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1media/My dog destroys things then acys like he doesnt even see it by pandamiglio.png2019-04-07T23:43:52-07:00Sam Henrickson5cd0ff97c337b26d01e84db58bdb9506b40fff7a335193Moralityplain2019-04-20T14:45:42-07:00Sam Henrickson5cd0ff97c337b26d01e84db58bdb9506b40fff7aThe question whether animals feel guilt as a result of a sense of morality has been asked in clickbait articles and cashgrab magazines for as long as I could read. The argument against animals, often specifically pet dogs, feeling guilt is that they are simply trained to fear punishment when they have been disobedient to humans' arbitrary rules that have little to do with anything important (where's the sense in telling an animal not to sit on the couch? Boundaries like this don't exist for dogs.) Scientists claim that dogs cannot feel a complex emotion like guilt, and cannot articulate a set of morals by which to live, and so they are motivated by fear of punishment to act the "guilty" way they do to reduce the intensity of their punishment. This is all a valid argument-- human moral standards are placed on dogs, dogs respond out of fear of consequence. This does, however, give rise to the question: is it not the same in humans? Are we not conditioned as humans by a moral code that is ultimately non-objective and extremely anthropocentric, and do we not experience guilt as a direct result of the realization of consequences? How much of human guilt is fear, just like in dogs? Fear and guilt are inextricably linked, and it is unfair to demand a separate emotion from animals over a moral code they had no say in creating.