by People talk to their pets every day: praise when they’re good, reassurance when they’re confused and affection when they’re cuddling. We also talk to animals when they misbehave. “Why did you do that?” one might ask his dog. Or we could scold the cat – “Don’t touch that!” – as we move a family heirloom across the room.
But is it ever appropriate to punish or punish an animal?
When people talk about “punishment,” this means more than loss of privileges. The term suggests that someone is being asked to learn a lesson after breaking a rule they understand. But an animal’s understanding is different from a human’s, which raises questions about what lessons they can learn and what, if any, are ethical for animals.
These issues relate to what researchers know about different animal cognition. But they also go beyond this by raising questions about what kinds of animals have moral standing and how people who interact with animals should train them.
As an ethical theorist, I have explored these and related questions, including some of my colleagues in psychology and anthropology. I would argue that it is important to distinguish between three types of learning: conditioning, teaching and education.
Atmosphere
One type of learning, called “classical conditioning,” was popularized by psychologist Ivan Pavlov just after the turn of the 20th century. By repeatedly ringing a bell while presenting food, Pavlov induced dogs to salivate at the ringing of the bell alone. That learning only comes from combining two types of stimuli: sound and snacks, in this case.
When scientists talk about punishment, they usually mean “operant conditioning,” popularized shortly thereafter by psychologists Edward Thorndike and BF Skinner. In operant conditioning, positive or pleasant stimuli are used to reinforce desired behavior, while negative or painful stimuli are used to discourage unwanted behavior. We could give a dog a courtesy, for example, reward him for following a sit command.
The type of learning that operant conditioning aims to achieve lacks a crucial element of human punishment: responsibility. When people do punish, it is not only to discourage undesirable behavior. They are trying to drive home that someone has transgressed – that the person’s behavior deserves punishment.
But can non-human animals transgress? Do they ever deserve a reprimand? I would argue that they are – but with key differences from human injustice.
Teaching
Training for many animals, such as horses and dogs, goes beyond conditioning. It involves a more sophisticated form of learning: teaching.
One important way in which tutoring differs from conditioning is that a tutor addresses their trainee. Pet owners and animal trainers talk to cats and dogs, and even though these animals have no knowledge of grammar, they can understand what many human words refer to. Keepers also often listen to the voices of their animals to try to understand their meaning.
To be sure, people condition cats and dogs – think of spraying a cat with water when it nibbles on a houseplant. The cat’s goal is to associate unlimited snacks with an unpleasant experience, thus leaving the plant alone.
But training pets can go beyond changing their behavior. It can aim to improve an animal’s ability to reason about what to do: a dog trainer teaches a dog how to do an exercise course, for example, or how to get through a new pet door. Teaching is about understanding, but learning is not based on conditioning alone.
An animal’s ability to learn arises from the nature of its mental life. Scientists don’t know exactly whether animal cognition involves understanding, real problem solving and the ability to reason or infer.
But research on perception—how humans and other animals transform sensory information into mental representations of physical objects—has helped philosophers and psychologists distinguish between thoughts and more basic mental abilities like vision and hearing.
Some non-human animals – including dolphins, apes and elephants – think, as philosopher Gary Varner argued in his 2012 book “Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition”, highly unlikely. My research suggests that the distinction between thinking and non-thinking animals runs well with the distinction between animals that can be directed and those that can, at most, be conditioned.
This difference is crucial in how different pets should be treated. An owner should be concerned about his pet frog, of course, and take care of his needs. But they don’t need to identify the frog in the same way they should identify a dog: by facing it, listening to it and comforting it.
While the owner may scold the dog to hold it accountable for its actions, it must also be accountable to the animal, including by considering how the pet interpreted events.
Education
Some non-human animals have demonstrated remarkable cognitive abilities in experimental settings, such as recognizing their bodies in mirrors and recalling past experiences. Some birds, for example, show sensitivity to details about food they have deposited, such as its abandonment and how long ago it was stored.
Still, scientists do not have strong evidence that animals have the capacity for critical thinking or self-concept, the main requirements for true education. Unlike conditioning and teaching, education aims to enable the learner to explain the world, evaluate and discuss the reasons behind decisions. It also prepares people to ask – and try to answer – ethical questions, such as, “How should I live” and “Was that action justified?”
A cat or a dog cannot ask these questions. Much of the time, the person doesn’t relate to these questions either – but they can. Indeed, caregivers pay a lot of attention to these matters when raising children, such as when they ask children, “How would you like it if someone did that to you” or “Do you really think that is it okay to act like that?”
Assuming that animals do not think and judge, and therefore are not capable of education, I would say that they have no moral obligations. It is fair to say that pets have made a breakthrough, because animals like dogs and cats can understand how to act better. But from a moral point of view, an animal cannot do injustice, because it has a conscience: it might understand some of its behavior, but it does not understand its own mind.
In my opinion, it is central to the ethical training of pets to face an animal and act with an understanding of how it interprets events. But if one treats an animal as if it were responsible for protecting itself for us, because it could give excuses and excuses, they anthropomorphize the animal and ask too much of it. Pet owners often do this in a fake way, saying things like, “Now you know you shouldn’t do that” – the same phrases they might use with a child.
Unlike a child, however, the animal’s violation is not a failure of a moral obligation. In human relationships we want to achieve a relationship of mutual justification, where reasons are exchanged and excuses and excuses are considered. But that is not the nature of our relationship with our pets – no matter how tempted we may think otherwise.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a non-profit, independent news organization that brings you facts and analysis to help you make sense of our complex world.
It was written by: Jon Garthoff, University of Tennessee.
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Jon Garthoff does not work for any company or organization that would benefit from this article, does not consult with, shares in a company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has not disclosed any material relationships beyond his appointment academic.
