Anthropomorphizing. It’s an ugly, ungainly word. Here’s the basic idea: the dictionary definition is to “attribute human characteristics to” something that is non-human. If you google the word you get the following example—“people’s tendency to anthropomorphize their dogs.”
Indeed, this is the most common example. Sentimental animal lovers are sometimes criticized for anthropomorphizing our pets. We treat them like family and project human traits and experiences onto them. Is this a flaw? I want to suggest that it would be far better if we tended towards more anthropomorphizing (ugh, this word!) of those in the animal kingdom.
If there are two extremes in terms of how humans can relate to animals, one is to treat animals as unthinking, moving objects (like walking rocks), the other is to treat them as furry but odd looking people. Both are simplifications but only one is harmful.
The first, to treat animals merely as objects for human use, is the most common, at least in modernity. Descartes famously saw animals as akin to machines, guided by automatic, unthinking internal clockwork. For him they really were moving rocks.
But we know so much more today. The view expressed by Descartes, which has dominated so much of the modern world, is neither acceptable nor accurate. We should also recognize that for many centuries there were indigenous communities, in the Americas and elsewhere, that developed entirely different philosophies which recognized the sentience and human-independent value of animals.
It may be too simple to suggest that we either treat animals as pure objects with no value other than what they can do for us (food, labor, eyes for the blind, so on) or as furry little humans. Of course reality presents a more complex spectrum for how we can relate to and treat non-human animals. But basically, I will argue, it would be much better if we treated them like humans.
This of course raises a question: do humans really treat fellow humans so well? Would treating animals like humans mean that they would be treated decently? After all, throughout our history humans have fought wars, committed genocide, torture, and other monstrosities, in addition to enslaving each other in large numbers. The Atlantic slave trade involved the movement of literally millions of Africans who were captured in Africa and sold in the Americas.
Humans don’t treat one another perfectly. But since the enlightenment, and especially in the past century or so, slavery has been formally rejected around the world. In addition, virtually all existing governments have signed onto a range of human rights, embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that seek to guarantee a certain quality of life for all people. Treating people purely as chattel, i.e. as tools to be used by other people, is widely considered illegitimate, even if we fail to honor these standards with some frequency.
Now consider the treatment of animals. The ones that we anthropomorphize, primarily our pets, are treated like family members and more or less as furry little people. And this is good—we give them food, shelter, medical care, attention, and companionship, some gruesome cases of animal abuse notwithstanding.
The ones we treat as unthinking objects, the millions caught up in factory farming, as well as those subject to animal testing, are given more or less the opposite treatment. On a much smaller scale, the Netflix show Tiger King depicted the similarly awful treatment big cats frequently experience at the hands of roadside zoos and breeders.
Peter Singer, an influential utilitarian philosopher, made this point decades ago—surely the sheer quantity of suffering among all those chickens, cows, and pigs caged in factory farms has to weigh heavily on the global scale of pain and injustice. One can prioritize the value of human life and still recognize that sentient creatures are suffering terribly because we see them merely as walking, unprocessed food.
Sentience and intelligence, which we might characterize as the ability to analyze and solve a range of complex problems, as well as to experience, understand, and share a rich array of emotions, are not limited to human persons. At its most complex forms intelligence includes the ability to develop relationships, attachments, memories, desires, life plans, and so on. (Philosophers and those in positions of power have historically been much too focused on the abstract mathematical component of intelligence). One does not need to be capable of every one of these experiences to feel pain, fear, sadness, and anxiety.
The evidence zoologists have uncovered in recent years, as well as anecdotal evidence from every attentive dog and cat owner in the world, suggests that all mammals and birds experience some degree of these features of sentience and intelligence, including emotions. Mammals and birds also dream, which suggests a level of consciousness that persists even in sleep. Stressed out dogs and cats in animal shelters are even given anti-anxiety medication.
The evidence may be more mixed for reptiles and fish, let alone insects, but there are some studies that indicate that at least fish and reptiles are somewhat sentient as well. Granted, these are very complex questions, involving empirical research, ethics, and theories of intelligence. But it seems that the only decent moral standard would be for us to ask whether we would let our pets be subject to the treatment in question. If the answer is no, that should at least give us pause.
The upshot is that if we treated all animals, or at the very least mammals and birds, as akin to humans (or akin to our pets) this would immediately invalidate almost all current factory farming methods.
Does this mean that we should stop eating meat? Maybe, maybe not. One thing is clear from this perspective—it is difficult to see justifications of factory farming as anything other than efforts to treat sentient creatures as mere objects and subject them to tremendous and unnecessary suffering.
Of course how to accomplish the goal of treating animals as sentient creatures capable of pain and suffering is a demanding, longterm task. Local, state, and federal law, combined with changing norms, can have a positive impact. Thanks to such efforts nearly a third of factory chickens are now housed in large warehouses where they can move about and stretch their wings, rather than crowded together into tiny cages where they can barely move.
Future positive changes will rely not only on changes in law but also changing values and attitudes. There is a rich legacy of arguments in favor of animal rights but my suggestion here has more to do with empathy and emotion. We anthropomorphize our pets because we spend time with them and see their positive traits, their intelligence and emotions, and we then impute further, more complex human experiences to them. But just because we overstate their emotional and analytic complexity does not mean that they possess none.
The philosopher Richard Rorty argued that emotional attachments can be more powerful than, or at least supplemental to, our more logical forms of argumentation. Anthropomorphizing animals is in this vein. If we saw animals more like little people, and less like moving rocks, we would treat them much better. This requires humans to tap into our emotional intelligence and imagination so that we can engage in a genuine attempt to understand these beings that are different from us but still complex enough to experience and enjoy life in a rich manner. Maybe animals should get to do just that.