In a ruling that references butter knives, euthanasia and cats named Slimey and Oinky, a Saskatoon judge made an impassioned defence of the notion that, when it comes to the law, dogs should not be treated as though they were children.
The Court of Queen's Bench judge made his case in a written decision about a dispute between a divorcing Saskatoon couple who disagreed about where their dogs Kenya and Willow (sometimes "Willy") should live.
"Dogs are wonderful creatures," wrote Justice Richard Danyliuk in the first sentence of his 15-page decision in August.
"Many dogs are treated as members of the family with whom they live. But after all is said and done, a dog is a dog. At law it is property, a domesticated animal that is owned. At law it enjoys no familial rights."
The wife wanted the case treated as a child custody dispute. She argued she should keep Kenya and Willow and offer visitation rights to her estranged husband.
Danyliuk rejected that request.
The judge ruled that dogs are property and should not be treated as children. He said that should be obvious to all based on a bit of logical, dispassionate thought:
"In Canada, we tend not to purchase our children from breeders.
"We tend not to breed our children with other humans to ensure good bloodlines, nor do we charge for such services.
"When our children are seriously ill, we generally do not engage in an economic cost/benefit analysis to see whether the children are to receive medical treatment, receive nothing or even have their lives ended to prevent suffering.
"When our children act improperly, even seriously and violently so, we generally do not muzzle them or even put them to death for repeated transgressions."
Danyliuk said given dogs are property and not family, it would be absurd for him to make a ruling about visitation rights.
"Am I to make an order that one party have interim possession of [for example] the family butter knives but, due to a deep attachment to both butter and those knives, order that the other party have limited access to those knives for 1.5 hours per week to butter his or her toast?"
Danyliuk acknowledged that dogs aren't quite like other possessions in that "statutory protection for pets exists to prevent them from being treated with cruelty or neglect."
I'm pretty sure our options are greater than something either being a big deal or nothing.
It is just an amusing story and the interest, I suppose, is that there is actually a precedent there now. Just believing something is obvious doesn't mean there are actually laws involving said thing.
Ahtman wrote: I'm pretty sure our options are greater than something either being a big deal or nothing.
It's effectively just stating what we already knew. Humans treat non-humans as lesser races undeserving of equality.
It is just an amusing story and the interest, I suppose, is that there is actually a precedent there now. Just believing something is obvious doesn't mean there are actually laws involving said thing.
I'm almost 100% certain that our nations' laws have it clearly spelled out somewhere what species they apply to.
Ahtman wrote: I'm pretty sure our options are greater than something either being a big deal or nothing.
It's effectively just stating what we already knew.
So you then understand why it is absurd that it actually had to be ruled on by a court of law.
Yes.
I like animals, cause I'm one of those Christians with a certain love for all living things (except spiders feth them straight back to Satan), so I'm not really big on animals being nothing but property. But having a custody case over dogs with visitation is absolutely ridiculous.
Thank god these people apparently don't have any actual children. In my experience vapid people are terrible parents.
Ahtman wrote: I'm pretty sure our options are greater than something either being a big deal or nothing.
It's effectively just stating what we already knew.
So you then understand why it is absurd that it actually had to be ruled on by a court of law.
Yes.
I also understand that a lot of humans are stupid and the judge basically had to respond to the request being made by people asking for something stupid, and was required to provide an actual explanation.
Ahtman wrote: I'm pretty sure our options are greater than something either being a big deal or nothing.
It's effectively just stating what we already knew.
So you then understand why it is absurd that it actually had to be ruled on by a court of law.
Yes.
I also understand that a lot of humans are stupid and the judge basically had to respond to the request being made by people asking for something stupid, and was required to provide an actual explanation.
Why is it absurd? One party had attempted to assert law related to one process instead of another. The judge would have to rule on the law to be used in the decision. Its not a big deal. I'm surprised this made news.
I don't know why, but this reminded me of the tete-a-tete between Jules(SJ) and Vincent(JT) in 'Pulp Fiction' where they debated the finer points between a pig and a dog with regards to culinary suitability.
Dogs as property? "I don't know, dog got a lot of personality. Personality goes a long way."
I also understand that a lot of humans are stupid and the judge basically had to respond to the request being made by people asking for something stupid, and was required to provide an actual explanation.
Why is it absurd? One party had attempted to assert law related to one process instead of another. The judge would have to rule on the law to be used in the decision. Its not a big deal. I'm surprised this made news.
It's absurd because any reasonable human being would realize that our pets are not treated as human beings by the legal system, by examining any interaction between non-humans and the legal system.
But mostly I'm wondering why you rephrased my post after quoting it like you're offering a counter-argument.
I think this was an inevitable legal... event... for lack of a better term. It is my unscientific observation that more people are buying more deeply into the notion that their pets are "children" because they love them like children. At least, in their own minds.
So someone takes a sentiment of imagining they love a pet like a human child, and wants to process legally that notion. Perhaps they're more emotion motivated than logic motivated. We're all different points on a long spectrum.
Anyhow, I'm glad this has been treated the way it has. A dog is property with additional rights as a living being, but not equal to a human [child].
I actually find it more ridiculous that a justice couldn't have spent the energy asserting dogs are not humans to actually doing what the former couple were asking. Visitation rights seems simple and if you have ever raised a dog, removing a pillar of their from them can have negative effects.
Of course they should have been able to create a equitable system with out the legal system if they actually did care about the animal they raised.
The current ruling creates a precedent allowing all future judges to summarily dismiss this idiocy, rather than having to process future idiocy through court. While it's a waste of time in this instance, at least protection is now in place to prevent future wastes of time.
I take it you're vegan, then? The argument that will follow, assuming you're not, is which animals are ok to eat, which ones aren't? Keep in mind, any consumption of an animal product, even milk, is technically exploiting an animal for your benefit.
If you are, good on you. If you've never swatted a mosquito, good on you. If you've cried over an accidental crushing of an earthworm after a rainstorm, good on you. Eventually, I imagine I'll find some degree of uncaring towards the casual harm of an animal that you've engaged in, and then we'll hopefully get off our high horses... which we were exploiting for the better view / easier mobility.
greatbigtree wrote: I take it you're vegan, then? The argument that will follow, assuming you're not, is which animals are ok to eat, which ones aren't? Keep in mind, any consumption of an animal product, even milk, is technically exploiting an animal for your benefit.
If you are, good on you. If you've never swatted a mosquito, good on you. If you've cried over an accidental crushing of an earthworm after a rainstorm, good on you. Eventually, I imagine I'll find some degree of uncaring towards the casual harm of an animal that you've engaged in, and then we'll hopefully get off our high horses... which we were exploiting for the better view / easier mobility.
Oh, no, I fully agree with killing animals, plants and bacteria.
I mean, it's not like any other animals in nature have an issue with killing other life forms to survive, and being able to eat is required to stay alive.
I just don't consider myself superior to the cow that became my steak, or the trees that became my desk, or the dog that is my pet.
Life on Earth is a daily horror show, and living requires killing others, so if I were to truly minimize my personal impact on Earth the logical course of action would be to end my own existence entirely, not simply swap killing animals for killing plants.
However, the moment Star Trek food replicators become available within my price range, I'm buying one, and never going to the grocery store ever again.
BrotherGecko wrote: I actually find it more ridiculous that a justice couldn't have spent the energy asserting dogs are not humans to actually doing what the former couple were asking. Visitation rights seems simple and if you have ever raised a dog, removing a pillar of their from them can have negative effects.
Of course they should have been able to create a equitable system with out the legal system if they actually did care about the animal they raised.
Go for Solomon's Method, cut the dog in half and share it between them.
BrotherGecko wrote: I actually find it more ridiculous that a justice couldn't have spent the energy asserting dogs are not humans to actually doing what the former couple were asking. Visitation rights seems simple and if you have ever raised a dog, removing a pillar of their from them can have negative effects.
Of course they should have been able to create a equitable system with out the legal system if they actually did care about the animal they raised.
Go for Solomon's Method, cut the dog in half and share it between them.
Or just adjudicate the issue.
As the immortal bard one crooned: My wife just left and took my hound dog. I'm gonna miss that dog.
What's so reassuring about this article is that we can easily see a judge ruling the other way. PETA and radical organizations like this are continually working to get human rights extended to animals. Common sense on display in the courts is nice to hear about.
Indeed, the "Furbaby" idea just sickens me. For starters, if I left a dog chained up outside overnight with a waterbowl for company... they'd be fine. A-ok, and happy to see you. The degree of effort required to keep a pet compared to keeping a child alive [and well!] seems to have lost relevance somewhere. Like I said, a contributing factor to how this made it to court in the first place.
I'm just happy the Canadian legal system continues to follow a path that is mostly intelligent.
greatbigtree wrote: Indeed, the "Furbaby" idea just sickens me. For starters, if I left a dog chained up outside overnight with a waterbowl for company... they'd be fine. A-ok, and happy to see you. {/quote] That depends. 1. They might freeze to death 2. Be eaten by rpedators. 3. Your ass may go to jail for animal abuse FOR CHAINING UP AN ANIMAL OVERNIGHT.
The degree of effort required to keep a pet compared to keeping a child alive [and well!] seems to have lost relevance somewhere.
Not at all. Having had children, birds, fish, and dogs, children are by far the most needy. Plus they can steal your booze. Ironically our budgies were the loudest and most mean (at least until TBone gave one a heart attack)
Like I said, a contributing factor to how this made it to court in the first place.
Or they wanted to share custody of the animal because both cared for the animal.
feeder wrote: On a somewhat related note: I can't stand my childless single friends who call their fething dog their "furbaby".
If you die in your home, your furbaby is going to eat your face. Fact.
It is also a fact if you die in the woods your friends/ family will eat you.
Not a certainty, but perhaps a possibility. There will certainly be much debate and guilt among your surviving family members who had to choose between starvation and eating you.
You dog has no such qualms about eating your delicious face bacon.
On a side note I do not mind going to jail for life for ending someone who hurt my pet.
If you were James Hetfield you would have murdered Dave Mustaine instead of just kicking him out of the band? But you would have been depriving teenage Feeder (and millions of others) from so many sweet headbangin' tunes.
I mean...if no one knows I'm dead and therefore no one's feeding my cat, I really don't have any qualms about giving up my face bacon. Not like I need it any more, and she's clearly hungry. If it helps her last until someone figures out what's going on, that's a-OK with me.
Regardless, yeah, I think this was the right judicial call. Take care of your animals by all means, I don't even care if you treat 'em like your kids - up to a point - but I don't think we need custody battles over pets.
I can see both sides here. Yes dogs are not human, but I see no reason there cant be shared custody of a dog. So long as the custody law is clear it applies here to property not people.
Orlanth wrote: I can see both sides here. Yes dogs are not human, but I see no reason there cant be shared custody of a dog. So long as the custody law is clear it applies here to property not people.
Except the point of divorce law is to divide the assets of the divorcing couple. Not how to create a timeshare for their belongings. A literal, legal comparison would be dividing a cottage. Either the couple could determine how to divide the asset's use during divorce, or they can't. They can either agree on how to share it during separation settlement...
"We each get alternating access every two weeks, starting in January of this year. Ok? Yes? Good. Moving on."
or they can't, in which case they must sell the property and split the proceeds. [Assuming no pre-nup, etc]
"Up yours! If I can't have it, neither can you! Sell it for fair market value!"
So in the case of the dog, they can either agree how to split the time themselves, or they can agree to the financial value of the dog [say, $2000] and that value would come out of one party's settlement value.
Dogs are incapable of moral behavior, and thus can't be "better" people than people. Humans invest our sense of loyalty and love into our pets, because they act in ways that remind us of how we act when loyal / expressing love for each other.
A human can love you, or hate you. A dog can only follow it's internal instinct cues and training. Dogs have instincts to be pack animals, so they share our "loving" behaviours. Cats don't. That's why cats are donkey-caves. Just jokes.
greatbigtree wrote: Dogs are incapable of moral behavior, and thus can't be "better" people than people. Humans invest our sense of loyalty and love into our pets, because they act in ways that remind us of how we act when loyal / expressing love for each other.
A human can love you, or hate you. A dog can only follow it's internal instinct cues and training. Dogs have instincts to be pack animals, so they share our "loving" behaviours. Cats don't. That's why cats are donkey-caves. Just jokes.
Er...dogs are pack. Their pack behavior is morality, and are infinitely better than most people.
I've seen a divorcing couple argue over the ashes of a cremated dog that neither wanted but just really didn't want the other to have. People can get quite petty and/or odd in a divorce.
Orlanth wrote: I can see both sides here. Yes dogs are not human, but I see no reason there cant be shared custody of a dog. So long as the custody law is clear it applies here to property not people.
Here in the States, in most jurisdictions, there is no "custody" of property.
In so-called "common law" States (when it comes to divorce and disposition of property), property acquired during the marriage is either divided up by the courts (if there is no agreement on who gets what beforehand between the two parties), or sold and the proceeds divided up between the two parties (usually in the case of real estate or high value property). In other States,unfortunately, one party can end up shafting the other by getting most or everything, leaving the loser (for lack of a better term) with little to nothing.
If this happened in North Carolina, for example, the judge would award the pet(s) to one party or another, or each party would get one of the dogs (once again, if there is no agreement between the two parties beforehand).
But it's good to see common sense is still valued by some in Trudeau's "It's the (insert current year here)" Canada. They haven't gone off the deep end yet.
There is a distinct difference between instinct and morality. A dog's instinct is to work as a pack. They benefit from this, and exhibit behavior similar to humans in that they make each other's lives easier. However, they have no moral compunction about tearing their prey limb from limb. They are incapable of empathy for the animal they shred, and may very well eat while it is still alive.
Extending this to "canines", in the wild an Alpha pair will kill the offspring of the non-alphas. If I'm the boss, I can't kill my employees' offspring to ensure better odds of survival for my own children.
A dog is incapable of morality. I can choose to not eat an animal, because I don't feel like it's the moral thing to do. I mean, I do eat animals. They're delicious. But that's a moral issue I am able to decide for myself. A dog can't do that. Dogs engage in behaviors that are similar to the behaviors of loving humans, but that does not equal love. Love is chosen, and directed. Love can change. A dog is a pack animal. It's instincts cause it to act that way. Not a chosen behavior.
greatbigtree wrote: Dogs are incapable of moral behavior, and thus can't be "better" people than people. Humans invest our sense of loyalty and love into our pets, because they act in ways that remind us of how we act when loyal / expressing love for each other.
A human can love you, or hate you. A dog can only follow it's internal instinct cues and training. Dogs have instincts to be pack animals, so they share our "loving" behaviours. Cats don't. That's why cats are donkey-caves. Just jokes.
You sure fellow collection of chemical reactions that morality is more than instincts given various extra labels in order to maintain pack mentality?
greatbigtree wrote: There is a distinct difference between instinct and morality. A dog's instinct is to work as a pack. They benefit from this, and exhibit behavior similar to humans in that they make each other's lives easier. However, they have no moral compunction about tearing their prey limb from limb. They are incapable of empathy for the animal they shred, and may very well eat while it is still alive.
Extending this to "canines", in the wild an Alpha pair will kill the offspring of the non-alphas. If I'm the boss, I can't kill my employees' offspring to ensure better odds of survival for my own children.
A dog is incapable of morality. I can choose to not eat an animal, because I don't feel like it's the moral thing to do. I mean, I do eat animals. They're delicious. But that's a moral issue I am able to decide for myself. A dog can't do that. Dogs engage in behaviors that are similar to the behaviors of loving humans, but that does not equal love. Love is chosen, and directed. Love can change. A dog is a pack animal. It's instincts cause it to act that way. Not a chosen behavior.
You assume all behavior is instinctual and that we are somehow more advanced. I'd disagree strongly on both fronts, but thats not relevant here and would only eventually demonstrate why view dogs as better than 99.9% of people.
greatbigtree wrote: There is a distinct difference between instinct and morality. A dog's instinct is to work as a pack. They benefit from this, and exhibit behavior similar to humans in that they make each other's lives easier. However, they have no moral compunction about tearing their prey limb from limb. They are incapable of empathy for the animal they shred, and may very well eat while it is still alive.
I think all of human history would show that morality is the thinnest of paper barriers. Otherwise we wouldn't tear each other apart for morale causes. Humans eat are rend animals while still alive without empathy daily. Humans murder humans without empathy daily.
greatbigtree wrote: Extending this to "canines", in the wild an Alpha pair will kill the offspring of the non-alphas. If I'm the boss, I can't kill my employees' offspring to ensure better odds of survival for my own children.
Humans will sell each other out daily without even giving it a second thought. "Our children before them", "our country before their's", "not my taxes"....etc etc etc
greatbigtree wrote: A dog is incapable of morality. I can choose to not eat an animal, because I don't feel like it's the moral thing to do. I mean, I do eat animals.
A dog is incapable of engaging in a hunger strike.
A dog is incapable of suicide bombing... technology issues aside... a dog is incapable of destroying itself to achieve a "moral" objective.
A dog is incapable of charity, outside it's own pack.
A dog is incapable of choosing an action that would self-terminate.
A dog could not choose to end the suffering of another animal by killing it, simply to end it's suffering.
Morality is not a barrier. But it is a choice. A conscious decision that a dog is incapable of making. Some humans murder each other, yes. Some dogs murder each other. But a human makes a conscious choice. A dog kills to eat or for defense. Or to practice hunting.
I do, in fact, eat animals despite a small moral objection. It is a moral decision I've made. I consider the impact of ending other lives to facilitate my own. I'm currently thinking about it a fair deal. I've recently made the acquaintance of a non-donkey-cave vegetarian, and can possibly see myself changing my decision to eat meat, and attempt a vegetarian lifestyle. It certainly wouldn't hurt my health.
A dog can not decide to stop eating meat. It will eat non-meat out of necessity, or convenience, but it would not willingly suffer health issues at the expense of eating meat. A human can do that.
So am I. I've not seen a dog run a van into a crowd in Berlin. Never saw dogs herd other dogs into ovens.
A dog is incapable of suicide bombing... technology issues aside... a dog is incapable of destroying itself to achieve a "moral" objective.
So a dog is more morale than a person. Excellent. you admit it already.
Of course Russian dogs blew up Hitlerite tanks.
A dog is incapable of charity, outside it's own pack.
I'm incapable of charity outside my own pack. How exatly would it provide larger charity? Dog treats for the poor?
A dog is incapable of choosing an action that would self-terminate.
Except for Russian dogs.
Statistically dog pairs, when one dies it is highly likely the other will die within 3 months.
A dog could not choose to end the suffering of another animal by killing it, simply to end it's suffering.
Sure it could choose that. UNless you have dog esp and TBone's big book of the history of dogs your statement is utterly unproveable.
Morality is not a barrier. But it is a choice. A conscious decision that a dog is incapable of making.
Opinion based on facts no in evidence your honor.
Some humans murder each other, yes. Some dogs murder each other. But a human makes a conscious choice. A dog kills to eat or for defense. Or to practice hunting.
greatbigtree wrote: Dogs are incapable of moral behavior, and thus can't be "better" people than people. Humans invest our sense of loyalty and love into our pets, because they act in ways that remind us of how we act when loyal / expressing love for each other.
A human can love you, or hate you. A dog can only follow it's internal instinct cues and training. Dogs have instincts to be pack animals, so they share our "loving" behaviours. Cats don't. That's why cats are donkey-caves. Just jokes.
I remember when people believed dogs were not self-aware. This fact justified our treatment of them as property. Then we discovered they actually are sentient, as are many other animals. Now it is human intelligence that justifies our superiority.
Ever think that maybe all of human civilization is simply the natural result of human instinctual behavior?
greatbigtree wrote: A dog is incapable of suicide bombing... technology issues aside... a dog is incapable of destroying itself to achieve a "moral" objective.
Neither do terrorists, in fact in studying terrorism you would learn that the dying part of a suicide attack is rarely on the mind of the attacker. They don't even see it as suicide, even remotely. They are not even choosing self termination. In fact it is exactly the same as when a Chihuahua charges the burglar in your home. A suicide attack is not a suicidal terrorist, they are just using the best method they know for protecting their....pack. With some suicide attacks the attacker isn't even aware they will die and even attempt to survive the attack.
greatbigtree wrote: A dog is incapable of choosing an action that would self-terminate.
Prove that.
greatbigtree wrote: A dog could not choose to end the suffering of another animal by killing it, simply to end it's suffering.
Prove this one too.
greatbigtree wrote: A dog can not decide to stop eating meat. It will eat non-meat out of necessity, or convenience, but it would not willingly suffer health issues at the expense of eating meat. A human can do that.
Dogs are omnivorous they choose to not eat meat all the time. It like you eats out of convenience. There are vegan dogs lol. Until you are vegan, you will never be able to know if you are actually making a choice or a constructed illusion of choice.
I don't buy that. I do believe a dog can be trained in such a way, either on purpose or just mimicing their owner, but I don't believe dogs are born that way.
Until you are vegan, you will never be able to know if you are actually making a choice or a constructed illusion of choice.
Being a vegan is no more an illusion than any other choice. If one wants to be one fine but it doesn't do well to just just make gak up to feel better about the choice.
I don't buy that. I do believe a dog can be trained in such a way, either on purpose or just mimicing their owner, but I don't believe dogs are born that way.
Nobody is born that way. It is a specific diet style. The point was they can be vegan an live very long lives without complication or resentment.
Until you are vegan, you will never be able to know if you are actually making a choice or a constructed illusion of choice.
Being a vegan is no more an illusion than any other choice. If one wants to be one fine but it doesn't do well to just just make gak up to feel better about the choice.
I hadn't the need to go into that. My eventual point would have been only people capable of choosing to be vegan can be vegan. In other words humans don't actually make morale choices just morale illusions.
I don't buy that. I do believe a dog can be trained in such a way, either on purpose or just mimicing their owner, but I don't believe dogs are born that way.
What choices do you believe that humans are born having made?
greatbigtree wrote: Dogs are incapable of moral behavior, and thus can't be "better" people than people. Humans invest our sense of loyalty and love into our pets, because they act in ways that remind us of how we act when loyal / expressing love for each other.
A human can love you, or hate you. A dog can only follow it's internal instinct cues and training. Dogs have instincts to be pack animals, so they share our "loving" behaviours. Cats don't. That's why cats are donkey-caves. Just jokes.
I remember when people believed dogs were not self-aware. This fact justified our treatment of them as property. Then we discovered they actually are sentient, as are many other animals. Now it is human intelligence that justifies our superiority.
Ever think that maybe all of human civilization is simply the natural result of human instinctual behavior?
There is a difference between self-aware and sentient. Dogs are sentient. They are not self-aware.
Good ruling by the judge. If shared custody is so important they should be able to have a contract drawn up and notarised, to make it binding.
greatbigtree wrote: Dogs are incapable of moral behavior, and thus can't be "better" people than people. Humans invest our sense of loyalty and love into our pets, because they act in ways that remind us of how we act when loyal / expressing love for each other.
A human can love you, or hate you. A dog can only follow it's internal instinct cues and training. Dogs have instincts to be pack animals, so they share our "loving" behaviours. Cats don't. That's why cats are donkey-caves. Just jokes.
I remember when people believed dogs were not self-aware. This fact justified our treatment of them as property. Then we discovered they actually are sentient, as are many other animals. Now it is human intelligence that justifies our superiority.
Ever think that maybe all of human civilization is simply the natural result of human instinctual behavior?
There is a difference between self-aware and sentient. Dogs are sentient. They are not self-aware.
Good ruling by the judge. If shared custody is so important they should be able to have a contract drawn up and notarised, to make it binding.
Being self-aware is a component of sentience, actually.
greatbigtree wrote: Dogs are incapable of moral behavior, and thus can't be "better" people than people. Humans invest our sense of loyalty and love into our pets, because they act in ways that remind us of how we act when loyal / expressing love for each other.
A human can love you, or hate you. A dog can only follow it's internal instinct cues and training. Dogs have instincts to be pack animals, so they share our "loving" behaviours. Cats don't. That's why cats are donkey-caves. Just jokes.
I remember when people believed dogs were not self-aware. This fact justified our treatment of them as property. Then we discovered they actually are sentient, as are many other animals. Now it is human intelligence that justifies our superiority.
You remember all the way back to 2012, good for you.
Until 2010 the official position of the AVMA was that displays of pain by animals are not corollary to mental events of pain.
The first official position of scientists stating that at least a very large portion of 'higher' mammals are conscious is the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness.
Concerning the OP, I think this is a wasted opportunity to elevate the degree of protection given to companion species, and create a secondary category, somewhere between familial rights and property rights, which covers them. If the judge had not been so busy going reductio ad absurdum on everyone's asses, he might have noticed that the decision of allocating custody in the context of a familial dispute is to find the most advantageous position for the child, the one person who CAN'T look after his own interest. Well guess what, dogs and kids have that in common, parents are going to gak all over their future out of spite.
Sentience refers to perception-pain, etc-dogs feel pain, are sentient.
Self-awareness is the recognition of self as an individual-dogs do not do this by our current metrics, very few animals do.
Thus, not self aware.
EDIT: apparently new tests are indicating dogs may have a measure of self-awareness. Still preliminary.
Well, let me know when scientists confirm the latest justification for treating other species as lesser beings based on arbitrary human-centric criteria. I'm pretty sure those goalposts are just gonna keep being moved forever.
Pouncey wrote: Well, let me know when scientists confirm the latest justification for treating other species as lesser beings based on arbitrary human-centric criteria. I'm pretty sure those goalposts are just gonna keep being moved forever.
Welcome to having a functioning society. You can not give a cockroach the same moral rights as a person and still have anything resembling a viable system.
Pouncey wrote: Well, let me know when scientists confirm the latest justification for treating other species as lesser beings based on arbitrary human-centric criteria. I'm pretty sure those goalposts are just gonna keep being moved forever.
Welcome to having a functioning society. You can not give a cockroach the same moral rights as a person and still have anything resembling a viable system.
Of course not. That'd be absurd and most other species wouldn't understand what the hell was going on anyways.
Most other species on the planet treat their own species as their own. A lion pride doesn't expect a tigress to fit in, after all.
But really, it's possible to say, "Human rules are for humans, not for other species, thus we do not treat other species the same way we do humans" and not also imply, "Non-human species are inferior."
Pouncey wrote: But really, it's possible to say, "Human rules are for humans, not for other species, thus we do not treat other species the same way we do humans" and not also imply, "Non-human species are inferior."
It's possible, but why would I want to do it? A cockroach is inferior to me, and I don't feel any need to believe otherwise.
Pouncey wrote: But really, it's possible to say, "Human rules are for humans, not for other species, thus we do not treat other species the same way we do humans" and not also imply, "Non-human species are inferior."
It's possible, but why would I want to do it? A cockroach is inferior to me, and I don't feel any need to believe otherwise.
Kinda why I hate humans, really.
We're extremely arrogant and self-important, believing ourselves the universe's finest creations.
The universe might be better off if we went extinct before starting to spread beyond our own planet.
Pouncey wrote: But really, it's possible to say, "Human rules are for humans, not for other species, thus we do not treat other species the same way we do humans" and not also imply, "Non-human species are inferior."
It's possible, but why would I want to do it? A cockroach is inferior to me, and I don't feel any need to believe otherwise.
I find it interesting that you believe your superior to a cockroach. What is it about you that makes you superior exactly? Is it your ability to determine that you are not contributing anymore to the world than a cockroach is?
Pouncey wrote: But really, it's possible to say, "Human rules are for humans, not for other species, thus we do not treat other species the same way we do humans" and not also imply, "Non-human species are inferior."
It's possible, but why would I want to do it? A cockroach is inferior to me, and I don't feel any need to believe otherwise.
I find it interesting that you believe your superior to a cockroach. What is it about you that makes you superior exactly? Is it your ability to determine that you are not contributing anymore to the world than a cockroach is?
Personally, I'm very fond of my ability to recognize that due to the cycle of life, literally everything I have ever eaten was poop and/or a rotting corpse many millions of times over throughout Earth's existence.
Yes, telepathically. And telepathically, the dog replied. As it turns out, dogs don't think in language, only pictures and smells, yet I was able to ask if it was self aware, and it replied with images and smells of food in a bowl.
And then running in a field, with all the wonderful smells.
And then it showed me a squirrel taunting it from a tree.
But it did not understand self awareness, no matter how many times I tried to communicate images and smells of myself.
greatbigtree wrote: Yes, telepathically. And telepathically, the dog replied. As it turns out, dogs don't think in language, only pictures and smells, yet I was able to ask if it was self aware, and it replied with images and smells of food in a bowl.
And then running in a field, with all the wonderful smells.
And then it showed me a squirrel taunting it from a tree.
But it did not understand self awareness, no matter how many times I tried to communicate images and smells of myself.
Now you have proof. Enjoy your day.
Actually, we're starting to develop mind-to-mind communication that could one day become the ability for a human and non-human to know what each other are thinking.
I'm interested to find out what our pets are ACTUALLY thinking.
Oh, also, you guys know that housecats believe that we're their property/servants, right? When they brush up against a human's legs, we see it as a sign of affection, but they're actually just saying, "This human is mine."
So, uh, two species mutually consider each other their personal property without really realizing the other has a difference of opinion on who owns who.
greatbigtree wrote: Yes, telepathically. And telepathically, the dog replied. As it turns out, dogs don't think in language, only pictures and smells, yet I was able to ask if it was self aware, and it replied with images and smells of food in a bowl.
And then running in a field, with all the wonderful smells.
And then it showed me a squirrel taunting it from a tree.
But it did not understand self awareness, no matter how many times I tried to communicate images and smells of myself.
Now you have proof. Enjoy your day.
That was ghost TBone jamming your communication with his own ghost mind control.
You probably also saw a dishwasher and had a compelling need to bark at it.
Frazzled wrote: That was ghost TBone jamming your communication with his own ghost mind control.
You probably also saw a dishwasher and had a compelling need to bark at it.
You guys both know that humans don't have an intrinsic telepathic ability, right?
I mean, you're so sure what dogs are thinking about, but since we've never really had the ability to mind-read, can you actually know what they're thinking, when you can't even prove that your fellow human beings have independent thought rather than operating on base instinct, and you only assume it because they are also humans?
I mean, there are even good reasons to doubt that humans actually have free will instead of simply operating on the natural instincts of one of the most powerful and complicated brains on Earth. It's possible that humans have no ability to choose to do anything, instead that we only act on our base instincts interacting with our relatively vast knowledge and potent intellect.
You guys both know that humans don't have an intrinsic telepathic ability, right?
TBone says bark bark barkbark grrrbark BARK BARK
(translation: this person apparently has no intrinsic sense of humor. Clearly he needs to SQUIRREL!)
Ever asked a fellow human to try ESP and tell them to guess what you're thinking while you sit right in front of them?
Ever notice how often they get it wrong because you can be thinking about literally anything and a person staring you right in the face from a few feet away has zero clue what thoughts are actually going through your mind?
Why are we so sure we have a firm grasp on what animals are thinking when we don't even share a common language to play the "What am I thinking?" game?
Frazzled wrote: That was ghost TBone jamming your communication with his own ghost mind control.
You probably also saw a dishwasher and had a compelling need to bark at it.
You guys both know that humans don't have an intrinsic telepathic ability, right?
I mean, you're so sure what dogs are thinking about, but since we've never really had the ability to mind-read, can you actually know what they're thinking, when you can't even prove that your fellow human beings have independent thought rather than operating on base instinct, and you only assume it because they are also humans?
I mean, there are even good reasons to doubt that humans actually have free will instead of simply operating on the natural instincts of one of the most powerful and complicated brains on Earth. It's possible that humans have no ability to choose to do anything, instead that we only act on our base instincts interacting with our relatively vast knowledge and potent intellect.
Oh no? You're thinking about posting a response, and then wondering whether or not it will be immediately turned back upon you if you do so, and now you're wondering if I can actually read your mind. And now you're trying to think of something that you think I wouldn't think of, but since I can read your mind, that wont work, so now you're trying to "blank" your mind... Need I continue?
The point is, I can telepathically communicate with lesser animals, and thus I am an expert on whether or not they're self aware, so my word is like that onto gods'. Now you're thinking I'm just being asinine, but it's true. I can also, by extension, tell you that humans are capable of being self aware, but not all of them are.
And yes, you remembered to clear your browser history.
So dogs, as property under the law, need not have legally binding custody agreements as children do. And since they aren't aware of themselves, they note that pack members are missing and then move on with their day. Unless that pack member returns, and then it's happy days and fields of wild flowers, with pollen in the air and the feel of wind on your nose, and little rabbits lazily wandering about, just waiting to be eaten.
The owners just needed to work something out in their divorce settlement. The dogs didn't need special legal protection to ensure that puppy support was paid, or anything like that. Done.
Frazzled wrote: That was ghost TBone jamming your communication with his own ghost mind control.
You probably also saw a dishwasher and had a compelling need to bark at it.
You guys both know that humans don't have an intrinsic telepathic ability, right?
I mean, you're so sure what dogs are thinking about, but since we've never really had the ability to mind-read, can you actually know what they're thinking, when you can't even prove that your fellow human beings have independent thought rather than operating on base instinct, and you only assume it because they are also humans?
I mean, there are even good reasons to doubt that humans actually have free will instead of simply operating on the natural instincts of one of the most powerful and complicated brains on Earth. It's possible that humans have no ability to choose to do anything, instead that we only act on our base instincts interacting with our relatively vast knowledge and potent intellect.
Oh no? You're thinking about posting a response, and then wondering whether or not it will be immediately turned back upon you if you do so, and now you're wondering if I can actually read your mind. And now you're trying to think of something that you think I wouldn't think of, but since I can read your mind, that wont work, so now you're trying to "blank" your mind... Need I continue?
The point is, I can telepathically communicate with lesser animals, and thus I am an expert on whether or not they're self aware, so my word is like that onto gods'. Now you're thinking I'm just being asinine, but it's true. I can also, by extension, tell you that humans are capable of being self aware, but not all of them are.
And yes, you remembered to clear your browser history.
So dogs, as property under the law, need not have legally binding custody agreements as children do. And since they aren't aware of themselves, they note that pack members are missing and then move on with their day. Unless that pack member returns, and then it's happy days and fields of wild flowers, with pollen in the air and the feel of wind on your nose, and little rabbits lazily wandering about, just waiting to be eaten.
The owners just needed to work something out in their divorce settlement. The dogs didn't need special legal protection to ensure that puppy support was paid, or anything like that. Done.
Actually I was remembering the time when I was delusional and believed people might be reading my thoughts telepathically. Eventually I then wondered what the hell a PIN would do to protect your money, or what a password would even be useful for, and realized humans are not telepathic.
Also, my dog knows when my mom is late coming home from work. He goes to the front window when she's an hour or so late, and whines and keeps an eye out for her until she comes home. Reminds me of when I was a little kid, my dad was late coming home from work one day, and I watched out the front window feeling sad, expecting every car that went by to be him. Eventually he arrived and I was really happy.
Of course, dogs cannot be equal citizens in human society. At best, they are like young children, and naturally we don't let children vote or make important decisions, trusting instead in their parents to make decisions for them.
Also, the reason this story made the news was because it was probably the first time anyone tried to treat a dog as a human child under the law, and if you read what the judge said, basically he confirmed that human laws are for humans.
My point about not treating non-humans as lesser life forms has nothing to do with any idea of giving them equal citizenship. I'd liken it to having different sovereign human nations - we consider humans in other countries to be our equals, but we put our interests above theirs, and we don't expect them to abide by the same laws we do. We don't expect an American citizen to abide by Canadian laws most of the time. Similarly, human laws are for humans, and we simply have rules for how we treat other animals. I don't expect or want non-humans to become fellow citizens, the most I'd want out of treating non-humans as equals is that we abandon cruel treatment of animals like factory farming and that nonsense PETA does because they believe that animals are better off dead than as pets. Treating a companion animal as a companion instead of a fellow citizen is just fine, and dogs seem to think the same about us - they don't treat us exactly the same as they would a fellow dog. I wouldn't suggest not killing animals for food, because humans are omnivores and we evolved to eat meat, and in many places meat is a necessary resource for keeping people alive.
Basically, just don't be a dick to animals because you believe you're better than them, and I'm happy.
I'm on board with treating animals with respect, and not being cruel to them. When slain for food, I hope that they're slain as quickly and humanely as possible. I hope that labour animals aren't worked to death, and given at least some time for rest / recreation.
I hope that pets are treated well, and like a family member.
I don't want, nor will I ever hope, to see animals treated as the equals of humans.
Be well, and treat animals nicely... just not like children, for legal purposes.
greatbigtree wrote: I'm on board with treating animals with respect, and not being cruel to them. When slain for food, I hope that they're slain as quickly and humanely as possible. I hope that labour animals aren't worked to death, and given at least some time for rest / recreation.
I hope that pets are treated well, and like a family member.
I don't want, nor will I ever hope, to see animals treated as the equals of humans.
Be well, and treat animals nicely... just not like children, for legal purposes.
Treating fellow life forms as equals doesn't mean treating them equally under the law though. It's basically just not presuming that humans are anything special enough to be considered a superior life form, but you can still recognize and accept that species are different enough from each other that they're treated differently in a lot of ways.
It's not an all-or-nothing thing, is what I'm saying. Species can be different without being inherently superior or inferior.
And yes, I also think it's absurd that anyone would ask for a dog to be treated like a human child in a court of law, and I think the judge did the right thing by keeping calm and just clarifying that human laws are mostly for humans, and a dog's relationship with their human owners is not equivalent to a human child's relationship with their parents.
Pouncey wrote: It's not an all-or-nothing thing, is what I'm saying. Species can be different without being inherently superior or inferior.
I don't know. All my parent's cats do is lounge in the sun, poop in a sand box, and meow for food, and they get all those things at no cost to themselves.
Ask me we've been completely outsmarted by the little bastards
Pouncey wrote: It's not an all-or-nothing thing, is what I'm saying. Species can be different without being inherently superior or inferior.
I don't know. All my parent's cats do is lounge in the sun, poop in a sand box, and meow for food, and they get all those things at no cost to themselves.
Ask me we've been completely outsmarted by the little bastards
Cats are incredibly arrogant, yes. And they are highly-skilled at training humans. They're also psychopaths, as they kill for the fun of it, not just for food.
greatbigtree wrote: Yes, telepathically. And telepathically, the dog replied. As it turns out, dogs don't think in language, only pictures and smells, yet I was able to ask if it was self aware, and it replied with images and smells of food in a bowl.
And then running in a field, with all the wonderful smells.
And then it showed me a squirrel taunting it from a tree.
But it did not understand self awareness, no matter how many times I tried to communicate images and smells of myself.
Now you have proof. Enjoy your day.
Self-awareness is an empty value anyways. What's the point of discriminating between creatures that exhibit complex self-preservation strategies, but don't know how to solve the laser-pointer in face of a mirror riddle? All this does is discriminate between creatures that can solve one specific cognitive riddle (where do I put my paw to touch this red dot?). It tells nothing of the depth and complexities of the personality involved in solving the riddle.
Morality is in the same situation. We don't enact laws because we are moral individuals. Amoral beings would still be expected to follow the law. When we judge someone inapt, it is not because they are morally lacking, but because they are rationally lacking to the point where they can't be expected to act consequentially.
greatbigtree wrote: Yes, telepathically. And telepathically, the dog replied. As it turns out, dogs don't think in language, only pictures and smells, yet I was able to ask if it was self aware, and it replied with images and smells of food in a bowl.
And then running in a field, with all the wonderful smells.
And then it showed me a squirrel taunting it from a tree.
But it did not understand self awareness, no matter how many times I tried to communicate images and smells of myself.
Now you have proof. Enjoy your day.
Self-awareness is an empty value anyways. What's the point of discriminating between creatures that exhibit complex self-preservation strategies, but don't know how to solve the laser-pointer in face of a mirror riddle? All this does is discriminate between creatures that can solve one specific cognitive riddle (where do I put my paw to touch this red dot?). It tells nothing of the depth and complexities of the personality involved in solving the riddle.
Morality is in the same situation. We don't enact laws because we are moral individuals. Amoral beings would still be expected to follow the law. When we judge someone inapt, it is not because they are morally lacking, but because they are rationally lacking to the point where they can't be expected to act consequentially.
Also, herd mentality can be a serious issue with humans.
Also, it occurs to me that I have no idea how to solve a Rubik's Cube, though some humans find it a simple task because they understand the strategies needed to solve it. I would not react well to a fellow human condescending to me because I can't solve a Rubik's Cube, much less feeling justified in treating me as though I were an inferior life form for that inability.
Given how widely individual human intellects vary, our smartest humans and our dumbest humans are likely further apart than an average human and an average dog are.
Frazzled wrote: A dark presence surely has entered our thread...
Well, admittedly, humans aren't exactly stupid.
We looked at our bodies, saw they were incapable of flight, but we wanted to fly anyways, so we learned about physics and devised devices that let us fly and/or glide as we see fit.
Eventually we got bored with that idea and decided to see if we could travel to our moon through roughly a light-second of vacuum.
Eventually we got bored with that idea after we did it a bunch of times. Now we're entertaining the idea of sending human volunteers to live on a planet completely barren of life in an environment completely inhospitable to our existence.
Frazzled wrote: I was talking about Chairman Meow. You're as serious as a heart attack aren't you. As the immortal bard once said: lighten up Francis."
I'm sorry, it wasn't intended as a response to you. I don't even remember why I pushed Quote instead of doing a general reply.
There can be peace as long as the dog knows his place... grasshopper.
But yeah, if animals in general were "human" I would have been jailed so many times for involuntary "manslaughter" running over stray "humans" with my truck at night on country roads.
These accidents have gained the approval of my "overlords":
Phineas (the InPhinerator, or "Meow-ic") and Ferb (the Ferbinator or "Squeak").
I am outnumbered and have no choice but to take their side along with the steadily diminishing guppies.
Talizvar wrote: There can be peace as long as the dog knows his place... grasshopper.
But yeah, if animals in general were "human" I would have been jailed so many times for involuntary "manslaughter" running over stray "humans" with my truck at night on country roads.
These accidents have gained the approval of my "overlords":
Phineas (the InPhinerator, or "Meow-ic") and Ferb (the Ferbinator or "Squeak").
I am outnumbered and have no choice but to take their side along with the steadily diminishing guppies.
If animals in general were considered equal citizens, frankly, humans would not be the ones deciding the outcome of any sort of election.
Because as equal citizens, adult animals would have the right to vote, too.
And they outnumber us. By a lot.
Animals aren't just things like cats and dogs. Spiders are animals too. So are ants. So are mosquitoes. Literally all insects are animals, in fact.
The reality is that if you are an organic life form on Earth, you have 3 or 4 options for what you are: animal, plant, fungus, and maybe virus if we can figure out whether they're alive or not.
Pouncey wrote: If animals in general were considered equal citizens, frankly, humans would not be the ones deciding the outcome of any sort of election.
Pouncey wrote: If animals in general were considered equal citizens, frankly, humans would not be the ones deciding the outcome of any sort of election.
Insects take control you say?
Yes.
However, there are difficulties.
No animal has a concept of how elections work in human societies. They are entirely unaware of how our system works, because effectively human laws are things that only exist in the minds of humans. We write things down, yes, but our writing and language are entirely arbitrary in terms of what symbols and sounds mean what, so there is no way for these animals to ever have understood anything we have ever said or written in any human language. Our languages are actually the most complex communication system on Earth, and in fact just being able to speak required our larynx to grow to the point we are the only animals who cannot both breathe and swallow at the same time.
So, naturally, it would be entirely unfair to require our new equal citizens to vote in an entirely random manner because they don't know that they're even doing a thing called "voting". Thus we would be obligated to teach literally every animal on Earth how our electoral system works, which would first require us to teach literally every animal on Earth how to understand human languages to a degree we can explain it to them.
However, as I just said, they do not understand our system. Which means they do not even know they are "citizens of our countries" or what any of those four words mean. Which means they're going about their daily lives, completely oblivious to the fact that humans just decided to start subjecting them to human laws.
This also means that they do not know that our system of determining our territory has strictly-drawn boundaries that are actually invisible when you go to them in the real world, but which we feel VERY sensitive about being crossed. While we were debating how to include them in our elections, they were crossing the boundaries of nations by the millions. Since we are now treating them as equal citizens, this means that billions of our citizens are becoming illegal immigrants, as they damned well didn't fill out the paperwork first since we have yet to teach them anything required to understand they shouldn't have gone where they went.
I could go on, but I'll summarize the reality like this:
Your dog can now legally vote. Your job now is to teach it to understand our political system well enough to do so in an intelligent manner.
And we have to do that for literally everything that is alive within the border of your nation that is not a plant or fungus. Yes, including the insects that only have a lifespan measured in weeks.
Pouncey wrote: Yes, including the insects that only have a lifespan measured in weeks.
Except no, because they'd have to be eighteen for both the US and Canada.
Since we've already gone down the rabbit hole here.
We're considering species with drastically different lifespans from humans to be equal citizens under the law.
That "18 years" thing is being replaced with "adult age for the citizen's species" before any election takes place. Otherwise it would be inherently unfair to disallow an entire species from ever voting because they do not live to the required age ever.
And remember, this scenario requires us to stop designing our laws entirely around humans.
Pouncey wrote: Yes, including the insects that only have a lifespan measured in weeks.
Except no, because they'd have to be eighteen for both the US and Canada.
Since we've already gone down the rabbit hole here.
We're considering species with drastically different lifespans from humans to be equal citizens under the law.
That "18 years" thing is being replaced with "adult age for the citizen's species" before any election takes place. Otherwise it would be inherently unfair to disallow an entire species from ever voting because they do not live to the required age ever.
And remember, this scenario requires us to stop designing our laws entirely around humans.
I don't see why we should change the voting age to accommodate mayflies. Voter disenfranchisement based around half-assed justifications is a proud political tradition!
Pouncey wrote: Animals aren't just things like cats and dogs. Spiders are animals too. So are ants. So are mosquitoes. Literally all insects are animals, in fact.
Not quite sure what kind of rabbit hole this is going down.
Laws are pretty much there to maintain a "civil" society.
A human one.
It is utterly pointless to apply/pretend any human thought processes used in the animal world.
Any animals that are important enough to get citizens upset when things happen to them are assigned as "property" since we do not like when people break or steal our toys.
At some point, creatures low enough on the food chain are treated with callous disregard.
You could choose to be a Buddhist:
"All living things fear being beaten with clubs.
All living things fear being put to death.
Putting oneself in the place of the other,
Let no one kill nor cause another to kill.
Dhammapada 129"
My dad is a veterinarian and I have seen animals in all manner of conditions.
I would say they deserve ethical treatment, they definitely suffer and can think and feel but do not be so foolish in thinking they can be made to think like us and be a "participating citizen".
Ideal outcome is for them to live in the wild but we have messed around with breeding of so many domesticated animals that release them into the wild would be a death sentence.
I would say trying to be a realist, any animal to be given equal status as a human in rights would require a fundamental shift in everything we do and then to figure out some way to make that/those animals aware of those rights which would probably be the hardest part of all, possibly impossible.
This is a lot of thought on a topic I feel does not deserve even this much, but hey: we come here to talk right?
Frazzled wrote: A dark presence surely has entered our thread...
Well, admittedly, humans aren't exactly stupid.
We looked at our bodies, saw they were incapable of flight, but we wanted to fly anyways, so we learned about physics and devised devices that let us fly and/or glide as we see fit.
Eventually we got bored with that idea and decided to see if we could travel to our moon through roughly a light-second of vacuum.
Eventually we got bored with that idea after we did it a bunch of times. Now we're entertaining the idea of sending human volunteers to live on a planet completely barren of life in an environment completely inhospitable to our existence.
All within the past century or so.
Surely leaving the relative paradise we live on to pointlessly go contaminate cold, inhospitable, dead rocks (and at great expense) is evidence of how lacking human intelligence is? Lets learn to manage one planet before we mess up more, guys!
Pouncey wrote: Animals aren't just things like cats and dogs. Spiders are animals too. So are ants. So are mosquitoes. Literally all insects are animals, in fact.
Not quite sure what kind of rabbit hole this is going down.
Laws are pretty much there to maintain a "civil" society.
A human one.
It is utterly pointless to apply/pretend any human thought processes used in the animal world.
Any animals that are important enough to get citizens upset when things happen to them are assigned as "property" since we do not like when people break or steal our toys.
At some point, creatures low enough on the food chain are treated with callous disregard.
You could choose to be a Buddhist:
"All living things fear being beaten with clubs.
All living things fear being put to death.
Putting oneself in the place of the other,
Let no one kill nor cause another to kill.
Dhammapada 129"
My dad is a veterinarian and I have seen animals in all manner of conditions.
I would say they deserve ethical treatment, they definitely suffer and can think and feel but do not be so foolish in thinking they can be made to think like us and be a "participating citizen".
Ideal outcome is for them to live in the wild but we have messed around with breeding of so many domesticated animals that release them into the wild would be a death sentence.
I would say trying to be a realist, any animal to be given equal status as a human in rights would require a fundamental shift in everything we do and then to figure out some way to make that/those animals aware of those rights which would probably be the hardest part of all, possibly impossible.
This is a lot of thought on a topic I feel does not deserve even this much, but hey: we come here to talk right?
That's my point, actually.
We can't treat non-human species as equal citizens. Our laws are for humans only.
Though frankly the voting thing pales in comparison to how you would handle the fact that carnivores are animals who need to eat other animals to live, so you'd need to have a debate on whether you let the carnivores go extinct or accept the fact that you have to let your citizens be killed and eaten to keep carnivores alive on occasion.
I'm not arguing in favor of treating other animals as equal citizens, I'm exploring what would happen if you did treat them that way, to show why it's not a good idea.
Frazzled wrote: A dark presence surely has entered our thread...
Well, admittedly, humans aren't exactly stupid.
We looked at our bodies, saw they were incapable of flight, but we wanted to fly anyways, so we learned about physics and devised devices that let us fly and/or glide as we see fit.
Eventually we got bored with that idea and decided to see if we could travel to our moon through roughly a light-second of vacuum.
Eventually we got bored with that idea after we did it a bunch of times. Now we're entertaining the idea of sending human volunteers to live on a planet completely barren of life in an environment completely inhospitable to our existence.
All within the past century or so.
Surely leaving the relative paradise we live on to pointlessly go contaminate cold, inhospitable, dead rocks (and at great expense) is evidence of how lacking human intelligence is? Lets learn to manage one planet before we mess up more, guys!
Intelligence is just the ability to learn.
Wisdom is something else entirely
Automatically Appended Next Post: When I say that I treat other species as "equals," what I mean is that I don't treat them as either superior or inferior. Just different. And when things are different, it's okay to have different rules for them to account for those differences. Dogs aren't humans, so we shouldn't have the same rules for them that we do for humans. We have to figure out which differences are important enough to be worth inventing different rules for, and species is DEFINITELY a big enough difference to be worth considering. We can also have different rules for different species, so we treat dogs differently than we do maple trees. That's what'll let us accept space aliens as citizens if any ever wish to immigrate to a human society, without also mandating that we accept EVERY species as citizens. And to be totally honest, I absolutely would accept a dog as an equal citizen if any dog ever applied for citizenship and got through the immigration process, and no, I would not accept that dog's owners meeting the requirements for them.
Oh god, I can't believe I missed the most obvious and easy reason why this couple's request was absurd. Someone even mentioned it earlier in the thread. I put so much thought into stuff, and literally the easiest and best way to explain why it's a dumb idea is:
Dogs are not humans.
So would a dog even BENEFIT from being treated like a human child in a divorce case? Probably NOT, because the dog would have just as little clue about what was going on as they do about the fact that the pizza delivery guy he barks at, assuming is an intruder, is literally BRINGING FOOD FOR THE DOG'S HUMAN OWNERS TO EAT.
Dogs are so clueless about human society there's no reason to believe a dog would benefit from this whatsoever.
Dumb request by a dumb couple, and I'm damned glad it took nearly 150 years since Canada's independence from Britain for any Canadian to be dumb enough to try something like this.
Pouncey wrote: That "18 years" thing is being replaced with "adult age for the citizen's species" before any election takes place. Otherwise it would be inherently unfair to disallow an entire species from ever voting because they do not live to the required age ever.
.
Those framing any such law would have to consider that the age of 18 for humans was framed for a specific reason - i.e. that at the age of 18 the human 'adult' could be expected to vote in an informed, responsible manner (they were probably wrong, but still...). A dog/cat at ANY age can't be expected to do so, ever. IOW we give legal rights and access to privileges to people based on their assumed maturity all the time (drinking, driving, voting, legal independence, sexual consent), animals would never cross the threshold for access to many of these things.
Pouncey wrote: That "18 years" thing is being replaced with "adult age for the citizen's species" before any election takes place. Otherwise it would be inherently unfair to disallow an entire species from ever voting because they do not live to the required age ever.
.
Those framing any such law would have to consider that the age of 18 for humans was framed for a specific reason - i.e. that at the age of 18 the human 'adult' could be expected to vote in an informed, responsible manner (they were probably wrong, but still...). A dog/cat at ANY age can't be expected to do so, ever. IOW we give legal rights and access to privileges to people based on their assumed maturity all the time (drinking, driving, voting, legal independence, sexual consent), animals would never cross the threshold for access to many of these things.
Exactly.
That's why we don't make them equal citizens to begin with. If we did, they wouldn't even be able to understand what that meant.
If we ever did start treating them as humans under the law, first we'd have to determine that they were inherently capable of being capable of understanding these things, and at that point, we'd have to redesign our laws to consider them equals, which means redefining all of our age limits to simply be the equivalents for their species.
We're gonna have to do it if we ever encounter space aliens who are as intelligent as humans who want to be citizens in our societies, because there's no reason that space aliens would age and mature at the same rate as humans do. We're gonna have to do it if we ever invent AI that our laws would consider people, because even an advanced AI doesn't become as mature and knowledgeable as an adult human instantly upon their first boot-up, you have to teach it anything you want it to know, and that takes time, no matter how fast your processors go.
If animals were ever considered people under the law, we'd have to accommodate their needs too, not just those of humans.
But the reality, like the judge said, is that animals are not, in fact, the same as humans, and they're so different from humans we cannot reasonably expect to treat them the same way we do humans.
Do I believe that animals are our equals, thus neither superior nor inferior, merely different? Yes. But I also believe that those differences are so massive that it's a case where "separate but equal" is the correct way of doing things, despite the historical connotations of that phrase when it was applied to two varieties of humans that were so similar that the ways they were treated differently were not merited or deserved.
We're gonna have to do it if we ever encounter space aliens who are as intelligent as humans who want to be citizens in our societies, because there's no reason that space aliens would age and mature at the same rate as humans do. We're gonna have to do it if we ever invent AI that our laws would consider people, because even an advanced AI doesn't become as mature and knowledgeable as an adult human instantly upon their first boot-up, you have to teach it anything you want it to know, and that takes time, no matter how fast your processors go.
If animals were ever considered people under the law, we'd have to accommodate their needs too, not just those of humans.
Well...not so much. You mention it yourself "space aliens who are as intelligent as humans who want to be citizens" or "AI that our laws would consider people" - you're talking about beings that are of similar mental capacity to human beings. It's easy to extrapolate laws that apply to humans in that manner. Animals, which are not of similar capacity, won't get that kind of treatment. A puppy is no less or more capable of understanding human law than an old dog - neither is capable of it at all. There's no point in applying law differently to animals based on their physical mental maturity if their mental capacity never reaches a necessary threshold for understanding that law.
We're gonna have to do it if we ever encounter space aliens who are as intelligent as humans who want to be citizens in our societies, because there's no reason that space aliens would age and mature at the same rate as humans do. We're gonna have to do it if we ever invent AI that our laws would consider people, because even an advanced AI doesn't become as mature and knowledgeable as an adult human instantly upon their first boot-up, you have to teach it anything you want it to know, and that takes time, no matter how fast your processors go.
If animals were ever considered people under the law, we'd have to accommodate their needs too, not just those of humans.
Well...not so much. You mention it yourself "space aliens who are as intelligent as humans who want to be citizens" or "AI that our laws would consider people" - you're talking about beings that are of similar mental capacity to human beings. It's easy to extrapolate laws that apply to humans in that manner. Animals, which are not of similar capacity, won't get that kind of treatment. A puppy is no less or more capable of understanding human law than an old dog - neither is capable of it at all. There's no point in applying law differently to animals based on their physical mental maturity if their mental capacity never reaches a necessary threshold for understanding that law.
I'm pretty sure that's what I said in the parts of the post that you cropped out.
I'm pretty sure that's what I said in the parts of the post that you cropped out.
I wasn't sure, it seemed to me you had shifted gears to a more general argument at that point.
Well, really, my opinion this whole time has been that the judge was correct.
I've only been exploring the hypothetical of what would happen if we did treat a dog like a human in the eyes of the law, precisely in order to show why it's a really, REALLY bad idea.
If your opinion is that we shouldn't treat dogs as being the same as humans, I agree. I've agreed this whole time.
Read the words I write my descriptions with. They generally involve the form "If we were to X, then Y would naturally have to result."
If we don't do X, then Y does not result, does it? And just because we can do something, does not mean we must do that thing.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I mean, you ever consider that maybe treating a dog like a human in a divorce proceeding might have more wide-reaching ramifications than just divorce proceedings?
Read the words I write my descriptions with. They generally involve the form "If we were to X, then Y would naturally have to result."
If we don't do X, then Y does not result, does it? And just because we can do something, does not mean we must do that thing.
Actually, I can still argue that even if we don't do X, if we did happen to consider doing X, that we should consider if Y would be logically correct. It's fun!
And yeah, treating a dog as a human in a divorce could have HUGE unintended consequences, which is why judges generally don't tolerate touch stuff like that. That's for lawmakers or the supreme court to hash out.
John Prins wrote: Actually, I can still argue that even if we don't do X, if we did happen to consider doing X, that we should consider if Y would be logically correct. It's fun!
You're actually right. I dunno why I didn't consider the possibility that the judge could have just rules that even though we generally consider dogs to be so different from humans they're not the same, in this case, treating them as human children for this specific purpose is beneficial enough that we can allow it, even though we don't have to allow dogs to have the full range of responsibilities, rights, and privileges that humans do.
We don't even let all humans vote. Human children aren't allowed to vote until they grow up into human adults, and the couple was asking for their presumably adult dog to be treated as a human child. I've even heard people say the exact phrase, "Dogs are like 2-year-olds," and one of the people I've heard say that owned a dog for nearly a decade along with raising three children of his own, so he had enough experience with both to consider it valid.
So probably the reality is that a dog simply wouldn't benefit from being treated as a human child would in this situation, and that's why the judge ruled against it. It wouldn't help the dog to do this, and if it would, there's no reason why doing that would mean we have to do anything else, since dogs are probably so clueless about human societies they don't even know what marriage is. Dogs who respond to specific words humans say don't actually understand the language they're spoken in, they simply associate that word with something they're supposed to do. If you wanted to, you could convince a dog that any word you say infrequently, like, for example, any word in a language you don't speak but are capable of pronouncing, is actually the word that means you're taking them for a walk.
Police dogs are actually trained with words in uncommon languages - for example, I think the standard in the USA is German, since people in the USA don't often speak German around police officers - to prevent the dog from inadvertently reacting to something someone says by a careless slip of the tongue. The only reason that they're trained with the words that are the equivalent translation of the command being ordered is that the exact word doesn't matter at all to the dog, but the human officers simply find it easier to remember the word for a command that's the word humans understand to mean that command.
So a dog being treated like a human child is pointless for the courts to do. The dog doesn't understand a damned thing going on, because the humans around it are using so many words that it doesn't associate with anything, they're just those random noises humans make a lot, even when no one's around. The dog doesn't understand what they mean, but the dog doesn't feel like it has to, because the dog still gets fed, still gets loved, still gets petted, still gets taken for walks, and it understands the noises used for THOSE situations, and that's good enough.
I mean, human languages are complex enough that just being able to speak them means our larynxes had to evolve to be so large that we are the only animals on Earth who cannot both breathe and swallow at the same time. Dogs never die from choking on their food, because they just breathe while eating, so they never, like, choke on their food because they can inhale and swallow simultaneously without any issues.
Human languages are, in all seriousness, the most complex form of communication on Earth. Ever hear a bird song? Imagine each note of that particular species' song is in fact, the equivalent of a word. Count up the number of words their language has. This'll be easy to do, because that number is small enough you can probably hear every word in their language spoken in real-time over a span of less than 10 seconds, and someone probably recorded that at some point. Count up the number of unique words in this post.
Basically, animals aren't physically capable of understanding us, because we'd have to explain ourselves to them for them to understand us, and teaching them our language is IMPOSSIBLE.
And yeah, treating a dog as a human in a divorce could have HUGE unintended consequences, which is why judges generally don't tolerate touch stuff like that. That's for lawmakers or the supreme court to hash out.
I dunno how it works exactly.
My understanding of Canadian law is that a judge makes a ruling on something. That ruling can then be appealed, at which point it goes up the chain to the next layer of courts. Eventually it gets to the Supreme Court of Canada, who make the final and absolute say for all time. And sometimes it never makes it there, because there's no guarantee it'll turn out in your favor, and both sides of a debate are so unwilling to ever get a final answer that might be against them that the police simply refuse to charge people with things that are actually felonies, because even prosecutors don't want to charge anyone with it since the Supreme Court, which is where it WILL (not might, WILL) end up the next time someone's charged with it, might say, "This is not a crime." Defence attorneys for the last person who was charged with it didn't push it higher either, because the Supreme Court could just as easily uphold the law.
Where might Canadian law be THAT uncertain about a felony?
Well, technically in Canada, it's a felony if you copy music from one form of hardware to another. Say, if you rip a CD you buy, to your computer's hard drive. That's actually a felony in Canada. Downloading a song for free from the Internet though? That's fine, the government says it's totally legal in fact, because it's going from one hard drive to another, so you're not changing the type of hardware involved. Uploading music to the Internet? That's a crime that no one argues about being a crime. Basically it's not illegal to BE a pirate, only to SUPPLY pirates. And that all only applies to music. Movies, TV shows, even video games and books have entirely different rules.
My understanding of Canadian law is that a judge makes a ruling on something. That ruling can then be appealed, at which point it goes up the chain to the next layer of courts. Eventually it gets to the Supreme Court of Canada, who make the final and absolute say for all time.
Mostly the Supreme Court deals with issues of laws being Constitutional or not, as that's held as the final say in law. A lot of stuff these days going to the Supreme Court involves the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, an amendment to the Constitution that is often used to strike down provincial/federal laws because regular laws can't trump the Constitution.
The Constitution doesn't mention animals AFAIK, and getting the Constitution changed can only be done unanimously (literally) by both the Federal and Provincial/Territorial levels of government. Because of this, it's unlikely animal rights/welfare law would ever make it to the level of the Supreme Court of Canada; lower levels of the justice system are supposed to deal with that sort of thing.
Interestingly, marriage and divorce laws are largely federal affairs, but marital property laws seem to be provincial - so this situation could have different results in different provinces, but I imagine most judges will follow the precedent set in this one case.
As for legal uncertainly, every country has laws that don't really get enforced much, especially when no physical harm is happening to someone. The Charter of Rights and Freedoms created a situation where a lot of laws might be overruled by it, but getting laws repealed is time consuming and expensive, so it's just easier to not enforce those laws with the understanding that they're just invalid at this point.
I would like to add that I have personally gone through a divorce involving no children, yet 2 dogs that were effectively our children. It was hard. Even though my ex-wife and I split in the most civil of ways (we just realized it wasn't working) I am still upset about splitting up our dogs. But it only seemed fair that we each take 1. BOTH of the dogs grieved for almost a year. They may not have understood what was happening, but it was VERY clear that they knew something was very different.
Dogs, like humans, are incredibly social animals. More so, they have a shared existence in human society for over 10,000 years (waaaaaayyy longer than any other domestic animal, even Cats). Dogs are one of the only animal besides humans that commonly seeks eye contact with humans. Almost all other animals actively try to avoid eye contact with us. Dogs are part of our identity as a species. Period.
Am I trying to say that they deserve the same rights as a human child? Of course not
But dogs do not exist in nature. They are quite different than their wolf ancestors. This is because we, the humans, have made them in our image (through selective breeding). As a species, we share many of the same responsibilities to dogs that parents share to their children. The key differences are that dogs do not grow to be full independent of us like children (hopefully) will. Nor do they become contributing productive members of human society. That is where there rights stop.
We are responsible for dogs. We made them, took them from nature and reshaped them forever. They should be treated with more rights than mere property.
Galef wrote: I would like to add that I have personally gone through a divorce involving no children, yet 2 dogs that were effectively our children. It was hard. Even though my ex-wife and I split in the most civil of ways (we just realized it wasn't working) I am still upset about splitting up our dogs. But it only seemed fair that we each take 1. BOTH of the dogs grieved for almost a year. They may not have understood what was happening, but it was VERY clear that they knew something was very different.
Dogs, like humans, are incredibly social animals. More so, they have a shared existence in human society for over 10,000 years (waaaaaayyy longer than any other domestic animal, even Cats).
Dogs are one of the only animal besides humans that commonly seeks eye contact with humans. Almost all other animals actively try to avoid eye contact with us.
Dogs are part of our identity as a species. Period.
Am I trying to say that they deserve the same rights as a human child? Of course not
But dogs do not exist in nature. They are quite different than their wolf ancestors. This is because we, the humans, have made them in our image (through selective breeding).
As a species, we share many of the same responsibilities to dogs that parents share to their children.
The key differences are that dogs do not grow to be full independent of us like children (hopefully) will. Nor do they become contributing productive members of human society.
That is where there rights stop.
We are responsible for dogs. We made them, took them from nature and reshaped them forever. They should be treated with more rights than mere property.
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My understanding is that dogs chose to work with humans as much as we chose to work with them. It was a mutually-beneficial situation, so two species opted to work together, because if the wolves simply ran away from humans like all other animals, or attacked us on sight, we could never have domesticated them. They would have avoided us, like all the other species we do not domesticate.
We didn't just choose them. They came to us, we didn't turn them away. It was a mutual decision by the two species to work together.
And given how most pet dogs are treated (I hope) by their human owners, it worked out pretty damned well for the dogs too. But they never needed to learn our languages at all to perform their roles, only to learn a few, key human words because they are the only ones we say that are important to them in some way.
You ever wonder why dogs understand what humans pointing at things means? Why they understand us so well? Because when you're effectively in the same pack as humans, understanding things like pointing results in millions of pounds of net gain in raw meat over the duration the two species have been together.
And at the time, human technology was fairly primitive. Hunting with dogs wasn't merely a sport, that were how humans hunted enough meat to keep themselves alive.
And even the modern day, we still have valid uses for dogs. The police and military make use of dogs by training them to alert us when they detect the scent of things humans care about - namely, drugs and explosives.
And you really, really don't have to remind me that dogs miss people when they go away and never came back. My dad died of cancer this past May, and I will spare you the details past that point. My dog, which had lived with us since 2007, probably figured out my dad was gonna die all on his own, and came to terms with it somehow. Dogs don't believe humans are immortal, so they know we die some day too. They probably know they die too, and if they notice how fast they age compared to humans, they know their owners are likely to outlive them.
And the reason I keep mentioning death here, is because you can't actually tell a dog anything, which means you can't inform it of events it didn't see happen. It has no reason to believe that a human who goes away alive, who never comes home because they die somewhere the dog doesn't see it happen, is even dead at all, instead of simply having a valid reason to not come back yet. My brother moved out after we got our dog, and he still shows up to visit sometimes. My dog still remembers him.
My dad never came back though. And I think my dog doesn't miss him, because given that my dog saw my dad's deterioration, absolutely did not assume that kind of thing was a good indicator of health, then one day my dad left, and there was much, much sadness over the next few days... Well, dogs are dumb compared to humans, but they're still relatively smart for animals. I think my dog knows my dad isn't ever coming back, because my dog knows it doesn't see everything happen that happens, and given what it saw happen there, it probably just assumes my dad ended up dead. It doesn't assume that for my brother, because he wasn't obviously sick when he left, and he keeps coming back, so he's obviously not dead and there's no reason to think he is.
They're not that much different from humans in some ways. Humans simply assume people are still alive until we have a reason to believe they're dead. Because we're humans, we speak human languages, which are capable of communicating that fact very easily. We simply attribute a lot of importance to a person's death (not saying it's not deserved, but it is very important for humans, and it is important for dogs, but it wouldn't be for a hive mind insect like ants or bees), so we tend to tell everyone we know at some point. However, until you tell them, they didn't know.
Ever fall out of touch with a friend for many years, then get back in touch with them, you talk for a while, one of you asks the other about a friend or relative, and it turns out that that person died years earlier? You ever notice the bit of surprise in the person's voice who says something like that? Maybe they're not surprised at the other person not knowing someone was dead. Maybe the surprise is simply in realizing they totally forgot to mention that at the start of the conversation.
Because even humans get through the trauma of losing a loved one, to the point we don't even consider it worth mentioning anymore when an old friend gets back in touch and you start catching up. As harsh as it sounds, life does move on, and more recent things are more important.
People can still learn to find happiness in our lives despite the reality that we are all mortal. Dogs can too. Dogs can get used to humans not only going away forever, but even dying right in front of them, and knowing they will never come back. It doesn't stop them from being happy about other things later in their lives.
I don't even remember what my point was. Ending post.
Pouncey wrote: Human languages are, in all seriousness, the most complex form of communication on Earth. Ever hear a bird song? Imagine each note of that particular species' song is in fact, the equivalent of a word. Count up the number of words their language has. This'll be easy to do, because that number is small enough you can probably hear every word in their language spoken in real-time over a span of less than 10 seconds, and someone probably recorded that at some point. Count up the number of unique words in this post.
Maybe not, if you remember we can`t understand whales's singing. But that's another point.
