Keeping Animals as Pets
Howard Benjamin Shaeffer, Jr.
Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy
Humboldt State University
1 Harpst St.
Arcata, CA
95521
hbs1@humboldt.edu
(707) 826-5755
2817 words
Abstract: I argue that moral philosophers who have been interested in the keeping of pets have
tended to focus on the issue of whether our pets have rights. This misses the point, since it is the
essence of the human-companion animal relationship that we want to care for the animals as we
would a member of our family. I then raise a problem for pet owners: insofar as having a pet
requires, determining its good, and this, in turn, requires taking the animal’s point of view on the
value of its own life, caring for animals as pets is philosophically problematic.
According to the Humane Society of the United States, there are 74.8 million “owned”
dogs and 90 million “owned” cats in the United States at the time of this writing; 36% of US
households contain at least one cat, and nearly 39% of US households have at least one dog.
Together we spend billions of dollars yearly on the keeping of pets. And yet despite the number
of people who have pets and the vast literature involving the rights and moral status of animals,
very little philosophical attention has been devoted to moral questions about our relationship to
our pets. Given that this is so, it should strike us as surprising that there has not been more
attention devoted to the moral issues surrounding the keeping of pets1.
To the extent that moral philosophers have addressed the human-pet relationship, they
have tended to do so in terms of rights and obligations, asking what, if any, moral obligations we
have to our pets. The best known example is Keith Burgess-Jackson’s “Doing Right by Our
1
I know the term ‘pet’ is objectionable to some who prefer the phrase ‘companion animal’. I am sympathetic with
this view, but I find ‘companion animal’ much too cumbersome, and apologize in advance to any non human
animals that may be offended by the use of this term.
1
Companion Animals”. State briefly, Burgess-Jackson’s position is that a person who takes
custody of an animal such as a dog or a cat – that is, an animal that has been bred to be
dependent on human beings -- knowingly closes off opportunities for other people to satisfy the
needs of the animal, and thereby incurs an obligation to satisfy the needs of the animal that the
animal itself cannot satisfy. For Burgess-Jackson, our pets are analogous to our children in the
sense that in both cases a person creates a situation in which another being is completely
dependent upon that person to satisfy many or most of its needs. In both cases, Burgess-Jackson
thinks, the person incurs an obligation to satisfy all the dependent being’s needs that it cannot
satisfy itself.
Rebecca Hanrahan2 argues, contra Burgess-Jackson, that since animals have no intrinsic
value and therefore have no rights, our relationship to our pets is not properly thought of as
analogous to our relationship to our children, but rather as the relationship between master and
slave. We may, without violating any moral duties, painlessly kill or abandon our pets at any
time and for any reason without violating morality: “Because our pets do not have a right to life,
there is never a time when we cannot prioritize our trivial interests over their fundamental
interests”.3
I think that both Burgess-Jackson and Hanran miss the point. For it is part of the concept
of pethood that the animals we make our pets are animals whom we care for out of love and
affection. What makes a work animal or an animal raised for food different from a pet is
precisely that, in the latter case but not in the former, caring for the animal is motivated not by
self-interest or because the animal is a valuable commodity, but because the person loves the
animal, and caring for it is part of the person’s own good life. One implication of this is, as Tony
2
2
Rebecca Hanrahan, “Dog Duty”, Society and Animals 15 (2007), 379-399.
3
Ibid., p. 394
Milligan observes in a recent paper, that one sees the animal as irreplaceable, in the same way
that persons are irreplaceable. Another implication, which is important for this essay, is that, the
animal is seen to be valuable for its own sake.
This is simply implied by the notion that the
relationship between a human and her pet is one of love. As Irving Singer points out4, to love
something or someone is to invest it with intrinsic value. It is not to recognize the intrinsic value
that the thing already has. For people who have pets, seeing the animal as irreplaceable, wanting
what is best for the animal, and wanting this for the animal’s own sake, is intrinsic to the
relationship. Even if we accept Hanrahan’s assumption that since animals do not have a right to
life it follows that we may kill them in order to satisfy our own trivial interests (note the I am not
endorsing this assumption), people who truly think of an animal as a pet will not be inclined to
make such a tradeoff. Conversely, even if we accept Burgess-Jackson’s claim that we do have
obligations toward animals we adopt is true, it too seems beside the point, since those who have
animals as pets do not need a moral argument to motivate them to care for the animal. It is part
of the very concept of pet-hood that the pet has intrinsic value for its human companion, and that
caring for it is, as I have already said, part of that human being’s own good.
This is not to deny that there are cases in which people adopt pets and fail to love them,
any more than saying that a marriage is a love relationship is to deny that some people do not
love their spouses. It is a presumption of a marriage relationship that the persons involved love
one another; similarly part of the very idea that an animal is one’s pet is the presumption that one
cares for the animal because one loves it. A pet is, by definition, a companion, a member of
one’s family, and many or most people think of them as such, sometimes as their only family. It
is telling that we speak of adopting a pet in the way that we speak of adopting a child. For the
relationship is fundamentally the same in both cases. As Hanrahan points out, many people who
4
3
Irving Singer, “The Nature of Love”
were victims of hurricane Katrina refused to leave their homes unless they could take their pets
with them. Clearly, such persons were not thinking of their pets as something like their slaves
but rather as deeply important beings in their own lives. So it is not their intrinsic moral value is
what matters for how we should treat our pets, since to take an animal as a pet is to bestow on the
animal the kind of intrinsic value people bestow on their children or other loved ones. Whether
my cat has intrinsic value and regardless of whether, in the metaphysical sense, I have
obligations to her, from my point of view she is a creature whom I love, and therefore for whom
I wish to provide the best care possible.
problem is, if having a pet means caring for it for its own sake, and if this, in turn, me
I am not saying that there is no important issue regarding what, ultimately, our moral
obligations to our pets are and what moral status animals have. Many people treat their pets as
mere things to be used and discarded when they become uninteresting or inconvenient, and there
is a real moral question regarding whether we may simply dispose of them as we please
(provided we don’t make them suffer) in these sorts of cases. That question, however, is not the
same as the question of whether the animal’s rights are violated when we abandon them. What
should we say about a person who claims that a particular animal is her pet, and then abandons
the animal as soon as caring for it becomes inconvenient? Regardless of whether the animal’s
rights have been violated, I think we would be inclined to say that this person is morally corrupt,
just as we would say a person is morally corrupt who claims to love another person and then
abandons her. This is so regardless of whether animals have intrinsic rights.
The important moral issue I find regard the human-animal companion relationship
regards how it is possible to invest the animal with intrinsic value in the way I have described.
With regard to human beings, a necessary part of determining the person’s good involves
4
looking at the person’s life from her or his point of view, of finding out what he or she finds
valuable and how the person’s values are arranged. It is important that, in caring for another
person, we do not decide for her what is her good; rather, we try to find out what she thinks her
good involves, and to help her achieve that good. This is not to say that people cannot be wrong
about what is good for them. I may think that smoking tobacco is good for me, but if I also think
that living a long, healthy life is good, then it seems I am wrong about smoking tobacco, since it
conflicts with my other values. On the other hand, consider the example of someone who
devotes her life to being a war correspondent, knowing that the odds of living a long, healthy life
are greatly diminished by having such a profession and yet deciding that the benefits of such an
exciting and important life outweigh those considerations. In that case, it seems difficult to say
that the person has made a wrong decision. When we are wrong about our own good, it seems
that we are wrong because there is an inconsistency in our values, not because there are some
ways of life, and some things in life, that ‘just are’ part of our good. People sacrifice love for
career and vice versa; they sacrifice their lives for their principles and vice versa. Sometimes,
people make decisions that seem even trivial to us. So, for instance, some people make the
conscious decision to forego their health and safety in exchange for excitement and risk. Some
people eat too much, or smoke tobacco, or engage in risky behavior, knowing, but not caring,
that it will likely shorten their life span. So with regard to persons, part of loving them involves
refusing to impose upon them our own notion of what constitutes the good life. It involves,
rather, listening to their own account of what constitutes the good life, and being willing to point
out contradictions and deficiencies but, at the same time, respecting the person’s own decisions
about such matters.
5
People who have pets usually will at some point have to face the issue of whether to
euthanize them. But making this decision in a way that is best for the animal raises some
important and intractable difficulties. With regard to human beings, we generally can ask, and
they can tell us, when their lives are no longer worth living. Even when human beings are
comatose and cannot answer, if we know the person well enough, we can often with a high
degree of certainty infer what the person would wish for in the circumstances (often, they have
even told us in advance). But with regard to our pets, we simply do not know if, from the
animal’s point of view, her life is worth living. A personal story might help illustrate the
difficulty. I once had a very nice cat, Moe, who, near the end of his life, developed intestinal
cancer and began losing weight, until he was transformed from an active, robust cat to a 2 pound,
frail, shadow of himself. Nevertheless, it was not clear that Moe was suffering. He did not
exhibit any outward obvious indications of pain, and on the day I finally did have him put down
he was sitting in the backyard, seemingly enjoying the sunshine. The point is, Moe could not tell
me, and I could not tell by looking, when his life was no longer worth living. It is not even clear
that he had any idea about this, though for all I know, he might have. Now, if the question is,
given that the decision about when to end Moe’s life ought to have been based on what was best
for Moe, and given that the answer to such a question generally must be answered from the point
of view of the being whose life it is, it seems impossible for me to know when the right time was
to end Moe’s life. I could not ask him, and he could not tell me, when it was time. But acting
for his sake seems inescapably to involve looking at the situation from his point of view. This,
however, is something that is simply impossible.
Here is another example. I currently have another very nice cat, Randall, who likes to
eat. He likes to eat so much that his current weight is around 22 lbs., way over what is healthy
6
for a house cat. His veterinarian has advised me that his life span will be shortened if he keeps
eating the way he eats, and that I should put him on a diet. But why exactly should I do this?
Randall’s increased life span is good for me, insofar as I thereby get to enjoy his company for a
longer period of time than otherwise. But, again, insofar as I care for him, the question is not
what I want for him, but what he wants. If Randall were a human person, he might say that he
values eating over longevity, as many human beings clearly do. On the other hand, were he a
human person he might say that he cannot get control of his eating and would like to stop. The
point is, all that I really know is that he wants to eat. Does he care that his life span will be
shortened? Should he care? Again, if the issue is what is best for Randall, and this involves
looking at the situation from Randall’s point of view, it seems that I simply lack the relevant
information to make the right choice. As things stand, I simply let him do what he wants, since
my only good reason for stopping him from eating so much is that it clearly benefits me. I do
not know whether it benefits him, since I don’t know, and cannot know, how much value he
does, (or would, if he could weigh such things) place on a long life with less gustatory
satisfaction. In short, weighing the benefits of dieting is something that Randall cannot do for
himself, and I cannot do for him. If caring for him involves doing what is best for him, and this
involves figuring out what is best for him by his lights, then I do not know what I should do
about his eating.
Similar questions can be raised with regard to ordinary activities animals engage in. My
cats like to go outside during the day, and I have had cats killed by cars in the street. Is it better
to keep them inside so they cannot be killed by cars? But that deprives them of the joy of being
outside in nature, which clearly seems to be something they crave, since they regularly beg to be
outside. Is it worth the risk? That question, again, must be asked from their point of view. The
7
problem is, I don’t know the answer. All I know for certain is that Randall wants outside. Do I
know for certain that he’d rather risk getting hit by a car than be locked inside all day? I do not.
Again, if love involves caring for him for his own sake, and if that involves doing what is best by
his lights, all I can really do is simply indulge him, since I do now know what he really wants, or
whether and how much he has weighed the alternatives.
My point, then, is that if having a pet involves loving a non-human animal, and if that, in
turn, involves caring for it for its own sake, that has to take into account what that non-human
animals’ interests and values are. But I cannot know these simply from their behavior. To put it
another way, I cannot know what is best for Randall.
At best, I can care for him as
representatives of a species. That is, I can put Randall on a diet because being overweight is not
healthy for cats (or anyone else). But it is not clear that I am thereby doing what is best for
Randall.
My conclusion is that, for those of us who have pets, there is a fundamental problem of
caring for them in the way that we aspire to. This problem is more pressing, and more to the
point, then the problem of the metaphysical status of our pets or whether they have moral rights,
because it is a problem that arises within the care relationship. I do not know the answer to the
problem, but it seems to me that it raises an important question about the very possibility of
keeping animals as pets.
8