I realize people get attached to their dogs. I realize people like to view them as part of their family. That doesn't matter. They are THINGS. Possessions. Property. They do not have any more value than the price tag attached to replacing them.

They feel pain; they feel fear; they have more complex intelligence and emotion than an infant human. There's zero argument for categorizing them as things. They may be property by law, but they are not inanimate objects and to the extent the law treats them as such, the law is not based on reason. Also, as a matter of morality, such a categorization is basically indefensible.

You are in less danger of a dog hurting or killing you than a vending machine crushing you.

You are in less danger of a dog hurting or killing you than a vending machine crushing you.

A friendly Saint Bernard running into you at full tilt or an angry Pomeranian can pose more of a threat than either vending machines or sharks. The odds a person will die from being bitten or struck by a dog in a year are 1 in 9,356,000, roughly 12 times the odds of being killed by a vending machine and 27 times more likely than meeting your end in the jaws of a shark.

They feel pain; they feel fear; they have more complex intelligence and emotion than an infant human. There's zero argument for categorizing them as things. They may be property by law, but they are not inanimate objects and to the extent the law treats them as such, the law is not based on reason. Also, as a matter of morality, such a categorization is basically indefensible.

My point is that they are not "things", as you put it. They may be property under the law, but that does not mean they are legally and morally equivalent to inanimate objects, which is what Taly asserted. You don't need to be a vegan or believe that dogs should have all the same rights as humans to recognize that the moral implications of killing a dog are very different than the moral implications of breaking a table.

Just because the dogs could be handled that way in those situations does not mean they can always be handled that way. Each situation is unique.

That doesn't matter. They are THINGS. Possessions. Property. They do not have any more value than the price tag attached to replacing them.

This is not true from many standpoints, including common (small c) laws in most States. We differentiate animals from objects as intentionally destroying some animals for sake of causing suffering to it is not permitted. Destroying your own inanimate property is not. Furthermore, there exists Federal law(s) protecting certain species which are threatened by extinction. We have yet to ration the consumption of any material goods on any permanent basis and the ones we have (including the processes necessary extract, refine and produce the consumer end good of such products) are also done so in part to protect living creatures.

That is not to say I agree or disagree with any such laws. Nor is it to equate domesticated animals of any animal with a human. But animals are far from just objects in the capacity of how our society regards them.

Good for them, but honestly, the smarter thing to do in both cases would have been to shoot the **** dogs. (Tasering it first is probably acceptable.)

I realize people get attached to their dogs. I realize people like to view them as part of their family. That doesn't matter. They are THINGS. Possessions. Property. They do not have any more value than the price tag attached to replacing them. And while anyone can try to preserve your property if they see fit, at the end of the day, if there's an imminent risk of injury or worse, when that property threatens to attack them, they're completely justified in shooting first to alleviate that risk.

The law is moral, defensible, and entirely based on reason - a specific type of reasoning, utilitarianism, to be exact.

They contribute to a thing they call the rule of law. You're appealing to authority here. Abstract ideas of "the rule of law" as absolute and immune to situational adjustment are unworkable and worthless. That's the problem with thinkers and philosophers. Anyone with the abiltity to survive while making their employment the business of sitting there and thinking about stuff has serious problems with understanding practical reality.

[...] All you're doing is appealing to the authority of a bunch of guys who basically sat down and wrote out their personal opinions. I don't know why you think anyone should accept them;
[...]
The fact of the matter is Khross, that rule of law doesn't mean any such thing. Philosophers and writers don't decide what it mean. Pompous blowhards in ancient greece don't either.

That does not somehow mean we need to make things conform to any given past philosopher's ideas - especially not their ideas as filtered through Khross's lens, nor for that matter, yours.

Morality only exists in your mind. So does "moral worth." Okay, it also exists in my mind, and other people's minds. My point is, Morality is a subjective product of human reasoning. It's a construct. It doesn't exist in nature. Law generally shouldn't be based on it, and value judgements regarding morality are really only valid to the person making the judgement.

I agree that once you get into the details of a moral code, you're dealing with a subjective mental construct. However, I think there are basic instincts that give rise to the foundations of morality - altruism and empathy, desire for security, fairness and proportionality, etc. Accordingly, various moral codes can be more or less in harmony with human nature. A moral code that requires total celibacy except for procreative sex that's as quick and unenjoyable as possible, for instance, is going to be less in harmony with human nature than one that allows for at least some pleasurable sex. A moral code that disdains all compassion and glorifies pure selfishness will clash with instinctive feelings of empathy, affection, fairness, and so forth.

As for whether laws should be based on morality, I would argue that virtually all laws are based, to one degree or another, on certain core moral assumptions (including the basic assumption that law itself is acceptable and/or beneficial).