Some nonhuman animals have demonstrated impressive cognitive abilities in experimental settings, such as recognizing their bodies in mirrors and recalling past experiences. Some birds, for example, display sensitivity to details about food they have cached, such as its perishability and how long ago it was stored.
Still, scientists do not possess strong evidence that animals have critical thinking abilities or a concept of self, the key requirements for genuine education. Unlike conditioning and instruction, education aims to enable a learner to explain the world, to evaluate and debate rationales for decisions. It also prepares people to ask — and to try to answer — ethical questions like, “How should I live” and “Was that action justified?”
A cat or dog cannot pose these questions. Much of the time, human beings do not concern themselves with these questions, either — but they can. In fact, caretakers pay great attention to these matters during child-rearing, as when they ask children, “How would you like it if someone did that to you?” or, “Do you really think it’s OK to act that way?”
Assuming that animals do not reflect and criticize, and therefore are not capable of education, I would say that they have no moral obligations. It is fair to say a pet has transgressed, since animals such as dogs and cats can come to understand how to act better. But morally speaking, an animal cannot commit wrongdoing, for it lacks a conscience: It may understand some of its behavior, but not its own mind.
In my view, addressing an animal and acting with an understanding of how it interprets events is central to the ethical training of pets. But if someone treats an animal as though it were responsible for justifying itself to us, as though it could offer excuses and apologies, they anthropomorphize the animal and ask too much of it. Pet owners often do this in a mock way, saying things like, “Now you know you shouldn’t have done that” — the same phrases they might use with a child.
Unlike a child, however, the animal’s transgression is not a failure to fulfill a moral obligation. In human relationships we aspire to relations of mutual justification, where reasons are exchanged and excuses and apologies evaluated. But that’s not the nature of our relationships with our pets — however tempted we may be to think otherwise.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. You can find the original article here.
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