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Do we have a compelling moral obligation to make our dogs a little fat from their favorite treats?
A dog’s sense of smell and taste are a thousand times greater than our own, and thus so is their enjoyment.
Dogs live in sensory deprived conditions relative to their exposure to scents and tastes in the wild.
When left to their own devices, dogs and their owners routinely choose tasty treats. Men with infinite resources in history usually became fat, and exercise for the sake of health improvement is an historic anomaly among the upper classes.
It follows that the happiness increase that a dog receives from perfect cardiovascular health probably does not exceed the happiness increase received from tasty treats, given how much we can assume they value these treats. The extremes of both end are deleterious to canine fulfillment, but we can probably say that a dog is most happy if made a little fat from treats.
Humans have only recently begun to value perfect health, and in all previous eras were quite happy with drinking (or smoking) and lounging if they could get away with it. The wealthiest kings with the smartest advisors loved their liquors and candies. The ancient Chinese figure of contentment and joy was Budai, a happy Buddhist figure with a large figure. The Romans considered mead the drink of the gods, the Muslim conception of Heaven entails rivers running with sweet wine, and the Christians conceive of a heavenly banquet in the afterlife.
There’s something telling about us, that we think canine felicity lies in austerity. Maybe we are imbuing dogs with our own notions of social competition. We know that we would be more attractive if we looked like Chris Pratt (not in Super Mario Bros), and we know that this entails attractive social rewards like a hotter partner and superiority over peers. Yet we struggle with this, choosing other enjoyments instead. In our shame, we make our dogs ascetic warrior monks: only the driest of foods, only water, exercise once a day at the least. Is this for our dog, or is it for us? Do you look at other dog owners with a sense of superiority that their genetically unfit fat pug is no match for our slim athletic German Shepherd?
There is one alluring argument for not giving our dogs tasty treats, and this is that they live longer. But this is an illusion. Food-motivated beasts don’t care about total sum days of mortal life. They care about chasing potential foods and eating tasty foods. They care about smelling a lot of good smells, especially of things that taste good. Their food motivation is so intense that it’s the only way to motivate them in training absent painful punishment. No rational being should consider three extra years of limited joy superior to one year of great joy. No human values “mere days alive” in hospital beds and prisons or in states of depression, and humans generally consider times of low pleasure to be write-offs. But this is how we apparently see the life our canine friends!
I don't think this follows. Enjoyment and sensitivity are different things, and I don't see any reason why they'd need to have such tight correlation. If you're just comparing between humans, you might be able to argue that someone with greater sensitivity to taste has the potential to enjoy tasting food more, but only in potential, and only with low confidence, and only because we're comparing somewhat similar brains. A dog's brain isn't wildly different from our own, but certainly it's much more different than between 2 humans, making the correlation even more tenuous. There are factors other than sensitivity at play here when dealing with the qualia we call "enjoyment," and those (rather difficult-to-measure) factors could easily be more dominant.
I think it follows, because enjoyments appear to increase from increased sensitivity (ability to discern and contrast, let’s say) in relation to the object of experience for every category I can imagine. The enjoyment of a soft blanket is reduced from calloused or numb hands. Someone who has trained their sense of taste can generally recognize more flavors and thus enjoy more. Someone who is familiar with different wines can enjoy a good wine more. Someone who can hardly hear will not enjoy bird sounds as much as someone who can hear every nuance of them. It’s actually hard to think of any enjoyment that isn’t increased from increased ability to discern, compare, and understand the object(s). This is what the whole idea of being a connoisseur is about. I can certainly appreciate music more on better headphones, and certainly appreciate it more with the more sensitivity I’ve gained from listening/understanding pieces. When Covid reduced people’s ability to discern flavors, it reduced people’s enjoyments. When people with poor eyesight get glasses, they usually note that they can enjoy what they see more. So I think this is a fine assumption for me to make but I’m open to examples of where the correlation fails.
I don't think any of this is true. I think someone who is familiar with different wines can convince themselves that they enjoy a good wine more than a layman who isn't. They might be able to appreciate certain specific aspects of the wine than a layman without a refined palette, but whether or not they actually enjoy it more is an open question. Similarly, someone who can hear every nuance of a bird song might be able to appreciate certain aspects of it more than someone who's nearly deaf and can only hear some dull muffled noises, but whether or not they get actual greater enjoyment out of it is an open question. Enjoyment and appreciation aren't the same things.
It's also impossible to generalize from individuals comparing the enjoyment from 2 different states of sensitivity, because that's vastly different from comparing enjoyment of 2 different entities. I might enjoy the same song more when I hear it through clear headphones instead of through a muffled speaker in another room, but all that tells me is that I enjoy that music more with increased sensitivity. Someone else could just as easily get far greater enjoyment out of the percussive music of 2 random rocks being struck together as I do from listening to Beethoven's 5th symphony through high-end headphones. Someone else could just as easily get far greater enjoyment out of some grilled roadkill as I do from a finely prepared and seasoned steak from a fancy restaurant. Connoisseurs might have more dimensions to appreciate certain aspects of whatever they're enjoying, and that might give them the language and excuse to convince themselves that they enjoy it more, but that doesn't mean that they actually do enjoy it more.
I think this is stretching relativism a little too much. A person who prefers listening to a low quality version of a song over a high quality version is someone who is odd, or interested in it for non-musical reasons like nostalgia. The vast majority of people prefer high fidelity music (that they can perceive). Sites like YouTube and phones like the iPhone make the default audio card high quality because so many people enjoy this. Similarly, only a very rare person enjoys watching videos on 480p, or collecting lo-res images.
There really seems to be a clear association between greater sensitivity/detail/perception (whichever word we want to use, they refer to the same cognitive antecedents) and increased enjoyment. Why go see a symphony in person if the experience is not greater? Why bother with greater graphics?
Is it really open? What bird song enjoyer would not desire to hear bird songs in maximum fidelity? It’s considered a tragedy when bird song enjoyers have reduced hearing sensitivity
You're comparing the difference within an individual and the difference between individuals in terms of enjoyment from different fidelity. Different individuals have intrinsically subjective experience of what they enjoy, and this difference is even more pronounced when comparing different species. The leap in how a dog's taste sensations translate to the dog's experience of "enjoyment" is something that's not really understood, even worse than how the leap exists in humans. So positing a sort of straight-up relationship between the higher sensitivity to higher enjoyment (or potential for such) isn't justified.
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To a point, sure. But too much sensitivity can lead to something pleasurable becoming painful. I think that @07mk is right, and it's an oversimplification to say that more sensitive = more pleasure.
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