To address the question of whether or not owning pets is moral, i will if permitted employ the strategy Regan used in morally discounting zoos and aquariums. According to Utilitarians, to assess whether pet ownership is moral we have to take into account the interests of the animals we call pets as well as the interests of the people directly or indirectly affected by someone having or not having a pet. This as we concluded earlier is information that far exceeds what humans can apprehend and those based on these shortcomings, we can't morally justify ownership of pets.
Secondly, i now employ the theory of holism or what some may call an environmentalist theory. According to holists, the community or group is valuable than the individual thus from time to time, we can sacrifice the individual interests for the the community or species. Now lets apply this to pet ownership; does having a pet put the interests of all animals of that specie at the forefront? I beg to differ that it does because i fail to see how having a goldfish protects the interests of goldfishes in the sea. With the same token, we now try to find a correlation between pet ownership and the rights view. Th rights view suggests that we treat animals with respect and in so doing respect their right to freedom. Pet ownership to the best of my knowledge infringes on the freedom of these we call pets as we find new ways of keeping various animals closer to our homes by means of leashes, fences and cages etc.
With this, i come to a conclusion that although pet ownership has and is a major part of our lives (one to which i have fallen prey to myself), it isn't morally defensible atleast according to utilitarians, holists and various animal ethicists of different dominions.
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4 comments:
What about those common pet-aniamls who, over the course of millenia, we have domesticated to such an extent that they no longer can live their lives independently of humans?
Well this is a problem we have caused but all the same i can't suggest we release them into the wild now because we have stripped them of their natural instincts valuable to survive in the wild. So i guess we go on having pets but try as much as possible to treat them as humanely possible as we can!
I don't think you can strip an animal of its instincts. The animal may not have to rely on them, and so they may be, in a sense, dulled. But, there are far too many cases of animals (specifically dogs) that tweak for whatever reason, and embrace their natural instincts... often to the detriment of smaller pets and children.
Likewise, bare in mind that we can re-train the animals to survive in the wild. If we can train a baby animal to be capable of living in the wild, then why not our pets? (I will admit that not all pets are entirely capable of being turned loose; however, a fair number are.)
The question then becomes 'Is the environment suitable for animals to be freed?' -- obviously, no. (The landscape that humans have built is our 'natural environment', not theirs. However, one could argue that they should be able to adapt, if truly capable of surviving...)
My neighbors love to let their dogs loose on the neighborhood. Honestly, I'm torn on the issue: I hate cleaning up after dogs I do not know, but I smile to see them running free.
by " stripped" i meant domesticated whicn in a sense makes them rely less on these instincts like their wild counterparts. The very fact that u suggest that we "re-train" them is testimonial to the fact they lack something vital in surving out in the wild!
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