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I live with two cats, and try pretty hard to keep them happy. However (even though I don't feel I'm a terrible person... ;) ) I don't think that the two cats I
by randallsquared 12y ago
I live with two cats, and try pretty hard to keep them happy. However (even though I don't feel I'm a terrible person... ;) ) I don't think that the two cats I live with are people. I think you can make a distinction between "cats have emotions" and "cats are people who have emotions", and I think that the latter is what people must mean by "cats don't have emotions".
- Sirenos 12y agoI don't quite get what you are implying here. "cats are people" is a patently bogus claim whereas their possession of emotion is hardly worth debating.
- randallsquared 12y ago> "cats are people" is a patently bogus claim There's a pervasive idea or feeling in a lot of people, I think, that animals are not just machinery, but actually very limited people, akin to mentally disabled humans, and should be treated as such (animal rights protesters, at least some vegetarians, etc). I don't think that this is patently bogus, but I do think it's not very likely. I think when people start talking about animals feeling pain and having emotions, they don't mean that those animals have the sensory and neural hardware which produces and consumes pain signals and emotions (which is "hardly worth debating"), but that there is someone experiencing that pain or those emotions. If that's not what they mean, then the mere fact of pain or emotions wouldn't carry any impact higher than rerunning a horror film.