Should abusing animals be illegal?

[hmkpoker]

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It all comes down to one's personal feeling of the society one wants to be part of. I would not like to live in a society where, for example, where it was ok to to nail a cat to a fence and leave it to die (ok maybe cats but definitly not dogs!). And so one goes down the line until some cruelty is tolerable, eg in vermin control. Somewhere you make a choice as to what is acceptable to you. No absolute measure, just what you feel is OK. There are no absolute rigts, only what a society choses to bestow.

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Well said, I'm glad you pointed this out so I don't have to ^_^ A line must be drawn somewhere; we may be averse to harming cute puppies and kitties, but what about mice? Skunks? Cockroaches? Amoebae? On the other extreme, we know from a look at history that human beings are capable of including even other people in that no-rights line. Consider Nazi Germany, where the citizens openly supported genocide.

I too would not want to live in a society where people nail dogs to the fence...mostly because that's indicative of a very sick race of PEOPLE there. I hate cats too, but I could never derive pleasure from torturing them. If I did, I imagine I'd also have a slew of other problems that would make me a danger to society and other people. (Perhaps what I'm saying is, regulating kitty torture isn't treating the disease, it's treating the symptoms)

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So the reason to give them rights is so you feel comfortable living in your particular society.

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Well, if the problem actually is there, then yes, I'd say that's a pretty good reason.

Excellent post [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[fluff]

I don't think I can formulate a consistent argument for this.

On one hand I do appreciate that the animals suffer and don't want them to needlessly do so, on the other hand, I enjoy eating their corpses...so....

[Willy Gee]

. . . you are selfish.

[Willy Gee]

"That's a pretty exceptionally rare extreme, and anyone sadistic enough to want to engage in such a barbaric activity should probably be getting some serious therapy. I pity such a person."

I'm curious, do you only pity the person, or do you have any concerns about the animal?

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Well said, I'm glad you pointed this out so I don't have to ^_^ A line must be drawn somewhere; we may be averse to harming cute puppies and kitties, but what about mice? Skunks? Cockroaches? Amoebae?

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I think a rational criteria would be how sentient a certain animal is. The more evolved an animal, the higher intelligence they have, the more sentient they are. Dolphins, apes, and other higher-order mammals would be more protected under law than flies, earthworms, and amoebas.

[lastchance]

If it serves no use and is for your own personal entertainment, torturing animals can be a sign of further things down the road.

So, yeah, if someone ties up a squirrel and pours some acid on it, I definitely think there should be a decent punishment (juvenile detention/community service) for it, depending on the animal and level of cruelty.

There's definitely a difference between torture and actual use of an animal.

We treat the symptoms of society all the time. Some behavior is simply unhealthy. Torture of animals is one of them.

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We treat the symptoms of society all the time. Some behavior is simply unhealthy. Torture of animals is one of them.

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I disagree with this reasoning (shared by hmkpoker) for having animal cruelty being a crime. Yes, we treat people that are mentally ill. But, not by fining them and/or having them go to jail. We send them to a psychiatric hospital.

Another symptom of mental illness would be someone that abuses themselves. But, we don't fine them or throw them in jail for doing that.

Torturing animals is a crime, not because it is a symptom that the person is mentally ill, but because we empathize with the pain and suffering of other sentient animals. Nobody will pay a fine or go to jail for cutting the wings off of flies to see the fly squirm, but they will for cutting the legs off of a cat for the same reason.

[Willy Gee]

"There's definitely a difference between torture and actual use of an animal."

I'm not sure that this distinction would mean much to the calf who spent most of its short life stuffed in an undersized box until such time that its throat was slit so it could "used" to make veal.

In my mind, the fundamental question is whether animals have intrinsic worth or an independent right to be free from pain, or whether their entire value is dependent on how humans "use" them. If the answer is the latter, then what could be wrong with torturing animals for entertainment, other than the fact that the torture might make some people uncomfortable?

If the answer is the former, society has a lot of re-thinking to do.

[hmkpoker]

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Well said, I'm glad you pointed this out so I don't have to ^_^ A line must be drawn somewhere; we may be averse to harming cute puppies and kitties, but what about mice? Skunks? Cockroaches? Amoebae?

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I think a rational criteria would be how sentient a certain animal is. The more evolved an animal, the higher intelligence they have, the more sentient they are. Dolphins, apes, and other higher-order mammals would be more protected under law than flies, earthworms, and amoebas.

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I agree, but the distinction is still arbitrary. A line has to be drawn somewhere.

The possibility of artificial intelligence would bring up a few interesting issues ^_^

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I agree, but the distinction is still arbitrary. A line has to be drawn somewhere.

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What distinction is arbitrary? The distinction of which animals are more sentient? I don't think so. Regardless, the point is that some animals are able to feel more pain, and suffer more than others. We empathize with those animals, and make it illegal to unnecessarily cause them harm.