Response to Sarah

Sarah posted the question: Do you think we will ever understand animals? What will the world be like then?

I think by understand Sarah means to know what is going on inside an animal's mind. My answer to that is, simply, no. However, I wonder why we keep coming back to this question as a basis for moral consideration. Why do we need to know the exact thoughts of a being to treat them with respect? My answer is that we don't need to know. We don't know what's going on inside another human being's head, let alone our dog's. We live in a world of perceptions. Therefore I think it is more important to concentrate on what we can infer from another being's behavioral cues than from their actual thoughts. I think it is best to act cautiously and assume that a being's behavior flows at least somewhat from their thought process, that they do have a thought process even if we have no way of perceiving it. The danger of treating animals as lower beings simply because they cannot tell us what hurts them through words is not worth the ethical price we will pay if we ever find out that we were wrong in assessing their cognitive and emotional abilities.

My question is when do you think we will be able, as a society, to treat animals ethically without the knowledge of their inner thoughts?