I’m a Doctor of Philosophy, and whenever I say that in the context of
animal behaviour and training, someone inevitably asks what philosophy has to
do with science. Often they ask me this just before defending the use of shock
collars.
Here’s the thing: science does not tell you what you are allowed to do
to another sentient being. It tells you what happens when you do it. The moment
someone says “it’s justified”, “it’s necessary”, or “it’s
better than the alternative”, they have left science behind and stepped
squarely into philosophy, whether they realise it or not.
Most shock collar defences boil down to sentences like this:
It’s better than being shot.
Better than euthanasia.
Better than a lifetime on lead.
That argument isn’t behavioural science, it’s utilitarian ethics,
straight out of Jeremy Bentham. Bentham argued that suffering can be morally
acceptable if it prevents greater suffering overall. Pain isn’t forbidden, it’s
weighed, counted, traded.
So the logic goes like this:
a shock causes pain → death causes more harm than pain → therefore pain is
acceptable.
Neat. Clean. And deeply dangerous.
Because once you accept that logic, the only real question left is how
much pain you’re prepared to allow, and who gets to decide when it’s “worth
it”?
People love to say “the science shows it works”. Works at what?
Suppressing behaviour? Sure it does, often. Producing compliance? Sometimes.
Improving welfare long-term? Er, no.
Science cannot tell you:
- what the dog
associates the shock with
- how fear generalises
- what happens when
timing is off (and it often is)
- how emotional systems
are altered
- or what the dog
experiences subjectively
And science absolutely cannot tell you whether you were morally entitled
to take that risk.
Every philosophical defence of shock collars relies on a fantasy human:
perfectly timed, emotionally neutral, endlessly restrained, never escalating,
having genuinely exhausted every other option. That person exists only in
arguments, not in real life.
Real humans are tired, frustrated, embarrassed, angry, upset,
inconsistent, and very good at justifying shortcuts. When utilitarian
calculations go wrong, the cost isn’t theoretical. It shows up later as
anxiety, shutdown, aggression, or “mystery” behaviour problems everyone
pretends are unrelated.
Then there’s this line: “Better than being shot.”
Yes. Being shot is worse than being shocked but that is not the ethical
victory people think it is.
If your training justification starts with “at least the dog isn’t
dead”, you’re already standing in a welfare failure. Because now we’re not
asking what’s best for the dog, we’re asking how much harm we can justify to
compensate for human failure: poor management, poor fencing, poor recall
training, poor supervision.
That’s not welfare-led training, that’s ethical cost-shifting, and the
dog always pays.
Even within utilitarianism, this reasoning is sloppy. Thinkers like
Peter Singer are clear that suffering must be necessary, proportionate, and
genuinely the least harmful option available. Shock collar use collapses under
that scrutiny because the alternatives weren’t exhausted, they were
inconvenient.
And from a duty-based perspective, associated with Immanuel Kant (even
if we correct his historical blind spots), there’s a harder question lurking
underneath:
Are there things we should not do to a sentient being, even if we can
invent a justification? If that question irritates you, good! That irritation
is moral reasoning doing its job.
Philosophy isn’t anti-science, it’s anti-pretence. It exists to stop
people smuggling ethical decisions in through the back door while pretending
they’re just being “practical”.
Shock collars are controversial because they sit exactly where power
meets vulnerability, outcomes are uncertain, suffering is instrumentalised, and
responsibility is asymmetrical.
That isn’t a training issue.
It’s an ethical one.
And if philosophy makes you uncomfortable here, it’s probably because
it’s showing you something you’d rather not look at.
