The Question | Questions | How should we treat animals?

13 Feb

Many of us love our pets and treat them well. Do we have an obligation to treat animals well? Is it ok to eat animals or use them in experiments? Here?s one answer from a young philosopher.

Shannon

This week’s guest philosopher is Shannon Dickerson. Shannon is 10 years old. She is in Mrs. Cross’s 5 th grade class at Mountainview Elementary School in Morgantown , WV . Shannon is a little shy, at first. She is a very thoughtful and caring girl who wonders about big questions. Shannon is very active and athletic. She enjoys swimming, cycling, rollerblading, ice skating, downhill skiing, x-c skiing, and riding her scooter. When she is not playing sports and games, she enjoys watching movies and spying on her teenage sister with some of her friends. (Shhhhhhhhhhhh, lets hope her big sister does not read this!) Shannon has her own spy kit, which has binoculars, a recorder that can reach all the way across the street, and a wrist computer that allows her to text message her other spy friends. Shannon and her family recently went on a trip to Washington , DC . Shannon’s favorite part of the trip was going to the Spy Museum .

Alright, on to the question! Shannon chose ?How should we treat non-human animals?? I think she chose this question because she obviously loves animals. She has two cats, Buster and Sage. Buster is a tough cat who, according to Shannon, ?rules South Park .? Sage and Shannon share the same birthday. Shannon also has two bunnies named Elron and Panda. Elron and Panda have family chores. While the family lawn mower is gathering dust and saving the ozone layer, Elron and Panda chomp on the grass and keep the lawn well manicured. ( Shannon ’s Dad was hanging out with us as we chatted about THE QUESTION, and he admitted that he cannot even remember the last time he had to mow the grass.)

After chatting with Shannon for a while about her pets, I could tell that she takes extremely good care of them. She is a tenderhearted person, and her pets are lucky to have her as a caretaker. ?How should we treat animals?? I asked. ?We should be nice to them? Shannon replied. I asked her whether her neighbor’s should be nice to her pets. She insisted that they should be nice, and that they are nice, because they all love cats and bunnies. ?But what if they didn’t,? I asked. ?Should they be nice to them even if they don’t like animals?? Shannon said, ?They should be nice to my pets because I love my pets and hurting them would hurt me.? ?Good answer, but what if the animal was a stray, and hurting the animal would not hurt the owner of the animal?? I asked. Shannon still thought it would be very wrong to hurt the animal. She told me of her own experience of taking care of a stray cat. I pressed Shannon about what makes it wrong to hurt a stray animal. She articulated a principle to defend her view. She maintained that it is wrong to hurt any living thing. I asked her about the common practices of hunting and eating meat. She paused; she pondered, and twisted her lip. I asked her if there was any moral difference between hunting and eating meat bought in a grocery store. ?There’s no difference,? maintained Shannon . ?So, if it is wrong to hunt is also wrong to eat meat from the grocery store?? I asked. ?Yes,? she replied. And if it is ok to eat meat it is ok to hunt?? ?That’s right,? replied Shannon . So, I asked, ?Is it wrong to eat animals?? She paused, and paused, and paused. Finally, Shannon said, ?I don’t know.? ?So, a common practice that we all take for granted is worth thinking about?? Shannon looked me dead in the eye, bit her lip, and said, ?That’s right. This is a really hard question and I do not have an answer right now. I will have to think about this some more.?

Shannon impresses me. She is so thoughtful and so honest. Her willingness to say, ?I don’t know? is a virtue that very few people have. Of course, I do not want to discourage people from trying out their answers in ?THE QUESTION.? In fact, Shannon herself skillfully and logically defended quite a few answers in our discussion. However, she had the courage to say ?I don’t know? when she wanted more time to think about this very difficult question. I hope you will keep thinking too. I also hope you will join the WVU Philosophy Department in our public forum on the questions. We will announce the time, date, and location of the forum very soon.

I agree with shannon. She is a thoughtful girl and she loves animals and wants them to be safe and I think she is doing the right thing. Also the best. she is able to tell what she thinks. So i am glad on what she has done.!!!!!!

i also love animals and i think that shannon is a very sweet girl that will make a difference in animals lives. i agree 100% with her.

if all of us like shannon,we would have more thing to care the animals .the hunmanbeing do not own the earth.i agree with shannon

I agree with Shannon. Love your pets

We humans consider ourselves absolute masters of all we survey and this includes all flora and fauna on the planet. And this has served us well and allowed us to develop a standard of living of a fairly comfortable nature (excepting unfortunately the hundreds of millions of barely subsistent-living humans on this planet—it is unconscionable that in Western Civilization many of us devote more effort and charity to our four-legged friends than to our fellow humans, either those in poor Third World nations or those siting on street corners in all the cities and hamlets of America). Only in the last few generations with the rise of the environmental movement and the recognition that other creatures on this world have various levels of intelligence (with the stark possibility that some may be more “advanced” from the moral-ethical point-of-view than we humans) such as apes and marine mammals. Obviously, it would be hypocritical of anyone who is NOT a vegetarian to hold up one standard for “pets” while not objecting at all to the wholesale (and frequently very cruelly done) slaughter of animals for our kitchen table. We are beginning to realize that our callousness in our relationship to creatures in lviing in natural environments (leading to the huge mass extinctions now taking place and accelerating) is not only amoral or immoral but harmful to our own interests. It seems clear that our view of the treatment of animals is evolving (with some backtracking and mistreatment that should NOT be condoned or supported) and hopefully our human species will turn the corner in a very short period of time (2-3 generations or less). Perhaps our species has not been contacted by intelligences beyond our planet for the very reason that we are considered barbarians because of not only our treatment of some higher level mammals but also because of our treatment of other members of our own species. We need a new ethic for the treatment of animals and this all relates to the future viability of our species. We’re running out of resources, energy, water, etc. Humanity needs to more fairly distribute world resources and adjust the raising and utilization of animals to maximize ethical treatment, smart resource conservation, and other values that will prolong our species’ survival while increasingly recognizing that other species on this planet have a value that may not be completely recognized today. Living in a future where renewable energy and other resouces are more conservatively utilized will result in a more viable extension of our species. Ethic treatment of animals, particularly marine mammals and apes, may actually be part of the formula for a healthier human future.

I believe that animals should be treated with love and compassion. Just because they may bark, meow, or something that you dont understand they are normally more loving towards people than people are towards them. Yes, they can break things or do things they aren’t supposed to, but they probably just dont know any better. I know from experience that having a pet can brighten your life so you should treat them how you want them to treat you.

I think we should treat animals just like we want to be treated. I treat my puppy just like a child. I couldnt imagine anything less. I lost one of my dogs last year and it hurt just as bad as if i had lost a family member.

I believe we should treat animals fairly and with respect. I know many people who dont worry about hurting a mouse for example, because they believe they are so much more than an animal and that the animal is far below them. I completely disagree with this as even though animals may not have the same intellectual understandings as humans, they still feel and think. I also believe that humans have a duty, to some repsect, to help animals. After all, we are the ones that have manipulted nature through industrialization that has left many animal’s natural habitats destroyed and their lives in danger. The least we can do now is to help these endangered species and offer all animals the respect they deserve.

i think all animals should be treated with the best of care. you cannot say that eating meat is wrong. God put certain animals on earth for us to use as food. i do think however that all meat products should come from animals that have been humanly put down and suffered no pain as well as had lived a good life beforehand. i love animals as pets and any person that abuses animals should have the same thing done to them.

Should you be eaten if you eat a cow or another animal? That sounds a little whacky, but isn’t raising something just to be killed and eaten abuse? Your policy seems to suggest that you deserve the same treatment.

This past weekend (Thanksgiving 2008) a man in Pittsburgh shot a neighbor’s Pittbull. According to the man, the dog was lose many times and had just been lose and bit a little girl in the neighborhood. (The girl is ok, but the dog had already gotten out and bitten a few people prior to this bite.) The man got his gun, went outside, and shot the dog when it came into his yard.

I love dogs, but I find myself very sympathetic to this guy.
As I understood the story, the guy was not being attacked by the dog. So it is not a classic case of self-defense. Nevertheless, I think the guy did the community (of all living creatures) a favor. Obviously, a better solution would be for the owners of the dog to train the dog and keep the dog from roaming. Since that option was not a reality, it seems to me that the guy did the entire community a big favor. I’d love to hear alternative views before I decide what I think for sure. Any ideas?

Animals are moral agents because they feel pain. But their has to be a moral spectrum. I deontological approach is the only way to deal with animal treatment.