toldailytopic: Is lying to an animal immoral?

Tambora

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toldailytopic: Is lying to an animal immoral?



I'll ask the dog.
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He just wagged his tail.
 

Totton Linnet

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If it is, then this cowpoke is in trouble. I would never lie to a horse, but I have to my own dogs. I tell them they can have a treat if they come in from outside. On occasion, I do not give them said treat.

That is probably bad, but not immoral.

I love our pets.

:eek:

The dogs think it is downright dastardly, dishonest and deceitful.

No wonder it is so hard to win a dog's trust.
 

sky.

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How does an animal know what a lie is?

"Hey dog you can stay up all night" puts dog to bed. Does the dog really know what happened?

"Hey cat I'm going to pet you 50 strokes" owner stops at 30.

"Hey hamster I'm going to buy you a new toy" owner doesn't.
 

vegascowboy

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How does an animal know what a lie is?

"Hey dog you can stay up all night" puts dog to bed. Does the dog really know what happened?

"Hey cat I'm going to pet you 50 strokes" owner stops at 30.

"Hey hamster I'm going to buy you a new toy" owner doesn't.

You cross the line with the hamster comment.

THEY are all-knowing! :IA:
 

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............ ..............

Yep! I say this about that animal husband of mine all the time!
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
To lie is to express a falsehood with the intention of deceiving (or something like that). In order to deceive someone, you pass off an untruth for truth. But in order to conceive of something is true, you must have an intellect, the very formal object of which is truth.

Animals aren't rational beings. They don't have intellects. They can't be deceived in the strictest sense.

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.
 

The Barbarian

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:think: One has to be able to reason to understand the concept of lying, something that the animal kingdom altogether lacks. There is a qualitative difference between humans and animals, not just quantitative. They are made in the image of God, enabling them to understand concepts such as lying.


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.
 

Traditio

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Sure they are, sure they do, and sure they can.

"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.

Obviously you can too. Be deceived, I mean. In fact, you seem to do it to yourself all the time.

Are you sore with me for some reason? Have I offended you in some way?
 

aCultureWarrior

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:think: Unusual Question. One has to be able to reason to understand the concept of lying, something that the animal kingdom altogether lacks. There is a qualitative difference between humans and animals, not just quantitative. They are made in the image of God, enabling them to understand concepts such as lying. An animal, even a dolphin is not going to understand that you told it a lie. Animals live for procreation and eating. Smarter ones enjoy play. They are not emotionally impacted by moral concepts such as lying. Banjo the dog only knows you didn't put out his doggie dish. He doesn't know you promised to do it and didn't. Lying to an animal-loopy, but not immoral.

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?).
 

vegascowboy

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How exactly does one 'lie' to an animal?

:confused:

Example. Telling a dog it is cute when it looks like THIS:

elwoodAP_450x363.jpg
 

zoo22

Well-known member
How exactly does one 'lie' to an animal?

:confused:

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.
 
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