A shift has been occurring in scientific thought in recent years away from the previously dominant behaviourist paradigm (Duncan, 2006) and towards the realization that many animals, including dogs, experience a range of emotions. There are those who, as Griffin (2001) noted, suggest animals have at least simple thoughts (compared to humans), though these are probably different from those experienced by humans. This position is exemplified by Kiley-Worthington (1990: 95), who has stated: ‘That mammals at least feel something like pleasure or joy cannot be denied by any person who is prepared to admit that animals feel pain.’ Others, such as Bradshaw (2011: 210), are happy to state that: ‘dogs share our capacity to feel joy, love, anger, fear and anxiety. They also experience pain, hunger, thirst and sexual attraction.’ That this shift is an emerging one explains why as McConnell (2005: xxvii) noted:
In contrast to the beliefs of most dog lovers, current beliefs among scientists and philosophers about the emotional life of dogs are all over the map. Some argue that only humans can experience emotions, while others argue that non-human animals experience primitive emotions like fear and anger, but not more complicated ones like love and pride. At the other end of the continuum, some say it is good science to believe that many mammals come with the whole package, being capable of experiencing emotions in ways comparable to the way we experience them.
While the recognition that dogs experience emotions hints at a change in the position of scientific thinking regarding the sentience of dogs, it is important to note that discussions about how animals experience emotions is often set within the traditional scientific bulwarks of chemical reactions and evolution. This arguably relates to the traditional view that: ‘a phenomenon that is not publicly observable and confirmable is not the stuff of science’ (Horowitz, 2009a: 3). Consequently, the only way science can look at emotions, in animals or humans, is by distilling them down to the biological and chemical and away from the fuzzy reality in which emotions are experienced. Such a view of the emotions experienced by dogs and other animals allows them to be seen as biological processes necessary to the survival of the species. In this way an animal that experiences emotions can still be viewed as an object, an automaton reacting subconsciously to chemical inducements rather than a self-aware, sentient being. This view is echoed by McConnell (2005: 271), who identified that: ‘Some people assert that while animals may “have” emotions, they aren’t actually conscious of them.’ It is from this perspective that it may be argued that most scientists today are willing to attribute sentience to animals; but I would suggest this is a poor imitation of what sentience really is, something more than the merely subconscious, automated reading of emotions as chemically induced events in the body. Bradshaw (2011: 211) goes a little further than many scientists when stating: ‘dogs do possess some degree of consciousness. In other words, they are probably aware of their emotions, but to a lesser extent than humans are,’ while at the same time recognizing that there is little agreement across the scientific community on this point. Consequently, it may be argued that, while agreement on animals possessing a range of emotions may have been reached, there is an ongoing debate raging as to whether this equates to animals being self-aware, sentient beings capable of individual agency.
It is against the backdrop of the traditionally dominant view of animals as lacking sentience that laws, rights, and welfare issues and standards relating to dogs – indeed, to all animals – need to be viewed. In virtually all cases it is clear that animals are viewed as objects, or property (Sanders, 1999; Bekoff, 2007; Rudy, 2011); not all that different in cold legal language from inanimate possessions. The implications of being an object as opposed to a sentient being are clear. An object has no rights and needs no rights; its welfare is of no concern as it is clear that an object has no feelings or emotions. Even where we see the advancement of the idea that animals have rights and are sentient, as argued below, Francione (2004: 120) has stated that: ‘The status of animals as property renders meaningless our claim that we reject the status of animals as things. We treat animals as the moral equivalent of inanimate objects with no morally significant interests.’ This highlights how existing laws based on one view of animals may be poorly equipped to handle significant shifts in the notion of what the non-human animal is and is capable of.
Against the view of dogs and other animals as objects lacking sentience or only possessing a poor form of sentience that consists of experiencing emotions as nothing more than chemical reactions in the body is a voracious voice that demands that dogs are sentient, self-aware beings capable of feelings (Siegal, 1994; McConnell, 2005; Bekoff, 2007). This is a viewpoint that is being increasingly voiced in relation to animals in general (Bostock, 1993; Lehman, 1997; MacFarland and Hediger, 2009). Jane Goodall (2007: xii) goes as far as to state: ‘There was increasingly compelling evidence that we are not alone in the universe, not the only creatures with minds capable of solving problems, capable of love and hate, joy and sorrow, fear and despair.’ The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, written by Philip Low (2012) and ratified by some of the world’s contemporary leading thinkers, is written in a much drier and less emotional academic prose. It stated: ‘the weight of evidence indicates that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses, also possess these neurological substrates’, and clearly recognizes the potential sentience of the non-human animal through its possession of a consciousness. Bringing the focus back to dogs Steiner (2005: 243) has indicated that they: ‘exhibit behaviour that strongly suggests rich emotional lives and complex ways of negotiating their environments’. Similarly, the rich consciousness of dogs and their potential to have a soul is illustrated by Horowitz (2009a: 139) who wrote:
Look a dog in the eyes and you get the definite feeling that he is looking back. Dogs return our gaze. Their look is more than just setting eyes on us; they are looking at us in the same way that we look at them. The importance of the dog’s gaze, when it is directed at our faces, is that gaze implies a frame of mind. It implies attention. A gazer is both paying attention to you and, possibly, paying attention to your own attention.
Following on from the views of people such as Goodall and Steiner, Bekoff (2007: 18), among others, has suggested that: ‘ethical values tell us that animals should not be viewed as property, as resources, or as disposable machines that exist for human consumption, treated like bicycles or backpacks’. This turns the matter of the rights and welfare of animals away from something that is simply related to the sentience of animals and therefore within their power (such as it is) and into a human construct where our ethical values have a bearing on the animal. In this way, as normal, the human is the one in the position of power, dispensing animal rights and welfare according to human ethical standards.
The leading proponents of the notion that dogs have sentience are