Should homeless people be allowed to have dogs?

If you are a typical human, your reaction to this question was probably to flash through your mind ever-so-briefly a sad looking scene of a desolate and ragged-looking human and dog sprawled on the sidewalk, and whatever emotions that prompted – probably some mixture of pity and disgust – subsequently influenced your initial response to the question.

The example illustrates how morality works. The fact that this question even gives us pause is strong evidence that morality is based on emotions, not rationality. It’s perfectly natural that some people might say homeless people should not be allowed to have dogs – it’s just not rational.

Let’s ponder this logically for a moment:

-- Consider how many stray dogs exist in the world.

-- Consider that by saying homeless people shouldn’t be allowed to have dogs you are saying it’s okay for people to be homeless, but not dogs.

-- Consider how much joy a dog could add to that person’s life.

When I consider these points, I feel disgusted with myself that I even paused to think about the question, but I know I shouldn’t because that’s just the way morality works. And ironically, my feelings of disgust went from influencing my moral judgments of whether homeless people should be allow to have dogs, to whether I was a decent person for pausing to answer the question, to whether morality itself and its use of emotional short-cuts is a “decent” system, whatever that means.