Meow mix meow mix please deliver
An abstract I am thinking about submitting for the kitty book:
For the most part, people extend unusual treatment to animals that were domesticated as pets, even when they have no personal relationship to those animals. For example, there are an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 animal shelters in the United States, and rescue organizations of all kinds that provide foster homes and veterinary care. In this essay I consider the possibility that humans have special obligations to domesticated animals. In particular, I will evaluate two potential sources of these obligations. Either 1) They simply represent a special case of a more general set of obligations to all animals, and are derivable from these obligations, or 2) They are unique, representing some special interspecies relationship engendered by the process of domestication. Though I do not ultimately decide in favor of one or the other of these possibilities, I assess their relative strengths and weaknesses, as well as their moral implications.
Man, this is just a ridiculous thing to be writing. Feedback? (Bearing in mind that it is hellaf rough, having been written over the span of a few minutes, as may have been apparent from my steadfast refusal to defend any substantive claims or anything)
For the most part, people extend unusual treatment to animals that were domesticated as pets, even when they have no personal relationship to those animals. For example, there are an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 animal shelters in the United States, and rescue organizations of all kinds that provide foster homes and veterinary care. In this essay I consider the possibility that humans have special obligations to domesticated animals. In particular, I will evaluate two potential sources of these obligations. Either 1) They simply represent a special case of a more general set of obligations to all animals, and are derivable from these obligations, or 2) They are unique, representing some special interspecies relationship engendered by the process of domestication. Though I do not ultimately decide in favor of one or the other of these possibilities, I assess their relative strengths and weaknesses, as well as their moral implications.
Man, this is just a ridiculous thing to be writing. Feedback? (Bearing in mind that it is hellaf rough, having been written over the span of a few minutes, as may have been apparent from my steadfast refusal to defend any substantive claims or anything)
posted by Evan at 12:36 AM
5 Comments:
also uh I'm not presupposing the existence of such obligations, as might seem to be the case. everything I say in this paper is very hypothetical.
I think it sounds like fun!
Also, why not take more substantive stands on things?
I agree with Matt. In fact, I think you should defend the second option. Further, I think you should defend it even in the *absence* of general obligations to non-domesticated animals. The really interesting thought here is the the process of domestication somehow creates obligations. I could be convinced of this, and I think I'd learn something worth learning if I were...
I probably will ultimately eventually arrive at something like a conclusion, or at least some reason to prefer one of the possibilities, but I won't know which one until I've written a lot more of the paper. Submitting abstracts is weird like that.
My main reservation about the second option is that I have no idea how these obligations work or what their scope is. Is it a species-to-species thing? (Individual-to-individual? Some permutation of these?) If so, does it follow from some fact about our current relationship to these animals, or is it an historical thing? The latter possibility seems implausible, as I'm inclined to think that we could have these same obligations to domesticated animals that just flew over from Mars or what have you. The former is a live possibility, but irritates my cosmopolitan sensibilities.
I kind of like to think that any animal, say, a wildcat born with a handicap, that was helpless in the way that most housecats are would be subject to similar sorts of protections, but I don't know that this is especially plausible either.
Actually, now that I think about it, I bet I could get some kind of traction by talking about humans substituting certain social roles and standards that would otherwise have been met by the cat's community in the wild. Yeah, I like this.
what about domesticated worms? (ie, cuteness factor? tradition of domestication? purpose of domestication? Farm animals vs companion animals... etc.)
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