Dolphins deserve same rights as humans, say scientists

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-17116882

by zosimus • 14 years ago

126 188 14 years ago

bbc.co.uk

I'm okay with this.

I think I'm okay with it, but it is a slippery slope. It reminds me of the abortion wars. People want to find a hard line for "when life starts" in a continuum. There's no such thing. I think the same thing could be said of all of the qualities that lead to our notion of personhood.

EvaPeron3• 14 years ago

If we are on the subject of what animals it is ethical to hunt, etc., how about more strongly protecting the Great Apes (chimps, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans) as they are our closest cousins in nature? Whales are more a rival, than anything else.

dfgonzalez• 14 years ago

Rights come with Obligations, so as long as they pay their taxes too, I'm OK with this

mattstreet• 14 years ago

People that don't have jobs don't have to pay taxes. (Except sales tax)

netcan• 14 years ago

but they do get the dole.

swalberg• 14 years ago

The UN has said that broadband Internet is a basic human right. This is starting to get difficult.

stephengillie• 14 years ago

Internet access is a basic human right because it vastly improves the quality of human life.

Would internet access be a basic dolphin right? They didn't build it...

littlegiantcap2• 14 years ago

I thought this was one of those negative rights, i.e. it doesn't have to be given to you, it just can't be taken from you.

olalonde• 14 years ago

Don't most countries have fishing quotas within territorial waters as well? Not sure dolphins and whales will be happy with this.

Evbn8• 14 years ago

Show me one dolphin who has exceeded quota.

nathan_long5• 14 years ago

I'd say that rights don't come with obligations inherently. I believe a month-old baby has a right to live, and all it ever does is poop and cry.

arrrg• 14 years ago

No they don't. Obviously not. Human rights are inalienable (though sometimes rights clash and then you need a mechanism to decide which one wins).

rmc2• 14 years ago

That's not how things work. Some people never pay taxes, but have rights.

lumberjack2• 14 years ago

Not necessarily. Human infants have rights even if they are orphans with unknown family lineage. I don't think anyone wants to grant Dolphins the right to vote either. Just some basic protections, such as the right not to be killed without proper justification.

nathan_long5• 14 years ago

>> They believe dolphins and whales are sufficiently intelligent to justify the same ethical considerations as humans.

I don't have a problem with extending legal protection to dolphins, but I do think that "intelligence" as the criteria is morally problematic, at least if it's the sole criteria.

For instance, could a person with Down's Syndrome be denied protection from murder?

The Christian worldview holds that human life has value intrinsically because God values it. Whether you agree with this or not, I hope you'd want to avoid drawing moral conclusions such as "my life is more valuable than my neighbor's because I'm obviously smarter."

Especially considering how slippery the definition of "intelligence" is.

swombat4• 14 years ago

Their view is not that intelligence makes your life more worthwhile, but that there is a threshold of species intelligence which makes that species "persons".

Note the focus on a species, rather than individuals.

crusso15• 14 years ago

When cetaceans let us know that they will mutually honor some sort of Interspecies Protective Treaty, I will be the first in line to support the move that they should have similar protections to people.

Until then, I don't want to see such beautiful intelligent creatures harmed -- but murder/manslaughter charges would be inappropriate if one were inadvertently killed.

The current animal protection/endangered species protection rules are sufficient.

jcarreiro• 14 years ago

I believe their argument stems not so much from the intelligence of cetaceans -- as others have pointed out, intelligence is hard to define -- but from evidence that they are self-aware, conscious beings.

dharmach2• 14 years ago

Your opinion is correct but don't drag Christianity here. Christianity did enough violence on the name of non-violent Jesus. Better you talk of universal human values.

brink• 14 years ago

He has the right to talk about whatever he likes. This is an open discussion.

nathan_long5• 14 years ago

>> Your opinion is correct but don't drag Christianity here. Christianity did enough violence on the name of non-violent Jesus. Better you talk of universal human values.

I understand your sentiment, but 1) you're making an "ad hominem" against Christianity, which I could argue is not justified but in any case is not pertinent, and 2) what you're asking ultimately doesn't make sense.

We're having a discussion about what is or is not moral. Any answer you can give necessarily depends on views which can only be classified as religious, even if you are a purely a materialist; they involve the purpose of existence, what it means to be human, etc.

Consider this exchange:

A: "We should not commit genocide." B: "Why?" A: "Because protecting life is a universal human value." B: "It's not universal if I don't agree with it. Why should I care?" A: "Because we can't survive as a species unless we protect one another." B: "What if I don't care about the species, but only about myself?" A: "Genocide is still wrong. You shouldn't do it." B: "Says who?"

Ultimately A has to answer "there is a larger moral principle outside of you which, whether you agree with it or not, you are obligated to obey", which is a religious statement.

The only other option is "many of us prefer that you don't do this and we will use force to stop you." That's pragmatic, but it's not about morality at all; it could just as well be applied to playing the bagpipes.

You can't exclude religion from moral debates because morality is inherently about religion.

rudiger• 14 years ago

Do you realize the irony of telling others what to think or say?

rmc2• 14 years ago

I think the point with intelligence is to show that dolphins, the species, are closer to humans, than (say) worms.

jlgreco15• 14 years ago

In more extreme cases where emotional identification breaks down, I think it is clear that the lack of brain functioning is identified with a loss of humanity, even if other bodily facilities are still more or less operational.

Now, are dolphins at the same level as vegetable humans? Clearly not. Is the bar to which we hold them higher than that, since we lack the same emotional connections? I suspect, in reality, yes.

crusso15• 14 years ago

The Christian worldview holds that human life has value intrinsically because God values it.

Protecting helpless/non-contributing life was happening long before Christianity.

Protecting helpless/non-contributing life is seen in almost all vertebrate+ life forms and seems to be a requirement for species advancement. The alligator mother allows its spawn to swim in and out of its mouth for protection, it doesn't eat them even though it could.

For instance, could a person with Down's Syndrome be denied protection from murder?

As thinking, social beings, we've extended the umbrella of protecting life to members of our species that are functionally disabled, even to the point where they can't take care of themselves.

It would be a significantly slippery slope hole in our Social Contract if we started trying to define who can and can't be murdered based upon genetic mutations.

takluyver5• 14 years ago

> The alligator mother allows its spawn to swim in and out of its mouth for protection

Protecting offspring, and relatives more generally, is an expected consequence of natural selection. It doesn't require any kind of intelligence, compassion, or even consciousness. Witness the many ways plants invest in protecting their seeds, for example.

What's interesting in this context is caring for the elderly, disabled or injured. The article mentions a case where a killer whale with a broken jaw was fed by other members of its pod. As far as I know, this kind of behaviour is only known in a few large mammal species.

nathan_long5• 14 years ago

>> As thinking, social beings, we've extended the umbrella of protecting life to members of our species that are functionally disabled, even to the point where they can't take care of themselves.

You say that as though the matter has been completely and definitively decided. In fact, humans often disregard that protection and hurt harmless people. Which is why moral debates are still being had, and why it's worth asking about the philosophical underpinnings of a moral position.

I suggested that Christianity offers such underpinnings. You may suggest alternate ones, but I think it would be naive to say that no such moral arguments are necessary because Nature Takes Care Of It.

Alex39172• 14 years ago

"Especially considering how slippery the definition of 'intelligence' is."

I think 'intelligence' represents how slippery all concepts are. Think about the definition of intelligence. According to the most common scientific definition, it's basically the ability to see patterns. The funny thing about that is that the ability to see patterns is basically what makes someone a good scientist, so scientists have defined 'intelligence' to mean having the potential to be good at science. Similarly, if you look at the CIA, intelligence means having information about enemy countries, because that's what makes a good CIA officer. If you were to ask a painter about the definition of intelligence, they'd probably tell you that it has something to do with being good at painting.

All words are defined by the types of people who are most likely to spend time thinking about the definition of that word, which means that essentially every concept in the every language is fundamentally biased by the worldview of the sort of person who would spend time thinking about that concept. And since science, logic, and knowledge are fundamentally based on these concepts in terms of looking for what to talk about and measure, I think this may be a serious epistemological problem that leaves humans capped at a certain level in terms of what we can know.

This is also why I'm generally skeptical of sites like Less Wrong, as I think the real limits of rationality and human knowledge have almost nothing to do with the 'official' list of logical fallacies that these sites tend to focus on.

astrobe_• 14 years ago

So... the definition given by people whose job is doing research on intelligence must be the right one?

I took Latin in high school because I liked etymology (and because greek letters were really too weird):

From Latin intellegentia ("the act of choosing between, intelligence"), from intellegō ("understand"), from inter ("between") + legō ("choose, pick out, read"). [taken from wiktionnary]

So intelligence is the ability to understand, that's all (the etymologic link with dichotomy is beautiful).

Now how we understand (and please don't confuse yourself again with "oh yeah but what does 'understand' really mean") is the hard part.

mistercow6• 14 years ago

Richard Dawkins wrote a short article a while back arguing exactly this point: http://boingboing.net/2011/06/30/richard-dawkins-on-v.html . Of particular interest is his point that it's completely plausible that less intelligent animals would suffer more, in direct contrast to common belief.

Osmium7• 14 years ago

We need a metric by which to make these decisions, and intelligence is a good start. But note the logic only works in one direction: if you're intelligent enough, you get these ethical considerations, but if you're not intelligent enough that doesn't mean you don't get these considerations. The Down's Syndrome comment is not relevant to the discussion.

AJ007• 14 years ago

I always saw this question as one of sentience, not intelligence. Certainly there are computers that exceed human levels of intelligence at certain tasks today, but none are sentient.

The things that I have been thinking a lot about lately are --

What happens when natural death is reduced by 99% and human levels of intelligence are extended to countless genetically customized biological lifeforms?

Do sentient computers that consume non-renewable resources have the right to reproduce and live? Who would enforce either option?

I think we are at the early stages of experiencing a paradigm change in human philosophy. In some part, because much of traditional human beliefs simply hold no foundation with reality (religious and otherwise.) Secondly, the things that were distant science fiction now exist or is within reach. The Star Wars/Star Trek view of the future and space travel mere decades later has become archaic.

I happened to read "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweil over a decade ago. It completely changed my thought process in regards to much of life. (I doubt without it I would have been as strongly convicted about dropping out of college and starting an internet business.) As technology has advanced since then, I believe it has kept my thinking a step beyond where it would have been otherwise.

The average person, even equipped with the latest smartphone, is unequipped to deal with these radical changes. Children can no longer look to their parents for patterns on how to live their lives, because their parents lives will not remotely resemble their own.

These are very good opportunities for start ups.

guard-of-terra• 14 years ago

"Children can no longer look to their parents for patterns on how to live their lives"

This stands for at least a century when the big shift from the village to the city occured. I'd say it wasn't any less radical than the shifts ahead us. Maybe a bit more radical even.

gort2• 14 years ago

> For instance, could a person with Down's Syndrome be denied protection from murder?

Since nobody seems to have given a straight answer to this, I will. Someone with Down's Syndrome easily counts as an intelligent being, and is not even close to any borderline.

I suppose your question assumes that, since intelligence comes in degrees, any value based on it must also come in degrees. But instead, most people who see personhood this way believe in some sort of threshold above which everyone deserves equal protection.

Evbn8• 14 years ago

OK, is it wrong to kill a stranger in a coma or PVS? They are less intelligent than dogs.

johnnyg3• 14 years ago

Sorry, but I'm going to need a Dolphin declaration of independence, armed revolution and ability to self sustain through value creation first.

swombat4• 14 years ago

I think it could easily be argued that the dolphins' way of life is more sustainable than ours... Probably not the best line of argument!

johnnyg3• 14 years ago

You think humans chasing small fish around in the surf is a superior way to live? Seriously?

There is nothing stopping you...just keep walking west. :)

Jach2• 14 years ago

In the long term? No way. Only humans have the potential to spread themselves off this rock and throughout the solar system and beyond. Dolphins are limited to where we take them.

takluyver5• 14 years ago

"Humans believe they are more intelligent than dolphins because they have achieved so much - New York, the wheel, wars, and so on - while all the dolphins ever did was mess around in the water having a good time. Conversely, dolphins believe that they are more intelligent than humans for precisely the same reason." - Douglas Adams

nathan_long5• 14 years ago

By "armed revolution" you're implying that someone has rights only if they are able to defend them. While that seems pragmatic, it actually destroys the definition of "rights".

Saying "X has a right to live" means "you shouldn't kill X." That's a completely different statement from "you will not be able to kill X."

Morality is concerned with what you are obligated to do or not do, apart from your preferences or abilities.

johnnyg3• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrasymachus

This has been hashed out before. Doesn't go well for "rights" in the sense you mean.

pyre2• 14 years ago

A baby can't self-sustain, is it ok if I kill it?

Someone that is brain-dead can't self-sustain, are there no legal/ethical qualms if I pull the plug?

Are disabled people open season for abuse because they are 'lesser' than the rest of us?

Evbn8• 14 years ago

You are being rhetorical, but the answers are obvious to the many people who engage in these antisocial behaviors.

Apreche• 14 years ago

Dolphins voting you say. Obama, to the aquarium!

jawns• 14 years ago

I'd be a lot more sympathetic to the cause of treating dolphins as if they had human rights if we first agreed to treat all humans as if they had human rights.

w1ntermute• 14 years ago

Yep, slavery exists to this day in many parts of Africa and India. That should be our first concern.

duck• 14 years ago

To be clear, it exists in most/all countries, even here in the states thanks to human trafficking.

slowpoke• 14 years ago

Our first, yes, but not our only. Otherwise, dolphins and whales might be extinct soon. There's nothing preventing you from supporting both, say, Amnesty International and Sea Sheperd, or Médecins Sans Frontières and Greenpeace - or all of them. This is not a binary decision.

jberryman• 14 years ago

No one is stopping you from helping fix the problem of slavery, especially not animal rights advocates.

papsosouid15• 14 years ago

But first we need to find out exactly which slaves have it the worst, and free all of them. We can't go around doing good things for anyone other than the absolute worst off people. Luckily this means we can spend all our time debating who has it worst instead of doing anything to help anyone.

mistercow6• 14 years ago

I find this line of thought extremely tedious. We have never improved as a society by lining up all of our concerns in a nicely organized list by priority, and then tackling everything on the agenda sequentially.

I am reminded of people who scoff at giving money to bums on the grounds that it is an inefficient form of charity. In most cases, here is what happens:

1. Bum asks X for spare change.

2. X thinks "That's not an efficient way to give. I would be better off donating the couple bucks in my pocket to a charity that I have researched carefully."

3. "Sorry I don't have anything on me."

4. X goes and spends the money on a cup of coffee and completely forgets about the incident.

Now, obviously that's not what always happens. But it's what usually happens, and it's ridiculous. I've had people tell me that instead of giving money to homeless people, I should go buy fast food and hand it out. Of course, when asked if they have ever done this themselves, the answer is invariably "no". It's so easy to do nothing instead of something if you can convince yourself that the something is not the absolute ideal.

Finally, affording dolphins human rights is not in conflict with affording humans human rights. We will not delay the process of preventing human rights abuses by also preventing the abuse of dolphins. To ask the question "How can we think about giving dolphins basic rights when so many humans don't have basic rights?" may feel righteous, but it certainly doesn't actually do anything to help either cause. All it does is to reassure yourself that you don't need to worry about the dolphin situation.

takluyver5• 14 years ago

I agree with the point you're making - we can address more than one problem at once - but I'm not sure the charity example is the best one.

People have a kind of mental 'karma quota', where once they've done so much good deeds, they don't feel a need to do more. It's a problem for environmental awareness, because people get daft advice like 'unplug your phone charger' (which achieves almost nothing), and then feel they've done their bit.

So the person walking past a homeless man probably won't go and give the same money to charity (hands up, I've done that). But the accumulated guilt might eventually make them go and donate money to something.

nandemo• 14 years ago

Indeed. These are some other headlines on the BBC sidebar at the moment:

    Deadly car bombings rock Syria
    S Korea shuts nuclear reactors
    Two killed in Bahrain explosions

astrodust• 14 years ago

Note that none of those involved dolphins.

Maybe they're more civilized than we are.

brudgers5• 14 years ago

I suspect that "We" have agreed. That doesn't mean everyone has. It is unlikely that everyone will, unless of course we exclude some people from our definition of everyone. Shirley, this is not your intent.

Philosophically, placing human rights first is inherently inconsistent with the foundation of extending "equal" rights to other species.

TomGullen• 14 years ago

> It is based on years of research that has shown dolphins and whales have large, complex brains and a human-like level of self-awareness

How did they conclude dolphins and whales are self-aware comparatively to humans? That seems like quite a large claim to make and the argument significantly hinges on this.

I wasn't aware of any scientific method to prove self awareness.

sethammons• 14 years ago

A program a watched a long time ago showed researchers working with dolphins. They would draw something with a marker on the side of the dolphin, and then it would race to an underwater mirror and contort its body to view the mark. The researchers said that this demonstrated self-awareness. As for being compared to humans, meh. I donno.

talmand• 14 years ago

Since I did not see this program I have to ask; did they reward the dolphin in any way for performing this task?

mmahemoff• 14 years ago

You also need scientific experiments in order to argue that humans are self-aware. Indeed, young humans aren't self-aware, hence Piaget's classic experiments on development to show the emegence of self-awareness.

The article does allude to a couple of experiments in the article ("pass" option if they can't answer a question, self-recognition in a mirror). I agree it needs to be studied in more depth to make these assumptions and certainly to confer new rights.

gcheong• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test

dsrguru• 14 years ago

We'll always have the Matrix problem where it's hard to "prove" self-awareness in others (Descartes does a pretty shitty job), but inasmuch as we have reason to assume other humans have self-awareness, most scientists feel comfortable making the same assumption for animals that pass the mirror test and do well on metacognitive tests where they grade their own mental processes. Examples of the latter include the "pass" test described in the article as well as tests Herbert Terrace conducted in which monkeys were asked to perform various tasks and, each time, bet a number of M&Ms proportional to how confident they were in their solution. Sure enough, they tended to bet a lot on answers they got right and much less on ones they got wrong.

Note that such tests, especially the mirror test, aren't bijective. If you pass the mirror test, we can be reasonably sure you're self-aware. However, if you don't pass the mirror test (which I didn't as a toddler), that doesn't mean you can't be self-aware.

sleepydog2• 14 years ago

Usually in this context, "self-aware" is usually used to indicate the ability to recognize one's own image, voice, smell, etc. The research referred to is mostly several experiments of showing dolphins to a mirror and determining that they can recognize a) That they are looking at a reflection, not a window, and b) They are able to distinguish themselves from other dolphins.

This only applies to one (quite narrow and literal) definition of self-awareness, mind you, but it's something you only see in apes and dolphins.

njl• 14 years ago

I'm very comfortable with this in the general case; I feel guilty eating bacon because pigs seem pretty smart. Still, rights always come paired up with responsibilities. Do we then try dolphins for rape or murder?

Rather than saying certain categories of animals should have the same rights as humans, maybe we'd be better off saying certain categories of animals deserve a higher level of ethical and legal consideration.

sethbannon2• 14 years ago

A 10 month old has no responsibilities. Certainly, though, she has rights.

jlgreco15• 14 years ago

A rather limited set of rights to be sure. Children, unless emancipated, lack a great deal of the rights that adults enjoy.

Perhaps this is the best way to legally consider dolphins. They have approximately the same rights as human children, until any one of them decides to ask for more.

crusso15• 14 years ago

She has rights because she is human. Her parents and other members of society vouch for her right to a position in society and accept the responsibility of her membership. The practice is so ingrained and a part of the fabric of our society that it's just accepted implicitly.

It has nothing to do with how capable she is of accepting responsibilities in her current state.

Non-humans have no such implicit acceptance of responsibilities and inclusion within the framework of human society by humans.

monsterix3• 14 years ago

While theorizing tests of animal psyche and self-awareness might be helpful to the purpose, but what we humans forget is the preciseness of agent Smith's evaluation of us:

"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure." [1]

There is no chance any animal/fish is going to survive the brunt of us 9 billion in next fifty years.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM1-DQ2Wo_w

gadders• 14 years ago

I always wondered where the assertion of "no rights without responsibilities" came from. Any ideas?

Alex39172• 14 years ago

"Maybe we'd be better off saying certain categories of animals deserve a higher level of ethical and legal consideration."

Ethicists use the term animal welfare (as opposed to animal rights) for this reason. No one at least at this point thinks that animals should be allowed to vote, which is what equal rights for animals would imply.

analog2• 14 years ago

Surely this is mainly due to the language barriers though? If we could fully communicate, what then?

papsosouid15• 14 years ago

Nobody said anything about equal rights, just rights. That's why they want to encourage discussion, to figure out what rights they would be given.

brudgers5• 14 years ago

Western legal systems tend to only recognizes two types of entities, persons and property. Those entities to which personhood is extended have rights, all else does not.

We punish those who are cruel to animals, not because we attribute personhood to them, but because of the impact animal cruelty has upon persons collectively (society at large). Criminalization of animal cruelty is no more based on the rights of animals than the criminalization of throwing litter from a car is based on the rights of curbs.

On the other hand, ethical considerations are not dependent upon legislation. One may choose to forgo killing a cockroach based upon inherent respect for it as a living creature.

Osmium7• 14 years ago

> We punish those who are cruel to animals, not because we attribute personhood to them, but because of the impact animal cruelty has upon persons collectively (society at large).

Are you sure this is correct? I'm fairly sure cruelty to animals is punished purely because of ethical considerations for the animal's well being.

sageikosa3• 14 years ago

I would just focus a little more on the notion that cruelty to animals is usually a clear indicator of a lack of empathy, which is dangerous to the rest of society when persistently manifest in individuals.

It isn't the general presence of animal suffering in the world that is a problem, it is the intentional infliction of suffering that is the problem, because it means the one doing the infliction is skirting close to the outer edge of empathy.

mtgx• 14 years ago

It probably won't be long until we say the same thing about some "strong AI" robots.

Jach2• 14 years ago

If it's really "strong AI", whether some humans want to grant the AI "rights" or not is irrelevant. Kind of like ants deciding whether humans should get a share of the harvest.

sethbannon2• 14 years ago

I applaud this. It's time we stop drawing the line of where rights begin and end at the species barrier and start taking a characteristics based approach. What are the characteristics of a human that lead us to say one should have rights? If other species share those characteristics, they too should be granted those rights.

crusso15• 14 years ago

As a species, humans agree to basic rules of conduct that form an implied Social Contract.

Can any non-human species do that?

jlgreco15• 14 years ago

Certainly a potential example from the past could perhaps be found in the social relations humans had with our close relatives. The relationships between Neanderthal and Cro-Magon is contested and ultimately largely unknown, however it seems likely there was some recognition of each other involved as something other than mere beasts.

unoti2• 14 years ago

> As a species, humans agree to basic rules of conduct that form an implied Social Contract. Can any non-human species do that?

A great question, and the answer is yes. Here's a clear example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAFQ5kUHPkY Monkeys cooperate to solve a problem, and one of them clearly shows a sense of social contract when he gives a reward to his partner, even though he could easily keep it for himself.

Studies have shown that animals definitely have an innate sense of fair play: http://twentytwowords.com/2012/10/08/monkey-hilariously-reac...

The above study has been replicated on a variety of animals.

UntitledNo4• 14 years ago

We don't know if they can do that. You might say we can observe their behaviour, but would an entity as intelligent as us, but who cannot communicate with us, draw this conclusions by observing us? I doubt it. If you don't know our "reasons" to have wars, or why some humans are starving while other humans are throwing food away and so on, would you think that we have any "Social Contract" at all? I also can't really say I'm convinced that we do...

acomjean• 14 years ago

so long and thanks for all the fish..?

aquatic jerks?

bejar37• 14 years ago

protomyth• 14 years ago

Ok, so if dolphins were given the same rights as humans, what is done when one dolphin kills another dolphin or other offenses[1]?

1) http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2009/05/13/dolphins_are...

brudgers5• 14 years ago

Philosophically related Podcast [About 15 minutes] on animal abolitionism with Gary Francione at Philosophy Bites.

It contains a well reasoned critique of Peter Singer's approach to animal rights which has become mainstream.

http://philosophybites.com/2012/10/gary-l-francione-on-anima...

EvaPeron3• 14 years ago

We need to be very careful here. There are those (not myself) who would contend that a fetus is a "person", thereby implying that abortion is "murder". I disagree with that, but if we say cetaceans are "persons" than is whaling then "murder"? Are we calling the Eskimo tribes who to this day hunt whales as part of their cultural tradition "murderers"? I am all for conservation, don't get me wrong, but willy-nilly throwing around the word "person" is not helpful, it is not helpful in the debate about reproductive choice and it is not helpful in the conservation debate either.

A more general idea that the more "conscious" (variously defined) an entity is, the more it should be treated humanely. That makes sense to me, and to most people I would think. But we need to figure out how to do this with getting into ethical quandaries like the ones outlined.

natex2• 14 years ago

Be careful with this comparison. The issue with abortion as murder is "when" a fetus becomes a person, not "if."

swombat4• 14 years ago

Are we calling the Eskimo tribes who to this day hunt whales as part of their cultural tradition "murderers"?

Would you call the cannibalistic tribes who hunt neighbouring tribes and eat them in holy rituals murderers?

EvaPeron3• 14 years ago

Yes, I call cannibalistic tribes murderers (provided any still exist, hopefully not). But my point is to not rush to make simplistic categories. My attitude on these and related issues is that it is enough work, more than enough work, for me to figure out how to live my own life ethically, without spending energies casting judgements upon others. Personally, I would never hunt dolphins or whales - I don't like hunting anyway and would not do that, heck, I take insects outside when I find them inside rather than stepping on them, lol - more seriously, yes, I find this research very compelling and for these reasons the concept of harming sentient beings is very troubling to me, and would not want to hunt a dolphin or a whale any more than, say, a visitor from another planet. That said, these are still complex issues which science can inform upon, but we need also to understand that in nature, in biology, one's own species is the priority, and so the "better angels of our nature" may and hopefully do go towards wanting humane treatment for more sentient creatures, but also let's not get on a bully pulpit on sensitive and complex matters. Again, I have found it is hard enough to try and be an ethical person for oneself, without trying to be judge and jury over others. That is my only point with the Eskimo tribe reference. :-)

vitno• 14 years ago

So... when dolphins gangs of male bottlenose dolphins isolate a single female and forcibly mate with her... we charge them with rape, right?

Osmium7• 14 years ago

It always seemed to me that our lack of consideration for these animals as "non-human persons" only serves to demonstrate a failure of empathy on our part, solely because we are unable to communicate with them. We don't know whether dolphins have a formal language yet, but we do know they can communicate with each other, and if we ever figure out a way to communicate with them too it'd probably go a long way to convincing people that they deserve rights.

It's the height of arrogance to assume the humans are the only species on this planet that deserve these rights. And it's not helped by animal rights organisations, that preach that all animals deserve equal rights to humans, which is an absurdity that doesn't help their cause, since it drives more reasonable people away from the idea that some animals really do deserve these rights.

jQueryIsAwesome2• 14 years ago

Human rigths were created not because we believe we deserve those, but as a tool to keep the peace among us. So the sad true is that most of us don't have a strong intrinsic motivation to grant rights to animals, one of the reasons being that they are not a thread to our existence; but even if they were the impossibility of communication would make any agreement (aka mutual rights) impossible.

tvdw• 14 years ago

    Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than
    dolphins because he had achieved so much... the wheel, 
    New York, wars and so on... while all the dolphins had
    ever done was muck about in the water having a good time.
    But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that
    they were far more intelligent than man... for precisely
    the same reason.

hannes2000• 14 years ago

"When you place dolphins in a situation like that they respond in exactly the same way humans do" – I doubt any human would just play along with this boring game.

pfortuny• 14 years ago

Sociologists DO get boring when designing experiments, don't they?

JoeAltmaier5• 14 years ago

I'd like to reference an argument presented here before when this same issue came up.

Japanese harvest ships slaughter thousands of dolphins each year, in a certain bay. Some escape. Next year, more olphins return to the bay and are caught, seemingly by surprise?

SO either, the escaped dolphins did not communicate the danger, were unable to communicate, or just didn't care what happened to other dolphins.

In any of those cases, do we have the duty to protect the lives of dolphins? Either they are not intelligent, not communicative, or have no racial ethic that values dolphin life. Why would we?

papsosouid15• 14 years ago

You are making a whole lot of unfounded assumptions. Who says those that escape knew the fate of those that didn't? Who says they have a choice as to where to go? Perhaps they need to be in that area at that time because that is where their food is at that time. The options you present are not even remotely close to exhaustive, yet you hide behind their totality for your excuse to avoid considering the issue at all.

JoeAltmaier5• 14 years ago

Dolphins are among the freest creatures in the ocean, traveling vast distances in little time and pretty much independent. And I'm sure something drives them to be in that bay at that time; its just not a higher intelligence, by all the evidence. Thus the tendency to reinforce: dolphins are dumb animals.

So this argument isn't 'considering the issue at all'? Then what's it about? Some other issue? Would a personal attack have been more on-point? (sarcasm)

bravoyankee• 14 years ago

I believe ALL animals deserve the same rights as humans, and I treat them with the same measure of respect. I have for years.

Randgalt• 14 years ago

As soon as dolphins show that they can respect my rights, I'll grant them rights.

Evbn8• 14 years ago

No dolphin has ever bitten and eaten anyone I know.

unoti2• 14 years ago

Don't elephants have the same kind of self awareness? There are certainly plenty of stories of elephants helping each other...

Dolphins deserve same rights as humans, say scientists

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