Dogs Are Not People, But That's Okay

In the last few months, there has been a slew of fascinating new data about the emotional capacities of dogs.  The first comes from scientists� new-found ability to image canine brains whilst they are conscious and alert. We can now be more sure that dogs share many of the same emotions humans do, including love. This new data was summarized in an article in the New York Times, entitled �Dogs are people, too�, a sentiment that has been picked up by animal rights activists, dog lovers and dog trainers.

The second stream of data comes from Alexandra Horowitz and her team of canine behavioral researchers at Barnard.  Horowitz designed an experiment that showed the �guilty look� people see when they come home to find their dog in the middle of a pile of shredded couch cushions, for example, only happens when the dog is being scolded.  It is not correlated with whether the dog actually did anything �wrong�, only with the owner�s reaction to the dog.

Trainers have taken this to show two things.  First, that Horowitz has proven that dogs do not feel guilt at all.  Second, that because dogs cannot link actions to consequences over more than a few seconds and because the �guilty look� isn�t an indicator that the dog know it has done something wrong, we shouldn�t punish dogs when we get home to find a roomful of cushion stuffing.

Furthermore, trainers have taken this to indicate that we shouldn�t punish dogs at all, since it�s not true that they �know what they ought to do�.  Dogs shouldn�t be held responsible for their actions like humans are, even though dogs can behave as if they feel guilt, which is a moral emotion.

The way these two streams of new data about what dogs are have been interpreted has lead to a tension.  On the one hand, there is the desire to show that dogs have so many similar emotions to humans that they ought to be seen as people too. On the other, we want to show that dogs ought not be blamed or punished for their actions like we blame and punish people, because doing so is unjust. 

If dogs are people, but we don�t hold them responsible, then it�s meaningless to claim that dogs are people in the first place.  To say that a dog is a person diminishes what personhood is, and ultimately threatens to undermine both the welfare of dogs and the unique responsibilities of humans.  

What is a person? 

How do we define a person?  The core of my preferred definition is that only a person can be held morally responsible for their actions. Only a person can make promises and be expected to keep them.  Without persons, there would be no good and evil, no right and wrong, just nature.  Being able to be held accountable for failing to live up to moral standards of behavior is what separates persons from the rest of life on Earth, and what gives persons a unique responsibility to do the right thing. 

On this definition, most animals are not persons and not all humans are persons.*  We can use promise-making and accountability to draw a bright line between normal adult humans and everything else.

But wait, doesn�t this collapse into �speciesism�, the unfair privileging of one species above others?  Any assertion that persons and non-persons belong in different categories - that they are different in kind as well as in degree - is now confidently waved away as a simple error in reasoning.

My definition of a person does not amount to speciesism for two reasons.  First, because it is an irrelevance that many people claim only humans can be persons - persons could be aliens, angels or apes and still have this unique place in the world.  Second, because there is a difference between being expected to act a certain way, and being entitled to a certain kind of treatment.  We don't have to claim that only persons deserve to be treated fairly and without cruelty, but we can claim that only actions that persons do ought to be appraised as good or evil, fair or cruel.  

To say that persons are unique is not fundamentally unfair.  Persons are expected to act morally, and they are also entitled to be treated well by other persons.  Non-persons are not expected to be able to make promises, uphold the rights of others or do their duty, but they are still entitled to good treatment because of other features they have.  

Dogs aren�t people because dogs can�t make promises or be held morally responsible for their actions.   This doesn�t mean that dogs aren�t entitled to be treated well; far from it.  Most dogs deserve better than their lot in life.  To say that they dogs are people threatens to have the opposite effect to the one intended by dog trainers.  Instead of increasing understanding and empathy for dogs, we are in danger of forcing them into a human scheme of values.

An insidious speciesism 

When I adopted my first dog as a child, I spent the journey home in the car telling her all the things I promised to do for her.  I promised to feed her, walk her, be her friend, and make her happy.  I didn�t expect her to promise anything in return; how could she?  Dogs don�t choose who rescues or buys them, and they don�t have a say in the rules of their new home.   Dogs make no promises about their own behavior - they don�t promise not to guard the food bowl, or growl at the baby, or come with you everywhere without fuss.  Seeing dogs as people is an insidious harm because it threatens to see dogs as parties to a covenant, and therefore subject to blame and the loss of entitlements if they break that covenant.  

Seeing dogs as people also gives them little room for those behaviors that we can�t fit into the human-like rhetoric of victimhood, past abuse, or mental illness - the kinds of aggression that don�t come from fear, the prey drive, in short, the �animality� of the dog.  When a dog deviates from the human-like mould we�ve force him into, when he chases and kills the family cat, does he deserve less good treatment?  Is he a �bad dog� because he no longer appears to be the simple little person, full of love, that the �dogs are people too� message would characterise him as?  This is closer to dangerous speciesism than the claim that there is something unique about humans that gives us special responsibilities to other creatures.

We humans have a responsibility not to see animals as worth bothering with only to the extent that they provide us with good feelings or resemble the parts of ourselves we like. Animals are an Other that we have to learn to relate to on their terms as well as on ours.  The way a dog, pig, rabbit, or snail perceives and processes the world is radically different from our own worldview, and we should never lose sight of this difference in our dealings with them.  We have a duty to treat living things well because we as persons have the capacity to be good that is unrivalled anywhere else in nature, not because they are people.  

*Great apes and cetaceans are candidates for personhood; although their lack of language makes it difficult to know whether they can keep promises, their cognitive abilities are such that there is an argument to extend personhood to them.