toldailytopic: Is lying to an animal immoral?
- Thread starter Nathon Detroit
- Start date
Huckleberry
New member
Like any lie, depends on the motive.
I would agree.
A lie can be used to hurt or protect.
The dogs think it is downright dastardly, dishonest and deceitful.
No wonder it is so hard to win a dog's trust.
The dogs think it is downright dastardly, dishonest and deceitful.
No wonder it is so hard to win a dog's trust.
Well, they ARE stubborn. I have to get them to come in for the night SOMEHOW!
IMJerusha
New member
Well, they ARE stubborn. I have to get them to come in for the night SOMEHOW!
Yep! I say this about that animal husband of mine all the time!
Lon
Well-known member
It can be. Scriptures tell us to care for our animals. If lying to one causes it stress or grief. For the most part, it is more a sin against our own nature if we tease an animal or otherwise harm it. One reason oath-breaking is treated so severely in the OT is because of what it does to the one making the oath. I think similarly at least, breaking a promise to an animal is more about an internal promise for us. On the surface though? If you said 'just a minute' and forgot? Not gonna be any kind of issue. If you do it all the time, you are going to frustrate the animal and it will act out one way or another (like missing play time with a cat or feeding time for a dog).
My arrow frogs don't seem to care, so I don't even really talk to them............ ..............
:doh: :doh: :doh: :doh:
My arrow frogs don't seem to care, so I don't even really talk to them............ ..............
Oh! You mean those kind of animals. Boy did I miss the whole point of this thread!
:doh: :doh: :doh: :doh:
zoo22
Well-known member
Sure they are, sure they do, and sure they can.
Obviously you can too. Be deceived, I mean. In fact, you seem to do it to yourself all the time.
Apes are quite capable of inferring mental states in others, and taking advantage of them. Apes having been trained to use sign language frequently lie when they think they might be in trouble.
Carl Sagan recounts the chimp, who when asked who urinated on the lab floor, blamed a human researcher.
And Koko, a gorilla capable of signing, once told a handler that the cat pulled a sink off the wall.
you mean like telling a tiger you're going to push it out of an airplane to see if human morals apply to it and then not doing it?
"Rational animal" is the definition of a human being. If you claim that animals are rational, have intellects, and can be deceived, you're basically saying that they're human beings. But maybe "rational" and "intellect" is ambiguous.
It's come to my attention that, apparently, rational may mean "problem solving" in modern terms. Certainly I'll grant that animals have a problem solving capacity, and St. Thomas calls this "the estimative power," which is called "particular reason" in human beings, the power according to which we perceive particulars as particulars, and also as objects of appetition, avoidance or neither.
Thus, if a dog jumps onto a person's lap, he perceives the person's lap as being, for example, "sittable," desirable for this reason, and seeks out the lap as an object of appetition.
But "rational" or "intellect" in the sense that I mean it (and the two terms, I think, are not entirely identical) refer to the knowing faculty. It's that according to which we know the truth. The intellect grasps:
1. What things are
2. The "to be" of things that are
So the formal object of the intellect is being. When the intellect is speculative, it conceives of being as true. When the intellect is practical, it conceives of being as good.
When the intellect conceives of essences, it conceives the universal: "caninity as such," "horseness as such," "humanity as such." The universal is immaterial and only can be present in an immaterial intellect. As St. Thomas Aquinas argues, the intellect has a potentially infinite range of knowing; thus, the intellect can't be the act of a corporeal body, since this would limit the range of the intellect's act.
Thus, we know that the intellectual soul is separable from the body (it continues both in its existence and its operation (it's act of knowing) even after the death of the body).
None of these things are true of brute animals. A dog doesn't sit around contemplating "horseness as such," nor does a dog have an immortal intellectual soul.
Are you sore with me for some reason? Have I offended you in some way?
lovemeorhateme
Well-known member
How exactly does one 'lie' to an animal?
Well said Inzl.
Since animals don't understand words, only the tone of voice that those words are used in, you would only be lying to yourself if you made an animal a promise.
My dad was a dog trainer, he'd shout out commands in Spanish and get the same results as when he did in English. (Maybe the dogs were bilingual?).
How exactly does one 'lie' to an animal?
Example. Telling a dog it is cute when it looks like THIS:
glorydaz
Well-known member
Example. Telling a dog it is cute when it looks like THIS:
Whoa....I really don't think I could bring myself to tell that big a whopper. :dead:
zoo22
Well-known member
How exactly does one 'lie' to an animal?
You deceive them. Make them understand something that isn't true. Animals can understand things we tell them, and animals put their trust in us.
I don't think it's immoral to lie to an animal unless the end result is immoral... Like, you can shake the leash to tell the dog you're going for a walk when you're actually going to the vet, but that's fine; there's not really much way to explain to them it's in their best interest. We can only communicate with them to a point. But if you're tricking them into like, going to the dogfights, that's getting immoral. If the intent of the deceit is to use an animal's trust in you as their caretaker to hurt them unnecessarily, I think that starts getting immoral.