Why is it wrong for animals to suffer?

Great Debates
41

Many would disagree with you as to their being just property. Many people who have pets consider them to be part of the family. Anyone with any moral character isn’t going to cruelly mistreat these creatures. They’re at our mercy and it’s wrong, period, to be cruel to them just because it makes you feel good.

As to animals killed for food, it should be done in as quick and painless manner as possible. There’s a difference between killing and torture. I’ve heard stories about what some workers in slaughter houses do just for the fun of it: poking pigs eyes out and cutting off their snouts while they’re still alive. This is utterly and totally disgusting and shows what kind of people these are. I cannot begin to express my anger at this kind of thing!! Anyone who does these kinds of things to animals makes me want to puke, and in my opinion are not good people!

42

Two paragraphs: the first one argues by definition, the second totally ignores the questions I’ve made above.

  1. So we can kill puppies because we define them as property? Okay, let’s define infants as property. What prevents us from infanticide now? That’s no argument whatsoever.

  2. Once more, with feeling: we may havea tacit agreement to help other adult humans out. But we can have no such tacit agreement with infants: they can neither help us out, nor make such an agreement.

You’ve tried to establish two different bright lines between infants and other mammals here. The first one is simply a semantic dodge; the second one is exactly the bright line that I’ve demonstrated doesn’t work.

Daniel

43

At one time people thought other people could be property too.

Yes, I have owned a cat, several of them(well, my parents did, when I was growing up). I have heard of cats toying with mice, though I have never heard of them torturing them. (tormenting pyschologically if that is possible). None of the cats my parents have ever had did this though. None that I have seen.

44

According to my encyclopedia, children are the property of their parents. It was printed the year I was born. This is not as much the case now, as children are only property of their parents as far as the state allows. Their property rights are now subject to conditions placed by the state that the parents act in the best interest of the child. Why would animals be all that much different as property? Why can’t the state say you can have animals as property so long as you to not treat them in certain ways?

As a practical matter, people who torture animals, often go on to harm people as well. That suggests to me that the acts of torturing animals and people are not all that differnent for the torturer. One of the reasons we should not allow animal torture is that it is so harmful to the person doing the torture. It seems to make it easier for them to work up to hurting people. Why would we want to allow people to work their way up to torturing people?

The state puts conditions on the holding of other property as well. Eminent domain means that the state can take any real property ( and personal property, but that is rare) from you. We have laws that mean they have to say why and compensate you, but they still can take it. You do not have the to do anything you wish with your property. Here you are not allowed to burn leaves that fall from your trees. Both are yours, but the state does not allow it.

On top of your argument that the animals are your property, so you should be allowed to do with as you wish, there is another thing to consider. Harming animals to see them suffer is wrong. Allowing an animal in your care to needlessly suffer is also wrong. The argument that they are not human so they don’t matter just does not hold water. In that they visibly suffer, they move of their own means, they react to their environment, they share with humans certian traits. We can easily see that their reaction to physical stimulus is similar to ours so that it seems reasonable to say that they feel pain, or at least they seem to. The seeming is enough. Hit a puppy and it cries and whimpers like a child. If that does not touch in you what is human, you do not so much deserve the name. We grant animals the rights to be treated with dignity up to the amount they remind us of ourselves. We expand this right to pretty much all animals, even fish and insects because we can see them react and they move independent to our own will. Hurting a fish may not so easily touch your heart, but we do generally extend the right to be free of torture to some extent, perhaps to be cautious.

45

I dont know if it has happened to you or not but my worst nightmares as a child were the ones of some kind of horrible thing happening to my dog i so beloved and this haunts me still from my disturbing childhood dreams. If we didnt have animal rights there would be far worse things that our children would know was happening and there would be no law to say that was a bad person who did it and it was wrong …to ease my fears somewhat. Instead you would have to say yeah beating your horse and starving half to death is normal and no we cant go to the petting zoo cause those animals are now mean and hungry and no we cant get a dog cause your father will probably kill it in the first week it pisses him off cause this is normal /.

Taboo

46

Well, to be technical, they are property. Their own property. Since they cannot give consent to be tortured.
Alright, I seem to not be making my argument clear. If I am part of an orginization that can hurt people, it is in my interest to keep it from doing so, to decrease the chances of it going after and hurting me next. It doesn’t matter that the group that was first targeted may be able to target back. What does matter is that the orginization now has a precedent.
A metaphor: I’m heterosexual. If laws discriminating against homosexuality pass (or here in Virginia, are allowed to stand), then I should oppose them. Not because I expect homosexuals to come to the aid of nerds, should we be targeted, but because the government that can target one group unopposed can target another, and another, until it hits a group with me in it. Is this any more clear?
Look, we define lobsters as property. No one much cares when you boil lobsters alive. And yet, if were you to do that to something fuzzy, even with the express purpose of eating it rather than fun, people would be up in arms.

And? I could build a doll that whimpered when struck. Does that make it morally wrong to beat the doll?

Also, one last thing, Daniel. You can’t say “we define people to be property” any more than I can say “I define the the infliction of suffering on animals to be morally neutral,” or, for that matter, “I define your argument to be wrong.” If you would argue it, by all means, but no fair with the what-ifs.

47

Robert, you keep on, keep on, keep on not addressing the difference between human children and nonhuman mammals. I ain’t gonna post no more here until you either concede that infants can’t enter into any sort of mutual nonaggression pact (and therefore have the same moral status as nonhuman mammals under your system), or until you offer some sort of bright line between the two. Calling nonhuman mammals property and infants not property is not an argument, unless you can explain why they deserve their respective status.

Daniel

48

This relates to the “bright line” argument, so I’m not breaking my promise by posting again. If it doesn’t matter that the targeted group can’t fight back, then what’s the difference between targeting homosexuals first and targeting chinchillas first? A group that has targeted chinchillas first may go after computer nerds next, right?

That is, of course, an absurd situation – but it’s caused by a philosophy that doesn’t take into account the features of the targeted group. You must consider things such as ability to fight back (at a minimum) when deciding whether it’s moral to attack another group.

And quite simply, a group that targets infants first will be dissuaded from attacking computer nerds next because computer nerds can (however ineffectually) fight back. Indeed, given your philosophy, it would make more sense to defend dogs from this group than infants: a group that attacks dogs has already shown itself willing to put itself in danger in order to cause harm to another group, whereas a group that attacks infants has shown no such willingness.

The “social contract” system is rife with internal contradictions.

Daniel

49

I, personally, don’t think that it is right for humans to “own” an animal. They should be able to care for the animal, just as they would care for a child. It is wrong for a child to be harmed, and it is wrong for a human to harm an animal. I happen to have a dog, and she is never hit. The only time she has ever been harmed by one of us was a complete and total accident (I was carrying her and tripped).

50

Monica, just out of curiosity, do you eat or wear animal products? If so, how do you reconcile that with your belief that humans shouldn’t own animals?

It’s possible to be consistent with this position, but pretty difficult.

Daniel

51

And just for ‘your view’ you won’t get an answer.

:wally

52

The link goes to an article and a picture regarding the stomping of a kitten for sexual pleasure. Granted, this sounds like something from PETA but it is a real case. I also understand that this is link will initially create a highly emotional response in most. But that’s my point — I post this here so that I can ask this question — Is it this emotional response that decides what does and does not have right?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/2481005.stm

53

The difference is…human children are people. Nonhuman mammals are not.

Are you arguing that animals can’t be owned, or that people can be? If the first, then you have to answer to the cows you eat, the grass you walk on, the cotton you wear, the bacteria in your intestines, and so on and so forth until you draw the line.

But, I will state that the ability of infants to defend themselves as a group is lacking, and that it would be ‘riskier’ to go after gay people or nerds then it would be to go after babies. On the other hand, the we in question being the U.S. legal system, I would also posit that the difference is negligable. Remember, babies often have parents.

Originally posted by robertliguori
If I am part of an orginization that can hurt people, it is in my interest to keep it from doing so, to decrease the chances of it going after and hurting me next. It doesn’t matter that the group that was first targeted may be able to target back. What does matter is that the orginization now has a precedent.

Maybe. On the other hand, from my perspective, people are different then animals from a persecution standpoint. And I wouldn’t have a problem with said group until it went after my chinchilla.

Us moral relativists need to think about more than what will happen to us if we win or lose. If, f’rinstance, I decide to kill my roommate, then I don’t just think, “He’s on the rowing squad. I’m a CS major. No, thanks.” I also need to consider how difficult it would be to hide the body, etc.* That, for me, outweights the initial risk of just trying to kill him in the first place.

[quote]

And quite simply, a group that targets infants first will be dissuaded from attacking computer nerds next because computer nerds can (however ineffectually) fight back. Indeed, given your philosophy, it would make more sense to defend dogs from this group than infants: a group that attacks dogs has already shown itself willing to put itself in danger in order to cause harm to another group, whereas a group that attacks infants has shown no such willingness.

The “social contract” system is rife with internal contradictions.

Daniel

[quote]

We are at an ‘agree-to-disagree’ point, I think. My view is that if I whack you on the head, I’m hurting myself, not just because you might whack me back, and not because you might get the police to do so. If I can whack you with impunity, then I, if I am in your position, can be similarly whacked. Therefore, I should do my upmost to make sure that you are never whacked. Mind you, the first two reasons are valid, but they aren’t the kicker that the third one is.

Eulogy: Are you arguing that people don’t exist, everything else doesn’t exist, that people are not seperate from property, or something else?

*I could post more examples of how much risk and bother I would have to go through to kill my roomie. I’m guessing that the mods wouldn’t be too happy about that. So, I’m not. Use your imagination. Better yet, use Poe’s.

54

Robert, you keep arguing in favor of what Daniel Withrow has (rightly) termed a social contract based on mutual non-aggression. But despite some truly excellent posts in this thread, I’m still a little unclear on what exactly you’re basing this argument on. Are you saying that because animals cannot enter into a social contract, they do not deserve the same treatment as other humans, who are presumably capable of making such an agreement? If so, why do you still include infants and other humans who are 1) physically incapable of doing harm and 2) mentally incapable of entering into a social contract? You seem to be including these groups by proxy alone, based solely on their genetic inclusion in the human species.

On what do you base this belief?

As for the ability of animals to enter into a mutual non-aggression pact…well, I’m not so sure they can’t. Here’s an example: Let’s say you have a dog. Let’s say your dog is a large, powerful, and potentially aggressive breed, such an American Pit Bull terrier, or a Rottweiler. Such an animal is perfectly capable of doing you serious harm, even killing you. Yet it does not. You treat your dog well, love him and feed him and care for him, and he returns this with affection. In effect, you and your dog have agreed not to harm each other because doing so would not be in the best interests of either of you. You have entered into what is more or less a social contract with an animal you previously defined as incapable of making such a contract. Yet clearly the rules of such a contract are being upheld, and both parties are benefitting from the results.

According to your view, I assume (perhaps wrongly- if so, please correct me) that such a contract would not count because a dog is not a human, and therefore cannot make such a contract. (Although it is clearly behaving as though it had.) In such a situation, would you consider it immoral for someone to abuse their dog? Or would you find it immoral because that contract had been violated?

It’s been pointed out before, but I think it bears repeating: although animals are considered property under the laws of the United States, the US also sets forth specific laws about what you can and cannot do with your own property. You may purchase, own, and use a gun, but only in very specific circumstances and under very specific conditions. Where is the illogicality of the law stating that you may own an animal but may not do with it exactly as you please?

As to my own beliefs, any deliberate abuse, either physical or mental of any living being is immoral. The protection we extend to humans incapable of making a physical or emotional MNP should, I believe, logically be extended to all other creatures who are also incapable of making an MNP. (Before you start crying hypocrisy, yes, I’m a vegan.) How you treat non-socially-contracted humans (i.e., infants and the metally disabled) is in many cases the yardstick by which your own humanity is measured. Taking this to what seems to me its logical conlusion, extending our benevolence and protection to all living things would be in effect the most consistent human position.

Humans beings can in many cases be considered property, even in this day and age, and I trust no one needs a refresher about slavery or any other system of human ownership. Children are technically the property of their parents until the reach the age of majority, however that is defined by their society and/or government. Persons not in full position of their mental faculties are considered the property of other people, be it their legal guardians or the state. Prisoners are also in many ways the property of the penal system- their freedom of movement is greatly restricted and their ability to choose their actions is to a degree rather limited. Whether this is for punishment, for their own safety, or for the safety of society is, so far as this argument is concerned, a moot point. They are for all intents and purposes human property. If you’d like to take this even further, you could argue that everyone who is a citizen of any country is in many ways the property of that country, bound to abide by the rules that government sets forth, and subject to the decisions and powers of that gov’t. Go even further, and all property is theft. :wink:

But, as I said above, there are still rules about what you can and cannot do with your property. (Check out the US Constitution if you’re confused about what I mean here.) So why the indignation when the gov’t says you aren’t allowed to abuse animals just because you own them?

55

First, the difference between people and animals: It’s arbitrary and self-referential to state that people and people and animals are not, but I really can’t deconstruct my argument any further, since both points are more or less starting suppositions.

Since I believe that I am in a different category then the dog, I believe that there is a difference between someone attacking their dog, and someone attacking their child. However, I do not believe that there is a fundamental difference between someone boiling their lobster alive and between attacking their dog.

What makes people not property? A very complicated, very complex question. Also one that I am not equipped to answer. There are too many exceptions, too many hypotheticals. In lieu of getting degrees in artificial intelligence, biology, and psycology, I’ll cop out and state that people’s peopleness makes them people.

Re the deconstruction of people as property: I’ll start with the prisoners. Remember, criminals (well, the guilty ones) have already broken the various “Don’t touch my stuff, and I won’t touch yours,” agreements we have with each other. Since these agreements are based on the assumption that all parties will follow them, they don’t apply to thieves.* Therefore, there is nothing inconsistent about denying theives some of their rights, depending on which agreements they violated.
As for the government infringing upon our rights: I see it as theft by he with the biggest gun. Taxes, in other words. Something you pay when paying is better for you then not paying. I could speculate that some people have a contract with the government (protect us and build stuff for us, and we’ll obey laws and pay taxes), but since we have no real choice but to take this contract, it is coercive by nature.

Just because something is illegal does not mean that it is wrong.

*All crime is theft, of money, innocence, land, or life.
Sam Vimes, Jingo, written by Terry Pratchett.

56

I think it all boils down to what you said near the start of this thread, when you rephrased your own position thus:

As someone else said earlier in this thread, there are no absolutes. This is so because morality is ultimately a social product and subject to the whims of society; in the case at hand, it’s clearly not something you can pin down with a concept like “property.”

Of course, there can be different, competing, or conflicting moral positions within a single society. The notion that ownership bestows rights with respect to property obviously does not jibe with the idea that certain property itself (pets or other animals) can have rights that impinge upon the rights of owners. But so what? If we decide that the latter moral position is one we care deeply enough about, it wins out, and that’s that.

In the end, it doesn’t particularly matter if you as an individual don’t agree with the moral position that animals can have rights if the society in which you live says that they do. This might seem unjust or coercive, but it’s not any worse than if I claimed that I don’t believe in the capitalist notion of ownership and that it is therefore wrong for me not to have free access to your house and all your so-called “property.”

57

Aha! Well, at least you’re admitting it’s a cop-out; this is the point that I’ve been trying (and failing) to get at, lo these many posts. If you can’t explain what it is about people that makes them uniquely deserving of protection, then you’ve got no argument whatsoever. Your argument seems to be:

  1. Why can’t we beat on animals?
  2. We can beat on anyone except people.
  3. Humans get protection for some reason I can’t explain.
  4. Tell me again why we can’t beat on animals?

Unless you can put an argument in place of step 3, you’ve got nothing.

Let me explain my system, as an alternative:

It is, all things being equal, good to satisfy a being’s wants, needs, and interests. It is, all things being equal, evil to thwart a being’s wants, needs, and interests. However, we live in a world in which it is impossible never to thwart a being’s wants, needs, and interests; therefore, it’s all about the compromise.

So, let’s take some hypotheticals:

  1. I want to crush a kitten for sexual gratification. The pleasure I’m going to get out of this is not a need; my desire to do this is nowhere near the kitten’s desire, need, and interest to stay alive. It is unethical for me to do this.
  2. I want to eat mutton, so I raise a sheep on free-range land, feed him well for a summer, and hire a strong neighbor to break his neck for me. My desire to eat mutton is bound up in strong cultural traditions that get to the heart of my identity; in addition, I do need some source of food (although I could live off a plant diet). I satisfy the sheep’s desire for food, shelter, fresh air, etc., and I take care not to cause it unnecessary pain when killing it. I do, however, thwart its strong desire to survive. The balance here is difficult to judge, and depends on how strong my desire to eat mutton is, compared to the strength of a sheep’s survival instinct.
  3. I want to eat mutton, so I purchase mutton from a supplier who keeps sheep locked in pens 24 hours a day. The sheep are so overcrowded that they’re constantly biting one another out of stress; most of them have no ears or tails left. The stench of waste in their pens is so strong that most of them have respiratory ailments. They are fed a diet of low-grade grains mixed with small quantities of newspaper and sawdust in order to bulk them up. They are transported to a slaughterhouse in a huge truck, unsecured, with neither food nor water; many of them die of heat exhaustion or dehydration along the way. At the slaughterhouse, they smell the blood of other sheep and hear their screams of pain before slaughterhouse workers beat them onto a conveyor belt. They are stunned wtih a stun-gun, lifted by their hind legs, and brought to a killing-machine: a knife that draws across their throats. Some of them are alive, although with a broken leg, when the knife finally kills them. In this case, I’ve not satisfied any of the sheep’s needs, wants, or interests in any meaningful way, but I have contributed to the thwarting of many of their wants, needs, and desires. My behavior is, on balance, unethical.

There are plenty more hypotheticals out there. My system does fail on one important count: it is imprecise, does not give clear moral guidelines in many situations. It is not, I believe, inconsistent.

Daniel

58

Lemme get a few more hypotheticals.

  1. I kill a fly.
  2. I boil a lobster alive.
  3. I uproot a weed.
  4. I douse a tick in mineral oil before igniting it. And giggling.

I can’t see too many people claiming that these acts are immoral. So, to throw your question back at you, why protect people, kittens, and sheep, but not insects, arachnids, crustaceans, or plants?

Basically, how much comprimise is too much? If the desires and needs of flies are completely outweighed by my needs, then why does another random animal have more important needs?
Re step 3: humans get protection because it is in my best interest. I hope I’ve explained how me keeping other people safe helps keep me safe. There is no absolute reason why we shouldn’t ax-murder each other. There are a multitude of small reasons, from “He has a bigger axe” to “You might get ax-murdered yourself someday”.
Lines of reasoning about violence to non-people run into problems with slippery-slopeiness. I mean, if your system can’t give a similar objective difference betweem flies and sheep, isn’t just as invalid as mine?

59

robertliguori, you seem to keep trying to have everyone argue using YOUR basic presupposition is that "animals and people are different’

The problem is that in GD, you don’t get to define presuppositions for anyone but yourself, and if we disagree with them that is a valid counter argument.

And I believe that someone who attacks their dog is doing so out of the same lack of compassion that may lead them to attack their child. And that, even beyond what the dog may suffer, this is a clear sign that this individual is violent and cruel and should be legally liable, as we wish to discourage members of our society from thinking it’s okay to get your jollies being violent and cruel to those weaker than you. US Dept of Justice cite

And on your reasons why it isn’t okay to cause people to suffer (setting aside for a moment your basic presupposition that it is okay to cause animals to suffer), I can’t even make sense of why you believe that. You seem to only define a sort of consequence based ethics. I can’t even address that as an ethics argument.

If the only reason not to harm people is because you don’t want other people to harm you, how is that ethical decision? That’s simple self-interest.

That argument implies that any ethical decision that does not directly lead to something positive to the individuals self interest is inexplicable to you, and therefore not a valid ethical position. (Can you tell I’m not a big fan of the “social contract” argument?)

I would argue, that is exactly what makes an decision one based on ethics: One is not personally enriched or helped by the decision, (other than mentally perhaps, that is another argument), but because the enrichment or help to OTHERS is evident, one makes an ethical decision to do something based on how it will benefit some other person/animal/community, etc.

On this particular ethical decision, I don’t think there are “people” and there are “animals”.

There are “animals”, and some of them we categorize as “people”.

And btw, for your repeated example eating lobster being “OK”, there are actually quite a few people like myself, who are not vegetarians, but do not eat lobster (or clams actually, or anything we don’t kill before we start cooking it) beause while we have decided that we are willing to eat meat, we draw the line at having it boiled alive for our dining pleasure.

Which I believe is exactly Daniel Withrow’s point that just because a moral system is not based on always/never thinking, does not mean that it is not carefully considered… perhaps even more so, since instead of just saying “I can do anything to animals I want, the Bible says so” (for one instance of always/never ethics), it require that you think about what is necessary, versus what is merely convenient for every way you cause suffering around you.

Including to all the other animals we’re able to control because they are weaker (physically or mentally), than ourselves, whatever species they are.

60

Nonsense. Adult humans get protection because it’s in your best interest. Infants do not. You keep ignoring this point.

My system does give a difference between flies and sheep:

-Given our best guesses, based on neurological and behavioral sciences, sheep are capable of forming beliefs about the world around them. They are capable of feeling emotions such as fear, loneliness, contentment, friendliness, frustration, and even anger. (I base these off of having been around goats and sheep, and off of general zoology). Sheep have complex responses to pain. Sheep are capable of treating different individuals differently, and can remember enough about individuals to know which ones are friends and which ones are foes. Sheep have a memory, and an ability to form beliefs about the future (“The sun is shining – I’m going to go over toward the gate, because soon the nice man will open the gate and let me into the pasture.”)
-Flies, on the other hand, may feel fear, but there’s no sign that they can feel loneliness, contentment, friendliness, frustration, or anger. They do not (to the best of my knowledge) show any ability to form beliefs about their world beyond instinctual beliefs; nor do they appear able to distinguish between individuals or remember past events. They have very simple responses to pain.

What does this mean? I’ve got an obligation to flies not to inflict pain on them for fun, because they can feel pain. I’ve got an obligation not to cause them fear for fun, because they can feel fear. I’ve got no other obligations toward flies. However, I’ve got an obligation not to cause sheep to suffer. If I keep sheep, I shouldn’t keep them locked up and deprived of other sheep company. I shouldn’t cause them undue suffering if I decide to kill them. I shouldn’t separate lambs from their mothers at birth, as this causes demonstrable distress to both.

As for obligations to plants, you first need to provide any sort of serious argument (The Secret Life of Plants doesn’t count, being obnoxious pseudoscience) that plants have wants or interests.

I submit that one cannot thwart a plant’s wants or interests, as they do not exist. A fly has very few wants or interests, and so we have few obligations toward them. A dog has many more, and more complex, wants and interests, and so we have many more negative obligations toward dogs. An infant has still more wants and interests, and our obligations increase commensurately. And an adult human has the most, and the most complex, wants or interests; our obligations toward fellow human beings are the most complex of all.

Daniel