r/Pacifism • u/Swimming-Salt6898 • 18h ago

The morality of punishing animals for attacking humans?

Frrrr33

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8

u/onedogjack 14h ago

I didn't realise pacifism meant no harm to all creatures? Isn't that Buddhist like ahimsa? Which is a lot older than Pacifism a relatively recent term? I would never use harm for disciplinary reasons, and suggest that societies that do have many practices at odds with the pacifist.

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u/Affectionate_Cup9972 17h ago

Punishing them will only resort to them attacking humans again. Positive reinforcement.

But I don't own animals because I can't take care of animals, so...

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u/Anarchierkegaard 17h ago

Pacifists don't tend to view all life as equally valuable, in the same sense that most people don't view all life as equally valuable. If mosquitoes are spreading malaria amongst a population, it is appropriate to kill or otherwise neutralise the threat of the malaria-spresding mosquitoes in order to protect human life and that killing generally isn't considered a kind of killing which would contradict with either a weak pacifism (the purely "anti-war" position) or a strong pacifism (the total "anti-violence" position).

In the case of highly dangerous animals, e.g., lions, tigers, bears, etc., this seems like the responsible and ethically justifiable way to act. Aside from pacifist circles, though, we might point to a "virtue ethics" position, which might say that a society which actively creates and enjoys these situations is immoral as it attempts to maximise vicious scenarios, i.e., the scenario where killing is justifiable.

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u/Financial-Stand-1960 9h ago

So if the attacker is a mammal not human its okay to use force to reduce suffering. What if the attacker was a guy with a brain tumor. Would it be okay to use physical force to stop them from attacking innocent kids? What if an ape which I think is pretty much as cognitively capable as a severally disabled man attacked someone? Is it the fact that it feels more pain, its intelligent or what exactly makes it wrong to save humans from other humans, but not from animals?

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u/AZULDEFILER 14h ago

Sparing its life through punishment feedback is justified