Historically in the US, to be a slave, you first have to be a person -- and pets aren't persons. To quote from the US Constitution: But this is beside the point. You're obviously passionate about...
Historically in the US, to be a slave, you first have to be a person -- and pets aren't persons. To quote from the US Constitution:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
-- Section. 2.
The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
-- Section. 9.
But this is beside the point. You're obviously passionate about this, but everything you're saying is to convince people to apply the language we'd use if we treated human beings the same way we treat animals. It's sophistry and missing the point which can succinctly be put as this: Is owning animals (as personal property for companionship, agricultural or other use) morally wrong? Today we've decided not to treat people like this, but I'd have no issue if somebody owns a toaster either. Animals have to live somewhere on this spectrum, so where on the spectrum is morally right?
Edit: In seeing your replies elsewhere, I am well aware humans are indeed animals in a taxonomical sense. So please sub in "non-human animals" anywhere I say "animals" or equivalent above.
Animals are of course persons, but maybe not according to the law. They are individuals with their own drives and motivations, they have their own unique experience of our world
Animals are of course persons, but maybe not according to the law. They are individuals with their own drives and motivations, they have their own unique experience of our world
Semantics of 'person' aside, I actually think this is what it centres around. There's a wealth of motivations a human can engage in - start a business, get married, help cure a disease, join a...
their own drives and motivations
Semantics of 'person' aside, I actually think this is what it centres around. There's a wealth of motivations a human can engage in - start a business, get married, help cure a disease, join a sport team etc. Animals motivations are generally nutrition, harbourage, and procreation.
Enslaving a person removes those wider motivations, which animals aren't able to actualize.
That's because many animals are sentient, but that alone does not make them a person. I've seen good arguments for granting elephants, dolphins and all great apes some form of legal personhood,...
That's because many animals are sentient, but that alone does not make them a person. I've seen good arguments for granting elephants, dolphins and all great apes some form of legal personhood, but this seems to be determined by levels of intelligence. If you're smart, you get rights. We can consider all sorts of capabilities when discussing this: Raw intelligence and comprehension, sociability and communication, capacity to suffer, etc...
All due respect, did you make this post to have an actual discussion, or do you intend to have meta-arguments with everyone who has the slightest logical hole in their response? I'd love to assume...
All due respect, did you make this post to have an actual discussion, or do you intend to have meta-arguments with everyone who has the slightest logical hole in their response?
I'd love to assume you argue in good faith here, but what is your point? You asked us to try to convince you otherwise. Some have tried. You are stonewalling with the angle of "this isn't a logically sound reply". So what now?
Before I even consider answering your point about pets and slavery, I have to address the flaws in your approach. Large language models used as text generators do not have knowledge. All they do...
I am an ignorant non-expert in this field. What did I do? I asked ChatGPT to help me find a legal definition of a pet. It compiled a list of laws that might address the question, I used it to generate some references, and I used it to proofread
Before I even consider answering your point about pets and slavery, I have to address the flaws in your approach.
Large language models used as text generators do not have knowledge. All they do is probabilistically predict words that will follow certain other words, and generate text accordingly.
I have seen an example where someone asked a text generator to provide references about a linguistic phenomenon. The text generator provided a list of seven papers about that linguistic phenomenon - all of which did not exist. It also created a name for the phenomenon which did not exist.
And, there's the recently famous example of a lawyer using a text generator to research precedents for a legal case, all of which it got wrong.
This act of inventing statements that appear to be factual is called "hallucination". It's extremely common.
So, when you say...
it is surprisingly helpful if you treat it like wikipedia and never check its references and always copy-and-paste
... I say exactly the opposite:
it is surprisingly helpful if you [...] always check its references and never copy-and-paste
I looked at your interaction with this text generator. You got lucky. Every piece of law it cited did actually exist. I'm not going to check the content of those laws, because I have neither the time, the interest, nor the expertise to do so. However, you should be extremely skeptical whenever asking a text generator bot to tell you facts.
This is an interesting statement. What do you believe knowledge to be, such that a large language model does not have it? https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/knowledge Setting...
Large language models used as text generators do not have knowledge.
This is an interesting statement. What do you believe knowledge to be, such that a large language model does not have it?
Your claim is almost certainly true. However, it does not necessarily follow that pets are slaves. Taking the Wikipedia definition of "slavery": You've demonstrated that pets are owned as...
I claim that there can be no found no current law in America which defines a pet as anything other than property.
Your claim is almost certainly true.
However, it does not necessarily follow that pets are slaves.
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labor.
You've demonstrated that pets are owned as property, but you have not demonstrated that pets are people.
There is not a commonly accepted definition of "person" which includes non-human animals. Even though there is an increasing amount of debate about what constitutes personhood, that debate is still ongoing and has not reached any sort of conclusion - nor is it likely to any time soon.
Legally, only humans are considered people. Animals are not people for legal purposes. Owning a non-person is not slavery, by definition.
As for whether it's moral or ethical to own animals... that's a different argument.
If you disagree with me that houseplants are slaves, I will end this with a challenge: I claim that there can be no found no current law in America which defines a houseplant as anything other...
If you disagree with me that houseplants are slaves, I will end this with a challenge: I claim that there can be no found no current law in America which defines a houseplant as anything other than property.
You make some valid points regarding the mistreatment of animals, but they should be discussed in terms of animal rights and not human terminology, because pets are not humans.
There are plenty of animals that are illegal to own as a pet. It is only logical to have different laws depending on the capability, intelligence and behavior of an animal; humans are not special...
There are plenty of animals that are illegal to own as a pet. It is only logical to have different laws depending on the capability, intelligence and behavior of an animal; humans are not special in that regard. Dogs are kept as pets because they have been domesticated to achieve an effective symbiotic relationship with us.
Again, I am definitely in support for tighter laws to prevent animal abuse; I just do not think pet ownership as a whole is slavery.
“Animals” is a pretty broad category, though. You have a paradox of the heap problem. I think like OP said, plants probably don’t have enough “personhood” to be a slave. Then, in the animal...
“Animals” is a pretty broad category, though. You have a paradox of the heap problem. I think like OP said, plants probably don’t have enough “personhood” to be a slave. Then, in the animal kingdom, sponges shouldn’t either. In between sponges and humans there’s an almost continuous number of examples representing each incremental step of personhood.
There has to be a line drawn somewhere, and evidently society has drawn it at “homo sapiens and not Homo sapiens”. Convenient? Yeah, probably. It’s a privilege of being the dominant species on this planet, I suppose. Another way you could define the line then is that species that can have at least contest for hegemonic rule on a species level would qualify. I think if there were neanderthals you would not be allowed to “own” one.
I thought for several minutes before posting this, and I am fine with it being labeled and discarded. However I found the tone - rather than the content - of this post somewhat self-consciously...
I thought for several minutes before posting this, and I am fine with it being labeled and discarded.
However I found the tone - rather than the content - of this post somewhat self-consciously inflammatory in nature, almost like a longer and more erudite form of shitposting.
The issue is an interesting one, but the way in which these arguments were couched made it difficult for me to persist sufficiently to appreciate the arguments through the tone.
First off, I want to point out that while you make some good points in your post, I think your combative attitude is not likely to lead to much productive discussion. Obviously this is an...
First off, I want to point out that while you make some good points in your post, I think your combative attitude is not likely to lead to much productive discussion. Obviously this is an emotionally charged subject, but if you are truly interested in convincing other people of your point of view, you need to be, at least in principle, willing to be convinced of some other point of view. When you use language like "as if I hadn't already conclusively answered the question to my own satisfaction" in justifying use of terminology that provides rhetorical support to your points, you are displaying an unwillingness to consider other points of view.
Anyway to the topic at hand - I personally think a lot of philosophizing about animal rights implicitly revolves around the notion that because animals are conscious and have aversions and preferences that they deserve rights. At face value this is reasonable - we ourselves have the same properties and often feel like this is what justifies our own rights. However, I think that we often neglect the role of social contracts in the justification of rights. Most would agree that is justifiable to deprive people of rights if they do not respect a social contract. The question is whether animals are capable of upholding a social contract. The difficulty here is that without an ability to communicate with animals, it is hard to get them to understand social contracts, and even if they were able to understand them, we would have no way of knowing for sure that this were the case.
This may seem like a deceptive argument - after all, how often do animals act in ways which would violate a social contract? But then, remember that dogs - the most common pet in the world - are the fourth most deadly animal in terms of number of humans killed (behind mosquitos, humans ourselves, and snakes). And unlike humans, who can understand the concept of a social contract and therefore be saddled with the responsibility of upholding it, you cannot consider a dog truly responsible for murder. A dog who has killed a person does not understand the significance of what it has done; it cannot make a connection between the act and any punishment. I consider this reasonable justification for not extending the social contract (both its protections and its responsibilities) to animals.
I also think you are mistaken in considering all pets slaves, even if your objections to animal treatments are generally valid. For instance, I am a dog owner and I treat my dog very well. I am considerate of his apparent desires and emotions to the extent that I am capable of understanding them (and I make a large effort to do so). Of course I also prevent him from doing things that would harm him - no matter how much he wants to, I will not let him eat chocolate, for instance. But in light of the powers I exert on him I view him less as my property and more as my custody. In fact, I think the parallels with custody of human children (who I think even you would not consider slaves) are apt. There are certain powers I can exert on my dog, and others that I cannot, regardless of my own preference. The delineation of these powers is a framework I have imposed on myself. Even if society at large does not treat animals within this framework, the fact that I use my freedom as a human to bootstrap 'rights' in a certain sense to my dog (as my putative 'property') makes him, in my mind, not a slave.
I think if you wanted to convince me otherwise, you would probably need to address the parallels between custody of human children and custody of pets. Obviously there are some aspects of animal welfare that could be improved in practice, but at least in principle there is some equivalence between these two concepts.
Well, yes. You're correct. If we were to turn over every stone in the field looking for a logically sound rebuttal, we wouldn't find one. That being said... yes, and? Don't get me wrong, I'd end...
Well, yes. You're correct. If we were to turn over every stone in the field looking for a logically sound rebuttal, we wouldn't find one.
That being said... yes, and? Don't get me wrong, I'd end up arguing this point too if I was beholden to arguing as if some absolute definition of a human morality existed. One does not exist. Morality is defined by cultural context. Cultures evolve, and the evolution of cultures is an NP-hard problem.
This all started because we couldn't be fucked to hunt forever, which led into agriculture, which led into animal husbandry, which proved to be an effective replacement for hunting forever. Since then, on the spectrum of "kill animals for food" to "keep animals for companionship" (and beyond, on both ends), we've done it all. And the answer to "is this morally correct" has been different depending on who you asked, when you asked, in what context you asked, and pertaining to which species you asked about.
My point is, there is no answer to whether or not it's right. Societies tend to just come up with their own answers depending on their environments, and the one that most people agree with ends up being, for example, the one written into law.
So, yes, I can't argue against your point. But I also don't see what there is to derive here. We've been figuring it out as we go the whole time.
I read your post and while, although I feel odd stating this, I guess I agree with the argument you laid out I take issue with Cats, both domestic and feral, have been observed hunting both for...
I read your post and while, although I feel odd stating this, I guess I agree with the argument you laid out I take issue with
It isn't that these cats are uncontrollable killing machines: Cats have fucking appetites (and I mean that both literally and figuratively) and will generally speaking control their own populations if left to their own devices.
Cats, both domestic and feral, have been observed hunting both for food and for fun. If left to their own devices, they'll kill all day long. I used to have a cat (and even in the confines of your argument, I would firmly state he considered everyone his roommate at best, never an owner) who would bring back kills, dissect them on the porch, leave them uneaten and go inside for kibble instead. The way feral cats would control their appetites would be to eradicate all of the available food stocks in an area. Cats are the human buffalo hunters of the world.
But, yeah, human laws are written from the viewpoint of humans, sadly. Though you're not incorrect in your assertion, I would assume humans living in sexual or hard labor slavery situations across the world would take umbrage with calling my house cat a slave - but you're correct that I won't let him go outside and eat grass because it makes him throw up. So, I guess he's a slave.
I think I would call it a symbiotic relationship; both parties benefit greatly! It is also more like adopting a child than buying a table, for most people. Some of your arguments can also be...
I think I would call it a symbiotic relationship; both parties benefit greatly! It is also more like adopting a child than buying a table, for most people. Some of your arguments can also be applied to children. I won’t speak on the laws since I’m neither a lawyer nor american
Don’t put words in my mouth please. I said it was more like it than buying a table, not that it was the same. Sorry to be spiky about this but it is clearly not what I said
Don’t put words in my mouth please. I said it was more like it than buying a table, not that it was the same. Sorry to be spiky about this but it is clearly not what I said
If classification is your endgame then sure, this argument holds water. But symbiotic relationships is often how it started. Both cats and dogs benefited from humans in the same way humans...
If classification is your endgame then sure, this argument holds water.
But symbiotic relationships is often how it started. Both cats and dogs benefited from humans in the same way humans benefited from them. There's even good evidence cats domesticated themselves.
My challenge to your theses is regarding one core aspect of slaves/slavery that you didn't address in your arguments: Slaves definitionally need to be considered persons/human. And we already have...
My challenge to your theses is regarding one core aspect of slaves/slavery that you didn't address in your arguments: Slaves definitionally need to be considered persons/human.
And we already have words for animals that are owned and used/worked: livestock and chattel.
In order to enslave someone/something, you need to already view them as or equivalent to a human. Because if you don't, they/it can by definition not be a slave, but "only" livestock/chattel.
Calling pets "slaves" removes such a fundamental core concept from the meaning of slavery, that it becomes a meaningless term.
In responding to this I will commit a sin perhaps greater than slavery: referencing Wikipedia as a source. The article for slavery on Wikipedia begins: "Slavery is the ownership of a person as...
In responding to this I will commit a sin perhaps greater than slavery: referencing Wikipedia as a source. The article for slavery on Wikipedia begins: "Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labor."
There's that tricky word, "person." Animal personhood is a fairly nuanced topic with a lot of room to consider whether, say, dolphins or great apes should be considered "people" based on the depth of their higher reasoning functions. However, the qualities that enable an animal to be considered for personhood are usually disqualifying for pet ownership; if you're aware of any serious attempts to award personhood to dogs or cats based solely on the merit of their cognition and not on our preexisting emotional attachments to them, I'd be interested to hear.
So yeah, it'd be slavery if they were people, but they're not people. I have a dog, I love her to pieces. She's not capable of taking care of herself, or of making advanced decisions, or really of doing much of anything besides sleeping, playing and looking for food. If you want to make this argument, instead ask: was humanity justified in selectively breeding a client species that is utterly dependent on us for survival? What are our obligations to said species for our role in its creation? Maybe we have a burden of responsibility for that, I'm not really sure, but trying to class it as slavery is disingenuous simply because they don't have a better option than living with us, because they have been consistently selected over millennia to fill that niche.
A good examination of it, but you're missing the OTHER half to what defines slavery, at least from a legal viewpoint. Yes, we can consider slaves as things that are "chattel", or at the very least...
A good examination of it, but you're missing the OTHER half to what defines slavery, at least from a legal viewpoint.
Yes, we can consider slaves as things that are "chattel", or at the very least property. But the key distinction, is that in addition to this, slaves also provide services without remuneration- or as I take it, they provide a service without receiving anything in return. And by human laws (which as you point out is who the laws were written for), we tend to regard slavery as services without financial compensation.
Which blows a few holes in your argument. The first is, what service do pets provide, without any benefit on their end? Companionship is maybe the one I can think of. But in return, their compensation is generally food and shelter, and maybe a few things to play with. When we think of slaves, we think of of no monetary compensation. Maybe I'm asking something really dumb but... what else besides food, shelter, and water can we provide as compensation? Do you REALLY think pets would have a use for monetary compensation?
I should mention, I speak from a perspective as a cat owner. The most you can otherwise argue is that cats may sometimes be used as rodent control, especially on farms. However, in this case the cat is still benefitting: that's how they get a meal/snack. Now when it comes to dogs, there are some ACTUAL jobs, such as a seeing-eye dog. However, they are never fully regarded as pets- they're actually called: service animals, and while they may be treated as a pet, they actually aren't what most people would consider a pet- they have an actual purpose beyond just companionship. Unfortunately, I can't give too much more insight about how this particular relationship works.
The only other thing to really debate is that in addition to not receiving compensation for services provided, pets have limited freedom. The classic image of slavery also includes that they can't go anywhere without their master's permission. This may be the one area where you could classify pets as slaves. However, even among pet owners- specifically cat owners- there's a HUGE debate about where cats can go. However, I would argue that you need all these parts of how we define slavery- property, doing services without re-compensation, and inability to freely travel, to actually call something a slave. Otherwise, you start expanding what is and isn't slavery, ad that doesn't play so well.
Very interesting topic. Ultimately the definition for slave must include a human person. But, I could see a moral, ethical, and even societal health and safety issue on how we breed, treat and...
Very interesting topic. Ultimately the definition for slave must include a human person. But, I could see a moral, ethical, and even societal health and safety issue on how we breed, treat and raise animals.
In my opinion breeding an animal for the sole purpose of confined companionship is immoral and physically unhealthy for both parties. There may be certain degree of emotional/mental benefit for the human but I can't see it overcoming the other negatives. Now, an animal with a purpose or job with professional training, guard dog, guide dog, grief animal for patients etc I'm good with.
I am also very against mass produced livestock that are subject to the horrible conditions they are under and try my best to avoid them. There are more ethical treatments of food sources that were originally rooted in religious standards- halal/Kosher.
Things like, slaughtering animals in a private/sanitary area, not torturing or abusing them in anyway, keeping them well feed/watered with room to move around. Some texts stating any unjust harm done to an animal will be punished the same as if it were done to a human.
This all adds to the health and cleanliness of the animal, which the animals obviously prefer. In turn more nutritious healthy food for humans.
I won't go into how industry and marketing increased our reliance on meat and all that, but animals should be allowed to be animals and humans CAN find uses for everything on earth without exploiting and abusing.
Historically in the US, to be a slave, you first have to be a person -- and pets aren't persons. To quote from the US Constitution:
But this is beside the point. You're obviously passionate about this, but everything you're saying is to convince people to apply the language we'd use if we treated human beings the same way we treat animals. It's sophistry and missing the point which can succinctly be put as this: Is owning animals (as personal property for companionship, agricultural or other use) morally wrong? Today we've decided not to treat people like this, but I'd have no issue if somebody owns a toaster either. Animals have to live somewhere on this spectrum, so where on the spectrum is morally right?
Edit: In seeing your replies elsewhere, I am well aware humans are indeed animals in a taxonomical sense. So please sub in "non-human animals" anywhere I say "animals" or equivalent above.
Animals are of course persons, but maybe not according to the law. They are individuals with their own drives and motivations, they have their own unique experience of our world
Semantics of 'person' aside, I actually think this is what it centres around. There's a wealth of motivations a human can engage in - start a business, get married, help cure a disease, join a sport team etc. Animals motivations are generally nutrition, harbourage, and procreation.
Enslaving a person removes those wider motivations, which animals aren't able to actualize.
That's because many animals are sentient, but that alone does not make them a person. I've seen good arguments for granting elephants, dolphins and all great apes some form of legal personhood, but this seems to be determined by levels of intelligence. If you're smart, you get rights. We can consider all sorts of capabilities when discussing this: Raw intelligence and comprehension, sociability and communication, capacity to suffer, etc...
All due respect, did you make this post to have an actual discussion, or do you intend to have meta-arguments with everyone who has the slightest logical hole in their response?
I'd love to assume you argue in good faith here, but what is your point? You asked us to try to convince you otherwise. Some have tried. You are stonewalling with the angle of "this isn't a logically sound reply". So what now?
Before I even consider answering your point about pets and slavery, I have to address the flaws in your approach.
Large language models used as text generators do not have knowledge. All they do is probabilistically predict words that will follow certain other words, and generate text accordingly.
I have seen an example where someone asked a text generator to provide references about a linguistic phenomenon. The text generator provided a list of seven papers about that linguistic phenomenon - all of which did not exist. It also created a name for the phenomenon which did not exist.
And, there's the recently famous example of a lawyer using a text generator to research precedents for a legal case, all of which it got wrong.
This act of inventing statements that appear to be factual is called "hallucination". It's extremely common.
So, when you say...
... I say exactly the opposite:
I looked at your interaction with this text generator. You got lucky. Every piece of law it cited did actually exist. I'm not going to check the content of those laws, because I have neither the time, the interest, nor the expertise to do so. However, you should be extremely skeptical whenever asking a text generator bot to tell you facts.
This is an interesting statement. What do you believe knowledge to be, such that a large language model does not have it?
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/knowledge
Setting aside the slightly anthropocentric phrasing, does an LLM not have information about a subject gained through study?
Your claim is almost certainly true.
However, it does not necessarily follow that pets are slaves.
Taking the Wikipedia definition of "slavery":
You've demonstrated that pets are owned as property, but you have not demonstrated that pets are people.
There is not a commonly accepted definition of "person" which includes non-human animals. Even though there is an increasing amount of debate about what constitutes personhood, that debate is still ongoing and has not reached any sort of conclusion - nor is it likely to any time soon.
Legally, only humans are considered people. Animals are not people for legal purposes. Owning a non-person is not slavery, by definition.
As for whether it's moral or ethical to own animals... that's a different argument.
If you disagree with me that houseplants are slaves, I will end this with a challenge: I claim that there can be no found no current law in America which defines a houseplant as anything other than property.
You make some valid points regarding the mistreatment of animals, but they should be discussed in terms of animal rights and not human terminology, because pets are not humans.
EDIT: s/animals are/pets are/
There are plenty of animals that are illegal to own as a pet. It is only logical to have different laws depending on the capability, intelligence and behavior of an animal; humans are not special in that regard. Dogs are kept as pets because they have been domesticated to achieve an effective symbiotic relationship with us.
Again, I am definitely in support for tighter laws to prevent animal abuse; I just do not think pet ownership as a whole is slavery.
“Animals” is a pretty broad category, though. You have a paradox of the heap problem. I think like OP said, plants probably don’t have enough “personhood” to be a slave. Then, in the animal kingdom, sponges shouldn’t either. In between sponges and humans there’s an almost continuous number of examples representing each incremental step of personhood.
There has to be a line drawn somewhere, and evidently society has drawn it at “homo sapiens and not Homo sapiens”. Convenient? Yeah, probably. It’s a privilege of being the dominant species on this planet, I suppose. Another way you could define the line then is that species that can have at least contest for hegemonic rule on a species level would qualify. I think if there were neanderthals you would not be allowed to “own” one.
I thought for several minutes before posting this, and I am fine with it being labeled and discarded.
However I found the tone - rather than the content - of this post somewhat self-consciously inflammatory in nature, almost like a longer and more erudite form of shitposting.
The issue is an interesting one, but the way in which these arguments were couched made it difficult for me to persist sufficiently to appreciate the arguments through the tone.
First off, I want to point out that while you make some good points in your post, I think your combative attitude is not likely to lead to much productive discussion. Obviously this is an emotionally charged subject, but if you are truly interested in convincing other people of your point of view, you need to be, at least in principle, willing to be convinced of some other point of view. When you use language like "as if I hadn't already conclusively answered the question to my own satisfaction" in justifying use of terminology that provides rhetorical support to your points, you are displaying an unwillingness to consider other points of view.
Anyway to the topic at hand - I personally think a lot of philosophizing about animal rights implicitly revolves around the notion that because animals are conscious and have aversions and preferences that they deserve rights. At face value this is reasonable - we ourselves have the same properties and often feel like this is what justifies our own rights. However, I think that we often neglect the role of social contracts in the justification of rights. Most would agree that is justifiable to deprive people of rights if they do not respect a social contract. The question is whether animals are capable of upholding a social contract. The difficulty here is that without an ability to communicate with animals, it is hard to get them to understand social contracts, and even if they were able to understand them, we would have no way of knowing for sure that this were the case.
This may seem like a deceptive argument - after all, how often do animals act in ways which would violate a social contract? But then, remember that dogs - the most common pet in the world - are the fourth most deadly animal in terms of number of humans killed (behind mosquitos, humans ourselves, and snakes). And unlike humans, who can understand the concept of a social contract and therefore be saddled with the responsibility of upholding it, you cannot consider a dog truly responsible for murder. A dog who has killed a person does not understand the significance of what it has done; it cannot make a connection between the act and any punishment. I consider this reasonable justification for not extending the social contract (both its protections and its responsibilities) to animals.
I also think you are mistaken in considering all pets slaves, even if your objections to animal treatments are generally valid. For instance, I am a dog owner and I treat my dog very well. I am considerate of his apparent desires and emotions to the extent that I am capable of understanding them (and I make a large effort to do so). Of course I also prevent him from doing things that would harm him - no matter how much he wants to, I will not let him eat chocolate, for instance. But in light of the powers I exert on him I view him less as my property and more as my custody. In fact, I think the parallels with custody of human children (who I think even you would not consider slaves) are apt. There are certain powers I can exert on my dog, and others that I cannot, regardless of my own preference. The delineation of these powers is a framework I have imposed on myself. Even if society at large does not treat animals within this framework, the fact that I use my freedom as a human to bootstrap 'rights' in a certain sense to my dog (as my putative 'property') makes him, in my mind, not a slave.
I think if you wanted to convince me otherwise, you would probably need to address the parallels between custody of human children and custody of pets. Obviously there are some aspects of animal welfare that could be improved in practice, but at least in principle there is some equivalence between these two concepts.
Well, yes. You're correct. If we were to turn over every stone in the field looking for a logically sound rebuttal, we wouldn't find one.
That being said... yes, and? Don't get me wrong, I'd end up arguing this point too if I was beholden to arguing as if some absolute definition of a human morality existed. One does not exist. Morality is defined by cultural context. Cultures evolve, and the evolution of cultures is an NP-hard problem.
This all started because we couldn't be fucked to hunt forever, which led into agriculture, which led into animal husbandry, which proved to be an effective replacement for hunting forever. Since then, on the spectrum of "kill animals for food" to "keep animals for companionship" (and beyond, on both ends), we've done it all. And the answer to "is this morally correct" has been different depending on who you asked, when you asked, in what context you asked, and pertaining to which species you asked about.
My point is, there is no answer to whether or not it's right. Societies tend to just come up with their own answers depending on their environments, and the one that most people agree with ends up being, for example, the one written into law.
So, yes, I can't argue against your point. But I also don't see what there is to derive here. We've been figuring it out as we go the whole time.
I read your post and while, although I feel odd stating this, I guess I agree with the argument you laid out I take issue with
Cats, both domestic and feral, have been observed hunting both for food and for fun. If left to their own devices, they'll kill all day long. I used to have a cat (and even in the confines of your argument, I would firmly state he considered everyone his roommate at best, never an owner) who would bring back kills, dissect them on the porch, leave them uneaten and go inside for kibble instead. The way feral cats would control their appetites would be to eradicate all of the available food stocks in an area. Cats are the human buffalo hunters of the world.
But, yeah, human laws are written from the viewpoint of humans, sadly. Though you're not incorrect in your assertion, I would assume humans living in sexual or hard labor slavery situations across the world would take umbrage with calling my house cat a slave - but you're correct that I won't let him go outside and eat grass because it makes him throw up. So, I guess he's a slave.
I think I would call it a symbiotic relationship; both parties benefit greatly! It is also more like adopting a child than buying a table, for most people. Some of your arguments can also be applied to children. I won’t speak on the laws since I’m neither a lawyer nor american
Don’t put words in my mouth please. I said it was more like it than buying a table, not that it was the same. Sorry to be spiky about this but it is clearly not what I said
If classification is your endgame then sure, this argument holds water.
But symbiotic relationships is often how it started. Both cats and dogs benefited from humans in the same way humans benefited from them. There's even good evidence cats domesticated themselves.
I think you are intentionally misrepresenting what I’ve said here
My challenge to your theses is regarding one core aspect of slaves/slavery that you didn't address in your arguments: Slaves definitionally need to be considered persons/human.
And we already have words for animals that are owned and used/worked: livestock and chattel.
In order to enslave someone/something, you need to already view them as or equivalent to a human. Because if you don't, they/it can by definition not be a slave, but "only" livestock/chattel.
Calling pets "slaves" removes such a fundamental core concept from the meaning of slavery, that it becomes a meaningless term.
In responding to this I will commit a sin perhaps greater than slavery: referencing Wikipedia as a source. The article for slavery on Wikipedia begins: "Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labor."
There's that tricky word, "person." Animal personhood is a fairly nuanced topic with a lot of room to consider whether, say, dolphins or great apes should be considered "people" based on the depth of their higher reasoning functions. However, the qualities that enable an animal to be considered for personhood are usually disqualifying for pet ownership; if you're aware of any serious attempts to award personhood to dogs or cats based solely on the merit of their cognition and not on our preexisting emotional attachments to them, I'd be interested to hear.
So yeah, it'd be slavery if they were people, but they're not people. I have a dog, I love her to pieces. She's not capable of taking care of herself, or of making advanced decisions, or really of doing much of anything besides sleeping, playing and looking for food. If you want to make this argument, instead ask: was humanity justified in selectively breeding a client species that is utterly dependent on us for survival? What are our obligations to said species for our role in its creation? Maybe we have a burden of responsibility for that, I'm not really sure, but trying to class it as slavery is disingenuous simply because they don't have a better option than living with us, because they have been consistently selected over millennia to fill that niche.
A good examination of it, but you're missing the OTHER half to what defines slavery, at least from a legal viewpoint.
Yes, we can consider slaves as things that are "chattel", or at the very least property. But the key distinction, is that in addition to this, slaves also provide services without remuneration- or as I take it, they provide a service without receiving anything in return. And by human laws (which as you point out is who the laws were written for), we tend to regard slavery as services without financial compensation.
Which blows a few holes in your argument. The first is, what service do pets provide, without any benefit on their end? Companionship is maybe the one I can think of. But in return, their compensation is generally food and shelter, and maybe a few things to play with. When we think of slaves, we think of of no monetary compensation. Maybe I'm asking something really dumb but... what else besides food, shelter, and water can we provide as compensation? Do you REALLY think pets would have a use for monetary compensation?
I should mention, I speak from a perspective as a cat owner. The most you can otherwise argue is that cats may sometimes be used as rodent control, especially on farms. However, in this case the cat is still benefitting: that's how they get a meal/snack. Now when it comes to dogs, there are some ACTUAL jobs, such as a seeing-eye dog. However, they are never fully regarded as pets- they're actually called: service animals, and while they may be treated as a pet, they actually aren't what most people would consider a pet- they have an actual purpose beyond just companionship. Unfortunately, I can't give too much more insight about how this particular relationship works.
The only other thing to really debate is that in addition to not receiving compensation for services provided, pets have limited freedom. The classic image of slavery also includes that they can't go anywhere without their master's permission. This may be the one area where you could classify pets as slaves. However, even among pet owners- specifically cat owners- there's a HUGE debate about where cats can go. However, I would argue that you need all these parts of how we define slavery- property, doing services without re-compensation, and inability to freely travel, to actually call something a slave. Otherwise, you start expanding what is and isn't slavery, ad that doesn't play so well.
Well I keep throwing the cat out the door but he's back every morning!
Very interesting topic. Ultimately the definition for slave must include a human person. But, I could see a moral, ethical, and even societal health and safety issue on how we breed, treat and raise animals.
In my opinion breeding an animal for the sole purpose of confined companionship is immoral and physically unhealthy for both parties. There may be certain degree of emotional/mental benefit for the human but I can't see it overcoming the other negatives. Now, an animal with a purpose or job with professional training, guard dog, guide dog, grief animal for patients etc I'm good with.
I am also very against mass produced livestock that are subject to the horrible conditions they are under and try my best to avoid them. There are more ethical treatments of food sources that were originally rooted in religious standards- halal/Kosher.
Things like, slaughtering animals in a private/sanitary area, not torturing or abusing them in anyway, keeping them well feed/watered with room to move around. Some texts stating any unjust harm done to an animal will be punished the same as if it were done to a human.
This all adds to the health and cleanliness of the animal, which the animals obviously prefer. In turn more nutritious healthy food for humans.
I won't go into how industry and marketing increased our reliance on meat and all that, but animals should be allowed to be animals and humans CAN find uses for everything on earth without exploiting and abusing.