Monday 25 April 2011

Anthropomorphism


I was amused by a comment on Facebook yesterday.

A friend had posted a critique of his vet, whose incompetence he was castigating, as it had led to the death of his dog.

One of his friends said: “It's just not good enough; they just don't seem to give a damn. If that happened to a human there would be hell to pay - dogs are people too.”

No they’re not – they’re dogs, which is why we call them dogs. However, I do understand the sentiment, but it is an amusing turn of phrase.


5 comments:

Paula RC said...

Sorry can you run that by me again. Dogs are people too? Well if that is the case then could they start paying tax like the rest of us. And they can start using the toilet too or cleaning up after themselves. And while we are at it if dogs are people, then let's start treating cats the same and they can clean off using my garden as their own personal toilet or I'll start charging them or their owners!

Chairman Bill said...

Jamara: I believe they're classed as Non-Doms, and hence don't pay take here.

Lee said...

Dogs is dogs. Why lower them to the status of people?

Anonymous said...

The question of whether animals and machines can be people is taken up in the quite sensibly titled "Can Animals and Machines be People?" by Justin Leiber (Fritz Leiber's son).

The whole issue of who or what qualifies as a person is an interesting one that I'm working towards discussing in the Game. But in brief, it's actually not that obvious why humans qualify automatically as persons and other things don't qualify at all. Is a woman in a persistently vegetative state a person? (Consider that I could have written: "Is a person in a persistently vegetative state a person?" and made it tautological).

Now I'm not saying we *should* see dogs as people, but *why* do all humans qualify as persons yet nothing else does unless 'person' is only a synonym for 'human' - which seems an unlikely option to take.

No time for more...

*waves*

Ana said...

It is not true what he said. If you take a look at communities that are defending "dog's right" you'll find that people are more eager to fight for pets than a human being.
It is amazing.