@Alan McDougall,
Alan McDougall wrote:I love my little pet dog, and I cant see him with his little wagging tail and bright excited bouncing love as only an instrumental goodness, that is cold
Your dog exists for an ends, and it is clearly achieving that ends: it clearly amuses you and provides you comfort.
The problem with animals is that people project themselves onto the animals and in so doing anthropomorphize them (not in the sense of making corporeal, but certainly in the sense of "human-ifying" them).
Simply put, though, there's no real reason to think that your pet loves you, insofar as there's no reason to think that your pet has a will, and, in willing, wills you as an ends (as Kant commands every rational moral agent to will people as ends, not as means).
And suppose that your pet experiences some sort of pathological "feelings." So what? It doesn't have a reason whereby it can apprehend them. It's no better off than when my computer "realizes" that it has a virus.
But you "want" to say that your pet loves you and so forth and so on. On what grounds? On account of the animal's behavior? What is behavior? It's external. It gives
no data whatsoever to us about the internal workings of the animal.
So let's suppose, then, that there's -no- way either for you to prove that the animal feels, judges, etc. and there's -no- way that I can prove otherwise. So what? We're talking about Christianity and the ten commandments. I'm just telling you what we Christians believe:
Animals exist solely as instrumental goods. They were made by God for us men in order to provide us comfort in our lifetimes, both for nourishment (food and drink) and as pets/aides (hunting dogs and the like).
In any case, your further objections are self-damning. You are right: only people have the ability to be "evil" in a moral sense. Do you know why? It's because animals have -no- capacity to be good in a moral sense. Why?
Because they aren't moral agents.
