safe from predation. It has freedom to roam where it pleases (even when its roaming gives me a heart attack!). It is likely to have a much longer life than a wild cat, thus leading to more total pleasure.


There is also an anthropomorphic tendency here- people are assuming that animals have the same emotions as humans, but that only humans are equipped to interpret and explain them


Yes, but you're treading on a dangerous slippery slope once you play the "anthropomorphic" card here. If you assume that I am unable to judge what "happy" is (if there is such a thing) for a cat, you can equally say that I'm anthropomorphising when I say the cat is in pain: if if you then go on to say that I can't assume cats feel pain, then why should I care if a cat is hurt?

That leads on to the second way of answering your first point, which is that I base the judgement of the cat being happy on stimulous and response, in the same way I judge that it's in pain. I lie on the sofa for a while, and the cat will come along and headbutt me (I kid you not) until I stroke it. It then purrs. Is that happiness? I'm not saying that the cat's happiness is definitely qualitatively the same as that of a human being, but to say that it is incapable of being happy simply because it can't tell me using language is speciesist. If a person were incapable of talking or communicating via signing, would it mean that person was incapable of emotional states that are the same as anyone elses?
 
 
Mr Tricks
17:31 / 17.12.03
Haus:
Thanks for the Begs the Question tidbit... feel free to elaborate on it, here or elsewhere.

WTF???
You've accurately observed that I've been moving around WRT the GOOD/Not Good aspect of owning a pet. As well as the is it right to won a pet? question. All a sort of thinking outloud process.

I would say that the "Tricks suggests rather that owning a pet is a morally neutral action, and that judgement of that act of ownership is context-dependent. bit is much closer to my real opinion.

Yes certain animals make better "pets" then others and I suspect that certain types of animals have evolved specificly to be pets and that is currently their natural state. The extreme example of which is the PUG, as mentioned above. Humans are culpable for the evolutionary direction which brought them about, but the question of what the "morrally correct" action to take with them has yet to be answered:

  1. Should they be driven towards extinction?
  2. Or should "we" take responsibility for the continued wellbeing of this species?

I tend towards #2

Now there's mention that the "working Pet" is better off, due to a capacity to function closer to the evolutionary precept of Pack Hunting as typified by the wolf. I'm wondering if the value judgement has an anthropomorphic tendency here as well.
If we consider survivial, and the perpetuation of a species, an evolutionary imperative then wouldn't the shift from "wild animal" to "domesticated (even usefull) Animal" place that species closer to humans on an evolutionary scale than say the Doe Doe Bird?

On the other hand there are animals that in no way should be kept as "pets." I'm thinking in particular of the Caged Bird, but there are certainly many other examples. once again I believe this can only truthfully be answered on a case by case/species by species/owner by owner basis.

Is owning a pet good because it is morally good to own animals, or is owning a pet good because it makes the owner a better person, or is owning a pet good because it is, irrespective of the actions or status of the pet owner or the pet owned, an absolutely good thing to do?

Not sure if these are retorical questions or if my answers would be considered qualified, but here goes...
The owning of a pet opens a series of unique opportunities for one to better oneself. Along with the opportunity to live with (and consiquently learn from) a rather serious responsibility towards another life it can connect an individual to aspects of nature and the natural world that would otherwise be completely overlooked in the day to day life within human society. More so this connection to nature as represented by one's pet opens the opportunity for other members of society to at least glimse aspects of a world outside the strip-mall and paved sidewalk.

Of course, the mistreatment of some pet is a complete failure of some individual's responsibility. However, in a world where the pet has been removed from the equasion would those failures no longer exist? or would they be displaced elsewhere? perhaps somewhere within a child care or parenting situation?
It's been said on several occasions (even on this board in other threds) that the keeping of certain pets is a sort of rehersal for parenthood.

Personally I've been speaking from personal experience and insight gained from continual companionship with dog(s).

I wonder what differentiations could be made with animals like Horses or fish or sheep.
Or societies in India or Africa where the boundries between wild/domesticated animals are not quite as defined.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
21:55 / 18.12.03
Yes, but you're treading on a dangerous slippery slope once you play the "anthropomorphic" card here. If you assume that I am unable to judge what "happy" is (if there is such a thing) for a cat, you can equally say that I'm anthropomorphising when I say the cat is in pain: if if you then go on to say that I can't assume cats feel pain, then why should I care if a cat is hurt?

I think most slippery slopes are quite dangerous, except possibly ones in mattress factories. Even then there's a health and safety issue...

Happy and in pain are two different things. So, for that matter, are "in pain" and "hurt". Your terminologies are slipping out from under you. Being hurt can usually be examined empirically - is the animal bleeding? Is it moving gingerly? Pain can be judged by stimulus and response - jab needle into cat, observe response. Happiness is rather harder. I can appear happy and be unhappy; can a cat do the same? Probably not, since we can probably agree that animals do not perceive their happiness as humans do; that is, an animal does not think "I am happy", it simply feels happy.

However, the relevant qualifications of happiness you are making are based on an assumption that a cat wants the same things a human wants - a long life, an absence of parasites and food that does not try to escape. This strikmes me as dubious, so the fact remains, as far as I can see, that there is no way to establish confidently that your cat is happier as a pet than it would be if it had been allowed to develop the skills to live in the wild.
 
 
Mr Tricks
23:02 / 18.12.03
there is no way to establish confidently that your cat is happier as a pet than it would be if it had been allowed to develop the skills to live in the wild.

this sort of sentiment has come up on this thred a few times. For me, there seems to be a flaw in the assumption that interaction with humans or domestication automaticly disolves any capacity to develop traits assumed to be inherent to that species.

with the exception of extreme cases (the declawed cat)I don't see the loss of hunting instincts as a phonomenon in pet cats.

Along those same lines, a domesticated dog adapts its instinctual behavior to the dynamics of a human included pack. These instincts are not lost, and once placed in the wild the dog (like the cat) would simply readjust its instinctual behavior to the new environment.

So as for the"there is no way to establish confidently that your cat is happier..." bit.
It strikes me that Monkey see, Monkey doo can speak with cofidence based on personal (and yes subjective) experience. Now if a thrid person accepts that report with equal confidence is another matter. There may be no way to empirically determining weither this cat would be "happier" had it lived a different life. The whole Pet subject seems much more in the realm of subjective perception.
 
 
Newfred
18:29 / 05.04.04
Animal rights debates always seem to end up encircling all aspects of Western moral philosophy. During the later twentieth century, animal rights took on a new political character, and in Europe and the U. S. much legislation to prevent animal cruelty has been passed. Following a chain of liberation movements, perhaps indeed starting with the widespread ending of slavery with the American Civil War etc., animal rights movements might best be seen as merely a logical progression.

Christian scholar of ethics Peter Singer, who supports many animal rights causes, contests that civil and animal rights movements are almost always based on arguments about 'equality'. However, he suggests that 'equality' is not a real or demonstrable thing, but rather a principle upon which we treat one another. Therefore, plainly men and women are not 'equal', just as no human being is 'equal' to another in any physical or personal way. Rather, civil and animal rights movements seek to change law and culture such that we afford each other certain priveleges and responsibilities which reflect an imagined social equality.

Personally, I find it easier to consider the animal rights debate in these terms. We need only look back to the age of slavery, and to different countries and cultures around the world, to see that morality is not the business of absolutes, but of values and principles native and relative to different cultural and political systems. Today, there are a decreasing number of people who support the testing of purely cosmetic products on animals, because we have afforded animals a certain degree of moral worth by acknowledging the reality of pain suffered by animals, and the gradual Western rejection of a created world order.

Nevertheless, we persist in treating animals differently from humans. It is not enough to say that this is chiefly because they are not human, because not only do humans continue to do great cruelty to fellow humans, but in many religious and cultural systems around the world animals in general, or species in particular, are afforded special moral consideration.

I would suggest that the chief reason we treat animals as inferior beings in the West is that we treat animals as inferior beings in the West. We are all brought up in environments which instil in us a set of values and lessons about how the world works, what is in, and what is out. Therefore, any change will be slow, because change pushes against the grain. But one day perhaps medical testing of animals, for example, will be as alien and repulsive to most of us as human slavery has become today. This process, in turn, will probably be driven by necessity and functionalism.
 
 
Henningjohnathan
21:42 / 05.04.04
I'm sorry if this has already been brought up, but I believe that there may be another perspective worth mentioning and that is the superorganic nature of domestication. Essentially, the idea here is that "Wolves are endangered; dogs are not" "Buffalo are miniscule in number when compared to cattle."

Domestication itself may in fact be an evolutionary advantage in which animals that make themselves useful to the nominally "dominant" species prosper whereas those that do not perish.

In this sense, if everyone suddenly converted to vegetarianism, what would happen to cattle?

Also we should note that ownership of a pet is in many ways similar to adoption of a child. The reason that we actually do love mammalian pets is that we both share the limbic brain (the emotional intuitive brain) and our relationship is actually a development of that connection.

However, I agree that this also makes it quite wrong to use these animals for torturous experiments. It is not the intellectual capacity in our own mind that feels what I would call "immoral pain", but the emotional limbic parts of our mind. For this reason, the pain a rabbit and especially any primate feels is just as "real" or "human" as that that we feel.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
06:24 / 06.04.04
I love the way this thread got all liberal with talk of how animals couldn't have rights because they have no responsibilities. Ex said precisely what I thought -- many animals are put down because they do not fulfil their 'responsiblities' to humans, responsiblities (which, just like in liberal humanist rhetoric about humans) which are imposed from the outside in the guise of a 'social contract' guaranteeing everyone a voice.

The problem is, slavery obviously does exist, 'still'. I'm not talking about 'the uncivilised barbarians' here: children, just like animals, are chattels in most Western countries and have very little agency. Granted, there are considerable movements of resistance to this notion of children as property, but the dominant historical rhetoric has been to consider everything that was not-man -- migrant labour forces (slaves, by any other name), women, children, animals, any non-white people, the mentally ill, disabled folk, and so on -- as property.

I don't know that owning, eating, domesticating or otherwise interfering with animals' 'natural' way of life is ethical. Then again, I don't know what a natural way of life is for the average 21st century animal. Animals adapt just like humans do, and exploit the resources available to exploit. Resources includes food specifically produced for human consumption -- both in the 'wild' and in domesticated circumstances. I think it's dangerous to use a conception of the 'natural' that we don't interrogate. Just as many animals are not fluffy and nice, so many animals adapt the situation they find themselves in an attempt at survival, and their relationships, social and historical contexts, and ways of living are as mediated and 'constructed' as ours.

Finally -- I am in the middle of writing a long piece of academic work that continually drives me crazy. Often when I'm working I look at my cat, sleeping in the blankety bed I make for him, lazily licking his balls or his ass (although we neutered him, it doesn't appear to have prevented him from finding female cats in heat *or* experiencing sexual pleasure) and I want to be a cat. In a different context, I have also entertained extensive fantasies about being a dog, and acted them out from time to time with other people. Plus I've been in a 24/7 master-slave relationship where I was the slave, albeit for the amount of time it took to realise it wouldn't work. This has changed my feelings about animals and humans and the relationships between them quite a bit.
 
 
Henningjohnathan
16:50 / 06.04.04
Interesting master slave point. i think someone once said that if a completely alien race came to earth, it would assume that the cats and dogs ruled the world.
 
 
TeN
19:05 / 08.04.04
First off, I'd just like to say this is a really good idea for a topic - very interesting indeed.

As for my response...

The cynical conservative in me wants to say --
"Stop whining you pansy! They're just fucking animals for Christ's sake!"

The radical environmentalist in me wants to say --
"Owning animals is slavery!"

The anarcho-naturalist in me wants to say --
"Slavery is one of the oldest human practices. We had slavery before we had language. Certain animals practice forms of violent domination/manipulation that could qualify as slavery. Stopping slavery goes AGAINST freedom!"

The communist in me wants to say --
"Is not capitalism a form of slavery? Do not the borgeosie enslave the proleteriat from the moment of their birth? Is not the system in itself unescapable? Does the freedom given to corporations not steal from the supposed freedom given to the people?"

The nihilist in me wants to say --
"fuck it."





But the voice in reason in me wants to say --
"Slavery is a relative term. In order for it to be used in a negative context, it would need to imply that the 'slave' is being treated harshly and unfairly. In the case of human slavery, this is almost always true. In the case of pet ownership, however, it rarely is. Take for example the adoption of a cat from an animal shelter: the cat was taken in in the first place because it would not survive in the wild (the competion is too fierce - 'stray' cats are in abundance, which is why cats are encouraged to be neutered). Wouldn't it be better to take the cat in and let it live a comfortable if not elegant life than to let it dye miserable in the wild/on the streets? In the case of animal abuse, however, the animal is being treated unfairly, and so this counts as being wrong (it's not exactly 'slavery' because most of the time the animal isn't being forced to do manual labor). The real question is: what about animals bred to do labor and/or be used for food? I think that would probably fall into the category of slavery (although it won't stop me from eating hamburgers)."
 
 
raelianautopsy
19:09 / 10.04.04
I don't think it is immoral to own pets because they are breeded to enjoy that they are pets. My dog doesn't seem to mind. But what about zoos? I always find the zoo depressing and all the animals depressed. Is it immoral to cage them?

I think that there are levels of morality. Some things are more immoral than others. I am a vegetarian partly for moral reasons, but I eat fish because they have six minute memories and aren't really advanced enough to suffer. For that matter, I would assume that anyone who thinks pet ownership is slavary would be a vegatarian. But what about animals that hunt and kill other animals? Is that immoral?

One of the levels to morality is the level of evolution the sufferee is. It is worse to hurt a dog than an insect. Maybe that's because of the Hindu thing of your karma deciding what animal you ressurect as. So stepping on an insect is a very low level of immorality, while torturing an insect is worse, while making higher mammals suffer is worse, but hurting and owning humans is the highest on the heiarchy of immorality. Does that make sense?

I don't know.
 
 
Skit
11:23 / 22.04.04
Some animals wouldn't survive in the wild very well, not to mention any names (nudges Willow (dog)) and it is more beneficial for them to live with people. Animals especially Dogs enjoy human company, if not the company of other Dogs, the lucky ones have both. This basic need is derived from the fact Wolves live in packs. If people are cruel to animals they shouldn't be allowed to keep them, however even though animals are our equals they should know there plave within a family. Dogs like to know their place, giving a Dog all the privalages you have, especially letting it share your bed and eat when you are eating will either create an aggresive Dog who beleives that you are inviting them to challenge your dominance, very few dogs will turn down the opportunity to become the alpha of the household. Passive dogs who do not want to challenge any one will become misrable and confused, infact this could lead to the opposite, exaggerated submission as the Dog in question makes a desperate attempt to say "no honestly, please, I don't want to fight, I agree with your authority..."
Animals shouldn't be taken from the wild and domesticated, all pets should be bred in captivity. All animals deserve freedom providing that freedom is not damaging to anything, eg the animal, other creatures, or someones property etc... I do not agree with caged pets eg birds or fish, but caging is acceptable if it is definately benificial to the animal or its species eg at zoos which do conservation research. The animals should be treated well and kept in exihibits that would be the size of there territory in the wild.
 
 
Skit
11:24 / 22.04.04
Whoops I didn't mean to post twice
 
 
Skit
11:32 / 22.04.04
Oh, this is good have to post more.
A Dog getting the paper etc is not slavery, the dog does these things (probably taken from things a Wolf would do in the wild) to prove its use in the pack and its respect for the Alphas, a Dog dreeds beeing ommited from the pack.Also with barn Cats, the Cats would hunt Rats or Mice naturally, it is hardly like they are being forced to do that, it is instinctive.
 
  

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