Are Pets Slaves?

I generally get close to tears begging her to stop licking my head and to let me sleep.

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Refrigerators are not humid environments. [size=10](I think youā€™r fridge is broke)[/size]

If you wrap it properly, bread will keep in the freezer for longer and it will be fresher.

I told my wife that but she doesnā€™t believe me.

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Liquor too has its death phase. If yeast cells whisper, it will be of the terrible fates in stores for them: bread rum, bread rum.

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Oh, well now I donā€™t even believe it. :wink:

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Are farm animals slaves?

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I define slavery as humans forced to serve robots in accordance with my ethics, and define robots as any computing system that can send a text or create a ticket that requires a human to respond. So by my functional definitions the robot overlords have made great progress. On the other hand, farm animals are free.

Only if others suppose them to be property.

I guess Iā€™m still not understanding. In your opinion, do you believe that the difference between slavery and not-slavery for a pet is only in the intent and language of the owner and not in her bevavior with that animal?

I asked before, but not sure if you saw it. Iā€™ll ask a different way instead: Do you treat your dog or cat the same way everyone else here does? That is, do you decide when to walk them, decide on their food choices, decide on their medical care, and decide on their end-of-life decisions?

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I would say that yes, they are.

They provide service and/or labour.
Though pets provide companionship and ā€œloveā€ - so maybe they are slaves too? (Though I know Iā€™m more a slave to them than they to me.) :wink:

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I think with pets, itā€™s a little complicated. You do own them and can transfer that ownership, but theyā€™re almost like children or friends in other ways. Working animals seem to be a little like employees, but theyā€™re paid in non-financial ways. I guess it really depends on how you treat them, because it can be a close relationship or really quite brutal (especially if the work is based on their strength rather than something like a sheepdog). Farm animals that are raised for food do seem uncomfortably like slaves, as you are just keeping them for what they can give you and thereā€™s no sense of what theyā€™re getting in return - although obviously ethical farms will give their animals better conditions.

Neither, really. I think that the main difference is their legal standing. But peopleā€™s language serves as a constant reminder of this. I think itā€™s the same with humans - a slave who is worked is easier to recognize as a slave, but a person who is owned and kept in luxury is still a slave. They may be doted upon, but their agency is denied.

I saw it, I was just delaying my answer so that I didnā€™t swamp the topic with replies.

I donā€™t have any non-human friends here any longer. But I doubt that everyone else here treats their friends the same way. Between them and I, it is a mutual process. I have been told quite a few times that I have an uncanny knack for communicating with non-humans. They love being understood.

There are some things around the house I need to do for them, because I have hands. Not unlike with human children, I intervene a bit to keep them safe from things they donā€™t understand. (No, electrical wires are not vines, you shouldnā€™t eat them!) I observe what they like to eat, where they like to go, and try to help them to enjoy those safely. I pick and choose for veterinarians who they like, and do much of their medical care myself. My rabbits were also able to feed themselves in the yard, eating dandelions and clover. My male used to come to me for his shots every day. My female needed a lot of help in her last year, as she was partially paralyzed. Eventually I had to respect her wishes of going off her food, despite knowing that this would cause her to die within a day or so. My rabbit friends lived for so many years because they were an integral part of the household, and truly loved being there with us.

With larger animals, it can be tricky. Because recognizing your dogā€™s agency, for example, can put you at odds with other humans who donā€™t recognize your dogā€™s agency. This leads back to the quagmire of legality. Why is human law the standard for non-human behavior and culpability? If ownership is so universal, then why do humans choose to not recognize that a dog or a bear can own land? For humans it seems to all come down to mere convenience, while it can mean life or death for other organisms. If I was honest, Iā€™d let them demonstrate their agency to me, rather than seeking to define it for them. If animals can survive on their own without human intervention (and they certainly can!), then they have agency.

Do you not grasp that human law was developed by humans for human needs?

Cats donā€™t pass legislation.

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Because we evolved, formed communities, built shit and organized ourselves. Once the dogs can do that, Iā€™ll sell 'em some land to live on.

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Of course I do, I said as much. Although I think it is more honestly for convenience than need. What I donā€™t grasp is the supposed formal basis for humanā€™s needs being a special case. Also, as I have mentioned elsewhere, there is no evidence that an exclusively human-managed biosphere might be robust enough to even sustain human life. So even if there are a few rational bases for human law running everything (which I tend to doubt), many models of such outcomes end to humanā€™s profound detriment. I think that itā€™s a framing of ā€œneedā€ which is so short sighted as to be destructive, and even self-destructive.

Who can say? If they do, there is no reason to assume that they would have told me!

Thank god. Or, er, dog?

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So, nothing else on Earth has evolved? The only of those that dogs lack is technology, and technology is not a requisite for property. Dogs indeed can be territorial. None of what you say explains the exception of what supposedly makes human territory special. There is also the ethical elephant in the room of when land was demonstrably their territory to begin with. If you donā€™t mind taking it from them, then what is your moral high-ground for complaining if somebody with more technology or better organization takes it from you? Itā€™s the same colonial/genocidal argument that Europe used to impose itself upon other continents.

Also, other animals have enough sense to know that their territory is an agreement only among their own kind. It never equals exclusive use. Thatā€™s why you never see a matrix-landscape of all bears, all ants, or all sharks. Because itā€™s an ecosystem, and trying to establish a monoculture without it is demonstrably fatal, regardless of anybodyā€™s opinions of whether or not this seems ā€œconvenientā€. The matter of humans deciding that they are a superset of their environment rather than a subset is a simple perceptual difference, but it could honestly kill everyone, everywhere. So, whereā€™s my incentive?

Hey Quixote, I think youā€™re concerned about things here that the vast majority of humans for the vast majority of history donā€™t care aboutā€¦

Most people are just worried about surviving and reproducing. The best ecological argument that you can make would and should center on that.

So? They still need to be navigated in oneā€™s dealings with other people. The problems occur when people try to pressure me in how I live, but havenā€™t reasoned through their own contradictions first. So people fail to be persuasive, and then get bent out of shape about it. Then thereā€™s also the issue that the majority of humans still (for now) constitute a minority of the Earthā€™s population.

I am fairly certain that I touched upon human monoculture not being robust enough to survive. So if some consensus decides that it is easier to deny this, is it more prudent to go along with it, or to pursue those strategies which seem survivable? And what if I survive and explain that I cannot allow myself, or my social relationships, to be implicated in genocide? There are no easy answers.