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Moral Change: The Changing Attitudes Of Animals

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George, while you make good points about a moral change occurring and playing a large part in the changing attitudes of animals; I believe this change is far more anthropocentric rather than based on morals. One of the main arguments from the reading was, (as you quoted), "those who began by torturing cats and dogs would end by murdering their fellows". To me that seems to be incredibly anthropocentric, as there is actually no mention, or concern, for the wellbeing of animals, instead it is focused on how this would effect humans. It all seems to be about stopping humans from hurting or killing other humans. This is especially shown as it was deemed wrong to harm animals that have human qualities, because it would be one stop short from harming other humans. …show more content…
All these points are based solely on human concerns and not out of morals. Going on from this, this anthropocentric rather than moral viewpoint is still very much so persistent in today's society: for example vegetarians still choosing to eat fish, as they are not shown to be similar to ourselves, and therefore it is not considered wrong to eat them as it will not inspire violence amongst humans. Although, in today's society, morals do play the largest part in the protection of animals, it still gets its bases from the early modern periods anthropocentric

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