Declawing Cats

[Anomalocaris]

Tribal morality might be just a list of thou shall nots.   But in a complex society the basis of morality should be principles that can both be generally agreed to and not self-defeating in the sense that it relies on acquiesce of people who might come to strongly perceive their interests to lie else where.

So, it's acceptable to base our moral principles as a society on the feelings of yuppies toward their couches because their interests lie there? That's not how it works, and is why moral philosophy has long included the interests of animals and our duties toward them. I don't know where you get the idea that it hasn't been part of society and human morality in more than just the above-mentioned case-by-case scenario, but that's incorrect. As long as we've been pondering morality, we've been establishing our duty to animals. That being unnecessarily cruel to animals is morally wrong is as long held as the idea that you shouldn't kill someone.

Actually, yes.  Because they do value their couches more highly then their cat's claws, over the long run they will resent not being able to do what they think are appropriate to their cats to protect their couches.    No real generally accepted morality says non-human life or well-being, pet or not, has priority over property.  The value of animal life and the value of property is subject to contingent evaluation.   Only human life (in most cases), and not even well being,  has principled priority over property in our morality.




We've been trying and failing, because ultimately only those constraint on our behavior towards animals which plausibly benefit our society will stick.  Abstract notions of our duty to animals only create numerous one-off inconsistencies that degrade the overall legal system and generally don't progress significantly further in making prevention of cruelties towards animals some consistent moral foundation, because a general consistent  principle of prevention of all form of a treatment of animals that in the case of some animals might be considered cruel is too detrimental to our collective economic interests.    As more one-off inconsistencies are added to the legal structure, it makes the entire legal structure gradually less respected and less workable.