Day 207

To continue from yesterday:

... I say "closer to the truth" because we also tend to give some animals much more respect and dignity and consideration than they probably deserve. Just as it is a mistake to treat your farm animals with the same level of regard that you treat farm vegetables, it is also a mistake to assume your dog or cat wants to be, or is just like a person simply on account of similar behaviour. The folks over at PETA, an organization about which I have mixed feelings, seem to believe that animals have a 'lifestyle' that requires our respect. I must disagree with this, and argue that animals (with perhaps the exception of primates, maybe dolphins and whales) are response machines; they don't think in the way we understand 'think,' they don't understand, and they aren't self-aware.

What they can do is feel pain and pleasure. Avoidng the infliction of pain upon a creature needlessly seems like a good enough imperative to me. Much beyond that, and I wonder if we've treaded into territory in which we're just assuming they're like us in their desires and acting as such.

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