moralising dogs is silly. they have no higher order thinking
but the idea that any violence committed by an animal is necessarily a failure on their owners part is also silly
animals can and do commit acts of violence without any prior warning. they could be scared or traumatised or misunderstanding something as an act of aggression. or they could just be angry
the idea that you can reliably train the possibility for unwanted violence out of every animal is hubris
telling someone you're talking to what they need to takeaway from a conversation is great craic. going to start doing that. I will stick with the opinion i have formed in my own brain for now though
im sure there are cultural and racist reasons behind the way certain dogs are targeted as dangerous but i also think people are just scared of the high capacity for violence of certain breeds, and that's understandable
other dog breeds not thought of as dangerous definitely have high levels of aggression but if they're not as physically capable at inflicting violence it's not as worrisome
maybe it should be tho
A trait that makes them more resilient in the ring doesn’t necessarily mean they are more naturally aggressive.
i never said it did. i was just responding to you saying they aren't bred to fight
if we split it into propensity for violence & capacity to inflict violence then there is no doubt pits have a lot more of the latter than most dogs and the former is basically unprovable either way
we should acknowledge that it is easier to manipulate someone into violence than it is to select for physical genetic traits.
doesn't mean you can't do both though, people have definitely bred dogs with the intention of making them better pit fighters
Idk probably shouldn't have got into this cause i don't have strong feelings either way about dangerous dog bans
i don't really feel like there is a real difference in the differentiation you made there
Game is the dog that won't quit fighting, the dog that'll die in the ring, the dog that'll fight with two broken legs
if that is a breedable trait it seems fair to me to say they have been bred for fighting (not exclusively)
the racism could definitely be one of the reasons it happened in the us but there are pit bull bans in a lot of countries where the dogs don't have strong cultural ties to minority groups.
is it not more likely that people assume they are dangerous because they were bred to fight? whether that is true or not it seems understandable.
i actually sort of disagree with myself being so black and white about that having read it back, cause i do think smart animals like dogs have some moral instincts
but while they have some abstractive ability to understand fairness or whatever it's not on the same level as humans, and trying to imprint human morality on them is silly
e- please no-one try to engage me on the topic of free will, i don't want to play