The central thing is that they [animals] don't know english to tell us about their moral agency. So we don't think of them as fellow citizens. That's an arbitrary standard, but it's what we use.
--
Not at all "arbitrary." Throughout human history there has been a helluva problem with the treatment of human beings as the property of someone else, as "less than human," put under the command of some aristocracy or priesthood or monarchy or bureaucracy because they're not
good enough to think and act for themselves. Chattel slavery, serfdom, peonage, corvee labor, "bride price" and "cookstove accidents" resulting in unsatisfactory wives getting burned to death,
castrati and other people involuntarily mutilated, human victims of religious sacrifice (which is how the gladiatorial combats of ancient Rome got started, remember), "life unworthy of living."
Do
not bring up the subject of America's War of Northern Aggression as if it had anything but a mythological connection to slavery. Considering that our legends hold that the first shots of that conflict were fired upon a
customs post in Charleston Harbor, its more appropriate to call it "The War to Enforce the Morrill Tariff."
A lot of hard thought and dickering went into the development of the concept of moral agency as the touchstone of what is and is not a human being. Americans not utterly crippled by having been run through the mulching machine that politicians and bureaucrats have made of the country's educational systems tend to have an adequate appreciation of what the philosophical Enlightenment entailed, and how the political product of that Enlightenment is our own United States of America, centered upon the concept of government as a service agency of defined responsibilities and powers, held "down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."
People who call "arbitrary" the distinction between non-sapient animals and human beings are not only quite contemptibly stupid, but they're
dangerously stupid.
It's not that there's much risk in elevating Fluffy-Wuffy to the status accorded a human child when it's not a matter of push come to shove. It's an indulgence that available resources make it possible to enjoy. Sometimes.
But when faced with a situation in which your favorite pet is in the middle of the swimming pool along with a random wandering four-year-old child you've never seen before, your first priority had better be to get that kid out and safe and undergoing whatever resuscitation might be required. To hell with Fluffy-Wuffy.
Is that an "arbitrary" discrimination? Bullpuckey.
Your esthetic judgement is open to being judged by my esthetic judgement. I judge your morality according to my morality. And vice versa.
My original point was that the people who try to make sure that nothing bad every happens to any cat are being obviously silly, and the same applies to people who try to keep anything bad happening to US citizens -- for the same reasons.
I personally try to keep bad things from happening to my friends. I choose to think of my pets as friends, and it's fine for me to want good things (as I see things as good) for my pets. You choose to think of your pets as possessions that have no rights and whose lives have no meaning except as they please you. That's your privilege. I would not give you a kitten, just as you would not give me your friend's daughter.
I repeat: "Bullpuckey." It is emphatically
not an "esthetic judgement." It is a
moral judgment.
I am as prone to emotional investment in household pets as I suppose any other average American without experience in animal husbandry might be (the farm work I did in my youth dealt entirely with garden truck, orchards, and viniculture; we didn't even keep chickens). Animal labs in college and med school were - literally - nightmares for me.
But I wouldn't want a kitten from you or anyone else. I've never sought pets. That's always been the decision of dependents in my household, even though I'm the one who inevitably winds up responsible for feeding them, cleaning up after them, doctoring them when they fall ill, and burying them when they die.
Behavioral biology - "animal psychology" - having been an interest of mine since adolescence, I've taken pains to learn how to provide any animal under my stewardship with the sorts of social cues to which their species respond with optimum levels of comfort and confidence, and thus far I've found that when rejected or neglected by their nominal owners, the pets in my household always seem to seek me out for emotional and physical succor.
Your random kitten would be a helluva lot better off with me as its caretaker than you'd like to think. I don't mistake cats for human beings, but adapt my comportment to suit their instinctual interactive behavior sets. They sure as hell have only the most limited ability to reciprocate, and I have no unreasonable expectations that they could develop such.
They're not people. Within their capacities, however, they can live in contentment and show affection. To impose upon them suffering or other hardship I can abate is something I mark as personally dishonorable.
Now,
that's a matter of aesthetic judgment.
--