You’re talking about an essential definition. I’m talking about a functional definition. If the conversation is about cats in captivity, essential definitions don’t matter. The only thing that matters is the functional definition. Cats were functionally defined as obligate carnivores because it helped people communicate the fact that you can’t feed a cat a healthy vegan diet. That’s no longer true, so it doesn’t need to be communicated, so the functional definition no longer applies.
Essential theories of truth suck because they don’t help you solve problems. Pragmatic theories of truth are awesome because they help us solve problems. According to a pragmatic theory of truth, cats are no longer obligate carnivores, because scientists made synthetic taurine.
They still don’t cease to be functionally obligate, you’ve just changed the definition of carnivore. Nothing about the cat itself changed, its body still requires an amino that previously was only available through animal flesh. And the designation “obligate carnivore” wasn’t an anti-vegan communication, it was an observation because we didn’t invent cats, or even quite domesticate them, they sorta coexist at various levels with humans depending on how we choose to shape that relationship.
But here’s my question when it comes to animal cruelty with regards to companion animals, which aren’t something most vegans argue in favor of abolishing but rather advocate for treating as peers. You can feed a cat synthetic taurine, you can keep a cat inside, neutered/spayed, but you still haven’t changed what a cat is- a half-domesticated predator that shares a life with you. They don’t have the thousands of years of selective breeding dogs have. Where’s the point that human intellect and good intentions to reduce harm comes full circle and ends up being unintentionally cruel because you end up forcing human values on a non-human entity? Your cat doesn’t understand human definitions of what drives it or how its digestive system works, it just does cat things. If you want it to not be a cat, you have to create not-cats, which is an entirely different animal than what we have and doesn’t solve the problem of all the stray/feral cats that do exist. Do we cull them? Collect and sterilize them until eventually they age out and go extinct? It’s the same dilemma of livestock. Without human intervention they wouldn’t exist as we know them, but now they do exist, but they’d have no real need to exist nor should they be released into the wild should we chose to discontinue our relationship. Even in the places where their wild ancestors roamed, those ancestors and the environments that shaped them are for the most part lost, and a dairy cow is not an aurochs in a post-glacial European forest, and never would have been what came next if left to the normal pressures of nature/climate/environment.
You’re talking about an essential definition. I’m talking about a functional definition. If the conversation is about cats in captivity, essential definitions don’t matter. The only thing that matters is the functional definition. Cats were functionally defined as obligate carnivores because it helped people communicate the fact that you can’t feed a cat a healthy vegan diet. That’s no longer true, so it doesn’t need to be communicated, so the functional definition no longer applies.
Essential theories of truth suck because they don’t help you solve problems. Pragmatic theories of truth are awesome because they help us solve problems. According to a pragmatic theory of truth, cats are no longer obligate carnivores, because scientists made synthetic taurine.
They still don’t cease to be functionally obligate, you’ve just changed the definition of carnivore. Nothing about the cat itself changed, its body still requires an amino that previously was only available through animal flesh. And the designation “obligate carnivore” wasn’t an anti-vegan communication, it was an observation because we didn’t invent cats, or even quite domesticate them, they sorta coexist at various levels with humans depending on how we choose to shape that relationship.
But here’s my question when it comes to animal cruelty with regards to companion animals, which aren’t something most vegans argue in favor of abolishing but rather advocate for treating as peers. You can feed a cat synthetic taurine, you can keep a cat inside, neutered/spayed, but you still haven’t changed what a cat is- a half-domesticated predator that shares a life with you. They don’t have the thousands of years of selective breeding dogs have. Where’s the point that human intellect and good intentions to reduce harm comes full circle and ends up being unintentionally cruel because you end up forcing human values on a non-human entity? Your cat doesn’t understand human definitions of what drives it or how its digestive system works, it just does cat things. If you want it to not be a cat, you have to create not-cats, which is an entirely different animal than what we have and doesn’t solve the problem of all the stray/feral cats that do exist. Do we cull them? Collect and sterilize them until eventually they age out and go extinct? It’s the same dilemma of livestock. Without human intervention they wouldn’t exist as we know them, but now they do exist, but they’d have no real need to exist nor should they be released into the wild should we chose to discontinue our relationship. Even in the places where their wild ancestors roamed, those ancestors and the environments that shaped them are for the most part lost, and a dairy cow is not an aurochs in a post-glacial European forest, and never would have been what came next if left to the normal pressures of nature/climate/environment.