Rectifying the human-pet relationship

• Main Author: Chee, Yiren
• Other Authors: Preston Huw Richards Greene
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2020
• Subjects: Humanities::Philosophy
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/137441
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The human-pet relationship is seen as an owner-property kind from a legal perspective. However, there are certain situations which appeals to our intuitions that we should not treat pets as property. For example, we would agree that there is nothing impermissible about intentionally throwing one’s smartphone on the ground but there seems to be something impermissible about throwing one’s pet animal on the ground. This paper investigates if pets can truly occupy the status of property by examining the concept of property in order to identify the core characteristic of property. This leads to this paper arguing that pets should not occupy the status of property due to the lack of necessary characteristic of property. On the grounds that animals have the interests of not suffering, the status of pets should alleviate beyond being property. Finally, this paper will discuss about possible consequences of changing the status quo of pets and animals as property and provide an outlook of the future of humanity’s relationship with animals.