Scientists say dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons' | Hacker News Reader

Scientists say dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons'

timesonline.co.uk

79 pointschaostheory71 comments

Marino and Reiss will present their findings at a conference in San Diego, California, next month, concluding that the new evidence about dolphin intelligence makes it morally repugnant to mistreat them.

It is morally repugnant to mistreat animals regardless of the intelligence of the animal and being a scientist has nothing to do with making such a judgment, since it is not a scientific judgment but an ethical one. Thus, the new-found evidence discussed in the article serves only to dramatize something these scientists want because of their philosophical predispositions, not because of their special knowledge as scientists. If the logic suggested in the article were true, the converse might be up for consideration as well (e.g., that we can be cruel to deer because they are so dumb).

Science and advocacy are distinct and should be kept that way. There is nothing wrong with scientists acting as advocates but, when they do so, their views as advocates should normally carry no more weight than do those of others.

Thus, the new-found evidence discussed in the article serves only to dramatize something these scientists want because of their philosophical predispositions,

I don't think this is entirely true here. You've loaded the question by making an assumption, "It is morally repugnant to mistreat animals regardless of the intelligence of the animal" which not everyone will agree with.

In fact, I suspect the vast majority of people do not: every day millions of people knowingly eat meat produced from animals that were horrifically mistreated, despite the fact that they could have eaten something else, often for a lower price. Why? Because it tastes good, and a lot of people don't care about the suffering of cows.

Suppose the following moral axiom that some hypothetical person might hold:

"Mistreating any sapient being is equivalently morally wrong as mistreating a human."

Therefore, if scientists can prove that an animal is sapient, those who follow such a belief will agree that such an animal should not be mistreated. I don't see the problem with scientists arguing that an animal is sapient.

I totally agree and after reading the article I was going to post this exact same comment but you beat me to it. I would say that it is just as morally repugnant or in fact more morally repugnant to mistreat an animal that is not intelligent.

It is not like lack of intelligence makes it alright to mistreat an animal.

How well do you treat mice that have invaded your home? How about cockroaches? How do you avoid mistreating worms while doing your gardening?

The article is not discussing the ethical question of "mistreatment", but rather that of legal rights. This is an important distinction.

Anyone can advocate for dolphin rights, but, as scientists who have done research on dolphins, they are in a position to make ethical arguments against keeping dolphins in a zoo for public entertainment.

The rationale behind these arguments are grounded firmly in science. You have to be able to show the research that proves that one animal has no sense of self, while another (a dolphin) does, etc.

"Anyone can advocate for dolphin rights, but, as scientists who have done research on dolphins, they are in a position to make ethical arguments against keeping dolphins in a zoo for public entertainment."

"The rationale behind these arguments are grounded firmly in science. You have to be able to show the research that proves that one animal has no sense of self, while another (a dolphin) does, etc."

We are all in a position to make ethical arguments; I often do. But its not science. They are obviously in a position to know more about dolphins than most, but whether we change our policies regarding them might be grounded in science (for a change), but it is not, in and of itself, science, and they aren't experts in that.

As for a sense of self, I don't treat animals humanely because they have a sense of self, but because I do.

This is more about not treating dolphins as animals, not whether or not we should treat them humanely. There's a subtle but distinct difference.

The legal rights distinction, in my view, does not alter the basic point - ethics determines how are laws are shaped and, while science can furnish the data points, it goes no further to help us determine the ethical outcome.

For example, the researchers are said to argue that it is "morally unacceptable" for dolphins to be killed by accident by humans while fishing.

Of course, laws might be passed making it a misdemeanor to kill a dolphin accidentally in such a context and perhaps make the perpetrator pay a fine. Or they might make it a felony and impose jail time as well. Or they might say that mens rea or evil intent is a required element of the crime. Or any one of many other variations. Or the laws might simply state that there is no culpability if a human who is fishing happens to kill a dolphin.

The above represents a broad range of potential judgments on a legal issue that is ultimately an ethical question (what we ought to do) affected by a scientific truth (what is empirically verifiable) whose discoverers are in no better position than is any other intelligent person to opine. Scientists may opine but no special deference ought to be paid to their ethical judgments simply because they are scientists.

Scientists may opine but no special deference ought to be paid to their ethical judgments simply because they are scientists.

I agree with you. I'm sure the scientists mentioned in the article do as well.

Let's not attack each other with straw-men, we'll be here all day. The article never suggested that due to their status as "scientists" they are somehow better equipped to handle ethical issues.

The article simply said that they were planning on making ethical arguments related to the legal rights of dolphins, based on their research and their findings.

There is nothing wrong with that.

As the intelligence level of dolphins is not common knowledge, nor is it even well understood by the scientific community at large, their input on the matter is of importance if only for the purpose of facilitating and informing the discussion of any possible legal rights that dolphins should have.

Scientists are in a position to tell us about various traits that dolphins possess, like a sense of self.

By saying that this gives this puts them in a position to make moral judgements you are implying that these traits (basically, intelligence or some flavour of it) are the basis for granting a moral consideration. That is one giant implication to just rely on without even mentioning. That is something these scientists are not in a special position to comment on.

The opinion of a scientist with a deep understanding of the biology of intelligence is worth more then my shallow understanding of biology.

Everyone's opinion does not have equal weight.

I agree though that no one group has a monopoly on ethics and everyone can have an opinion of some worth.

We make moral judgements to the contrary every day. Our implicit acceptance that humans are "worth more" than other animals acknowledges both an innate desire to defend one's own species over all others, but also that a heirarchy of superiority. For example, you would object to a massacre of puppies but would not over a massacre of bacteria.

The question lies in how you decide superiority. Thr religious tend to believe that we are "made in gods image" and thus superior. I am not religious, so I define my heirarchy by the ability of the species to comprehend the universe and its disruptiveness to other species. This is probably equally arbitrary, but it has at least some logic behind it. I view knowledge of the universe as humanity's ultimate goal as a species and thus judge species based on their ability to complete said goal.

When it comes to a choice between harming another species and the alternative I make a moral judgement based on the species "intelligence". I obviously never justify senseless violence and tend to abhor any purposeful torture.

The scientists' information is thus very important to my moral system.

P.s. Sorry for any typos or similar, this is posted from an iPhone.

> I define my heirarchy by the ability of the species to comprehend the universe and its disruptiveness to other species. This is probably equally arbitrary, but it has at least some logic behind it.

I have a very similar view of the world, and when a friend tried to get me (last night!) to put it on firm logical footing, I was unable to.

Why should our ability to comprehend the universe be the yardstick by which we measure ourselves? I feel that it is a reasonable measure, but I can't give sound reasoning for it.

Somehow, I think this property (which appears to be unique to us, at least in our own biosphere) is deep in a way that, say, the ability to swim gracefully in water is not.

"Why should our ability to comprehend the universe be the yardstick by which we measure ourselves?"

The movie Avatar (obviously on my mind because I recently saw it) tries to bring the audience around to the opposite conclusion. The movie makes clear that the humans better comprehend the universe (star ships, ability to create bodies to control remotely, etc.) but then unequivocally roots for the aliens who demonstrate no interest at all in the scientific method.

Which I guess is a long winded way of saying, the ability to comprehend the universe is certainly not accepted as the most important yardstick of worth by all your fellow human beings.

If you want to go back to Kant (my grasp is a bit shaky but it will do), the reason we care about conscious beings over non-conscious beings/things is because they are the source of the "good will" and produce value in the world. The world is dark and valueless without thinking being to grant value to the valueless. If dolphins are conscious, then they too are sources of the "good will" and are deserving of treatment befitting of it.

However, Kant's philosophy leads to some strange places if you push it too far (like all philosophies). I think humans innately combine a mix of Utilitarianism with Kantianism to come up with intuitive judgements - which is a pretty obvious and useless statement, but if we take it at face value it means that when we are confronted with extrema, we would do well to consider both sides of the coin.

Well, if you're not religious then any foundation must be arbitrary. With no religious presence, the universe has no fundamental meaning or purpose. Therefore, there is no underlying truth or morality that grounds our existence or any other being's existence.

As to why the capability to accumulate knowledge is my ultimate goal, one would turn to my belief that knowledge is the ultimate goal. In essence, I believe that knowledge is something which is unequivocally good in every and all instances. The choices we make with that knowledge are our own, but knowledge in and of itself is purely positive -- one of the few things that I think are. Therefore the pursuit of knowledge is a good and noble endeavor. As Asimov says, "[t]here is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere."

I think you are going backwards & trying to find rational justification for how you feel or act already.

Why is average intelligence for the species you basic qualifier? Why not intelligence of the individual?

I think we are fundamentally speciest and there is no way around it.

Intelligence of the individual matters equally. It just so happens that individuals of a species have intelligences which tend to clump about the species mean fairly closely (low standard deviation).

I think we are fundamentally speciest and there is no way around it.

Of course we are; that's an evolutionary necessity. Even discarding that, to believe that anything is inherently "wrong" or "right" must be based on some fairly arbitrary code if you don't have a god to back you up. Without religion, there is no universal morality, thus some arbitrary decision must be made. The only difference is how arbitrary and what logic is based upon that.

It just so happens that individuals of a species have intelligences which tend to clump about the species mean fairly closely (low standard deviation).

How about babies? Anyway, would you advocate that outliers with low intelligence should be considered morally inferior?

It's not a scientific judgement? How can you say it's OK to kill plants but not "animals," considering they are made of essentially the same thing? Where is the line?

It's fairly easy to trace the evolution of the nervous system from simple single-celled organisms to modern animals. Moral repugnance is a purely human invention.

Plants and animals are made of essentially the same thing? Plants have no nervous system and absolutely no capacity for suffering. It is impossible to inflict pain on a plant. By contrast, most animals are capable of experiencing physical and even mental anguish. Once you admit this, good luck trying to build a coherent moral argument for why human suffering should be abhorrent while all other forms of animal suffering are fair game. This is "speciesism," a term introduced by the philosopher Peter Singer in his famous book Animal Liberation. I have never read a convincing refutation of the argument therein.

There is a line. It simply requires some thought to elucidate it.

Pain?

When you poke a Euglena[1] with a pin while looking at it under a microscope, its sensors detect an intrusion and immediately start flapping the flagella (the thing it uses for locomotion, analogous to a leg) to get out of the way. That's a super-simple nervous system. Many plants do this as well, using a slow production of chemicals which move branches and leaves.

As you get more advanced, going up the biological totem pole, every creature uses that exact same sensor => action mechanism. Pain is the brain's complex interpretation of the pin prick, and an animal attempting to remove itself from the source of the pain is the same as activating the flagella.

My brain has mirror neurons which make me literally feel your suffering as you experience it, which is why humans are so against "pain" and "suffering". It's also why I personally will never injure another human, or even another animal, purposefully.

Is it more "wrong" in any scientific way to injure a human instead of a dolphin or a bear or a chimp or a plant -- or even to break a window? Absolutely not. This is why science should never be used to prove or disprove human "morals" and morals should never dictate the functions of science.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euglena

I admit that I had never heard of the Euglena before, although the same article seems to be suggesting that the very characteristics you have pointed out cause some scientists to want to classify it as an animal. The suggestion being that the hallmark of "animality" is the ability to feel things.

In any case, I do not (intentionally) consume a great deal of Euglena, so I will content myself with pointing out that grains, vegetables, and fruit upon which I rely to replace the inhumane bounty of factory farming never bled, farted or blinked, and never will. I'm not trying to sound like a holier-than-thou vegetarian here; I'm not, and I have always made a point of not judging how others approach this issue. But if you're going to deconstruct my reasoning, the use of a red herring is discouraged.

As to your last question, the answer is "yes", and the case has been made in the book I mentioned far better than I can here. If you equate breaking a window with killing a dolphin, bear, or chimp, well, that speaks volumes.

I'll cheerfully refute it: lower animals do have the capacity to feel pain (so we shouldn't be cruel) but not, it appears, the capacity to hypothesize about the future - that is, pigs don't suffer anxiety over the probability of ending up getting slaughtered for bacon when they're sufficiently bulky.

this is a major qualitative difference between us and other animals (that we know about).

Well, if you concede the cruelty point, then you are pretty much in agreement with the animal liberation school; I'm unclear what's being refuted. The point is not that eating other animals is wrong--some believe so (not me), but it's a tough argument to swallow. Only that we have no right to make them suffer.

I think people often confuse the two because if you buy into the animal liberation argument, then the first thing to go is all the beef, pork, poultry, eggs and dairy that come from factory farming, i.e. everything. So functionally you wind up vegetarian, if not vegan. Now that we're seeing more places like Polyface Farms, Neeman Ranch, etc. open up, hopefully that situation will change in the future.

Since we really have no way to know for sure how much thinking about the future a pig does while confined on a grim industrial farm or exactly how much anxiety that pig experiences nervously worrying about the future, maybe we could give them the benefit of the doubt?

The ethics of mistreatment are tied to inteligence of the species, however. Stepping on an ant, or cutting down a tree is not the same as killing an animal. Who knows where the lines are, but the distinctions exist.

"What is it that should trace the insuperable line? ...The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" -- Jeremy Bentham

We certainly don't need to fear that dolphins could try to dominate or exterminate us. So why bother treating them in any special way? The reason for morale and ethics is to maintain society and minimize risk of revenge. In case of dolphins there's hardly a society, the risk of revenge is none. To keep natural balance we should restrain ourselves from killing them all off or domesticating all of them and that's it.

Maybe this is too brutal opinion for modern times but I think people have gone too far in their foolishness. We should remember our real place and our real power, so that we can learn to use it more responsibly, instead of playing silly Ramen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concepts_in_the_Ender%27s_Game_...) games out of the boredom.

It's an emotional argument, not a logical argument.

I strongly recommend the movie The Cove. It's much more entertaining and less depressing than you would expect. Available via DVD or bittorrent. http://www.thecovemovie.com/ (flash site so I can't link directly to the trailer)

The movie is actually quite depressing, but I was happy to find out after watching that the practice has, at least temporarily, stopped.

Yeah, I know, my point is that there is less footage of dolphins being killed than most people expect after hearing the description.

And yes, it's absolutely amazing that an activist film such as this worked. How often has that happened in the history of documentary filmmaking? I think it's a shoe-in for the best documentary Academy Award this year.

The article is interesting and has lots of actual facts about dolphin neurology that kept me reading.

I could do without the political crusade though.

I'm far from convinced. On the one hand, their shape and their environment explains why they never copied the concept of technology from us. On the other, it does nothing to prevent them having art, literature, math, or creating a pidgin and talking to us. And on the third hand, we anatomically modern humans spent our first 150,000 years doing essentially sod all, so we can hardly complain.

I would want evidence of bidirectional conversation before calling them "people". Otherwise, I think they're "almost-people". Maybe near-future science can uplift them the rest of the way.

By your standards plenty of disabled people would not qualify as people.

Absolutely the opposite - disabled people are a perfect illustration of why humans are definitely "people". We work around our difficulties. Can't hear? Use sign language. Can't speak? Write it down.

Human minds in dolphin bodies would quickly work out similar hacks. The fact that dolphins don't is what makes it hard to qualify them as people.

> I would want evidence of bidirectional conversation before calling them "people".

There are plenty of people that are not capable of that in any way that most people would recognize.

The dog analogy comes to mind: Dogs are smarter than people because they understand us but we do not understand them.

edit:

We seem to place the onus of proving your intelligence and your ability to communicate on others before giving them the moniker 'sentient' or 'intelligent'. By laying an arbitrary ('good enough for you') marker and saying 'jump over that and I'll accept you) we judge everybody by our own norms, whereas that is not a good way to look at any of these issues at all.

A nice example from the animal kingdom would be the ant, the bee or the termite. As a single individual they're not going to pass an intelligence test by human standards any time soon. But as a collective they exhibit very complex behaviour that could possibly qualify as intelligent.

To put up a barrier for Dolphins to prove they're intelligent makes intelligence a linear affair, cross the threshold and you're 'in'.

But plenty of people exist that could not cross that same threshold, even by employing the tricks you mentioned.

For instance, there is a state of being called 'locked in'.

A person is 100% aware of their environment but also 100% paralyzed. By your standards these people would not qualify as people because they are wholly incapable of communication.

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locked-in_syndrome

David Brin starts off one of his articles talking about this: http://www.crackaddict.com/~nalgas/David_Brin-Dogma_of_Other...

That's a really good read. It's interesting how in his interaction with his audience people have an enormous problem letting go of their usual frame of reference.

The Dolphin example is a great one because just like with chimps (or pigs!) there is obviously some modicum of intelligence there, it's an alien one because of the lack of shared references but it comes with all the ethical issues that the discovery of an extra-terristrial species of similar capability would have.

I'm pretty sure that there are some ethical lines that you probably shouldn't cross with any creature, intelligent or not, and we're a long way away from even establishing those boundaries (as per our imagined feelings placing ourselves in the shoes of the subject).

Dolphins are mammals, have adapted to living immersed in a 3D salt water environment, I wonder how we'd feel if they would be able to communicate and declared that henceforth ships are to pay toll or else :)

It would be a sad day for biologists and there would be a glut of Dolphin steak if our past with other species is any lesson.

I'm not sure you can beat up on humans alone for exterminating species, after all, species have gone extinct before humanity.

We are substantially better at wiping out other species but that's more due to our technological advancement than any extra maliciousness on our part.

It would be dolphin steak mislabeled as some other kind of meat... because of their place at the top of the food chain, dolphin meat is dangerously high in mercury.

> The dog analogy comes to mind: Dogs are smarter than people because they understand us but we do not understand them.

Having owned a dog, a cat and numerous small animals, I can say that I think that at times I was definitely able to have a two-way conversation with most of the higher animals, but not the lower. I think the Guinea Pig I had when I was 8 was about as low down the evolutionary scale as I could have any understanding at all (lots of squeaks meant "hungry").

My Gerbil was a black box, I fed him and cleaned his cage and he ran around for a few years, but other than that, not a lot to say. My cat and dog, on the other hand, most definitely told me when he wanted outside, or didn't like this brand of food, or needed his litter box changed, or was unhappy when we moved, was cold, needed into a room and the door was closed, was happy to see me after a long trip, etc. All it took was a little bit of observation.

Research into Apes and Dolphins seems to have revealed very similar levels of two-way interaction.

I'm not saying they were particularly interesting conversations, but there was definitely an effort to communicate something by both parties and we managed to understand each other I think a fair amount of the time.

Yep. Some animals even show 'empathy', the ability to figure out your emotional state by observing you and changing their behaviour accordingly.

But it doesn't give them people rights any more than a Dolphin asking for a fish does.

On the other hand even if they weren't intelligent at all we'd still have some moral obligations towards them.

Heck, I know people I'd gladly trade for a Dog or a Dolphin for that matter.

Domesticated dogs appear to have "empathy" with humans because over thousands of generations, the ones who acted that way got fed and bred more.

Selective pressures on early humans "caused" them to behave as though they were experiencing emotion and demonstrating a sense of self, because those were the ones that got more food and produced more offspring. If dogs have evolved to demonstrate some of the behaviors humans do, how can anyone prove that they are simply mimicking those behaviors instead of actually experiencing the same neurochemical reaction we do?

It seems to me this could easily slide into a philosophical zombie argument. If dogs continue to be bred for human-like qualities for thousands more years, and eventually come to mimic nearly every human behavior, are they any different from humans at that point? Or are they actually just zombie animals demonstrating behavior without actually "experiencing" anything?

> how can anyone prove that they are simply mimicking those behaviors instead of actually experiencing the same neurochemical reaction we do?

Tests like the Turing test see that as irrelevant. Basically if an animal behaves like it feels emotions, it does feel emotions.

I think it's a reasonable barrier. Ant nests are fairly capable as reactive systems but limited by the inflexibility of the stigmergic control systems they're running on. I doubt such a substrate could implement true intelligence.

As for humans - "locked in" people are a special case, their outputs have been entirely disconnected (unlike dolphins). But we are pretty close to having the tech to reconnect them. Again, humans find a way around it.

Exception: there are humans who IMO do not qualify as people. That is, no measurement even with a mind-reading machine would call them sapient - they get grandfathered in because they share a species with us

Are dolphins intelligent in a different way than chimps?

This is an example of somewhat parallel evolution after all.

Good, we should then start making them liable for violations of laws as well. Dolphin researchers know for example that some dolphins like to form gangs and go around harassing other dolphins and forcing themselves sexually on female dolphins. Should we also send out the police patrol and lock them up?

No, you should leave that to the Dolphin police.

To force human norms and laws on Dolphins would be to anthropomorphize (sp?) and that is exactly what the article warns against.

If you start of from the assumption they are non-human persons then you'll have to admit to their right to self govern their society.

What about when dolphins violate human laws? Like breaking undersea cables or eating fish hauls still in net, or attacking a human or some other such violation?

This would seem to be most closely analogous to an international border violation.

No, you are still trying to treat Dolphins as human persons.

Dolphins could not violate human law since they are not human.

International implies nations, Dolphins probably would not recognize nations.

For an encore, with a wink to Douglas Adams, they might not even recognize humans as particularly intelligent.

Of course we both know that mice are in charge. :)

I think though, what this shows is that there is the potential for a very interesting and lively debate as to how far something like "non-human person" extends. If we don't hold them liable to any kind of responsibility for particular extensions of rights beyond what we'd show any other animal, then are we not just treating them like another animal -- and thus the new classification as a "non-human person" is simply superfluous?

I think your right about that (besides the mice being in charge, which we take as given).

The funny thing here is that this is all fine and good as long as we're dealing with inferior intellects, wait what happens if a superior intelligence should come across us and decides to capture and domesticate us and treat us like food.

I'm pretty sure we'd be arguing for equal rights for animals :)

I really don't remember the title of the story, I think it was a short story in an anthology, it read as a 'care and feeding of your khod' or something like that.

The basic idea was that the story was told from the viewpoint of an alien species that kept the obviously non-intelligent khod as a food stock. Lots of rules were laid down about how you should treat your khod if you wanted to get the most mileage out of them.

Particular care should be taken when slaughtering the khod, never do this in front of other khod that you do not intend to slaughter right away.

Only at the end of the story you realize the khod are captive humans.

I realize that this is supposed to be a joke, but there is an answer to your question and it is (of course) no.

Our law could easily deal with dolphins that enjoy human rights protection. Babies are given the full protection of human rights, yet they cannot vote, cannot drive and cannot be made responsible for any crime they may commit. Why not give certain animals a similar status?

Rights come with obligations; those who can't discharge those obligations get their rights taken from them. That's not a moral statement, either; that's a descriptive statement of what the current situation is. That is the way it is because it must be that way. Rights are, ultimately, the power to draw on the resources of others in the society (even "the right to free speech" is nothing more and nothing less than the right to draw on the resources of the society to defend your free speech), and for every such draw there must be a corresponding obligation or your putative "right" will draw against a non-existent account. While we like to think about the positive side of "rights", without the corresponding obligations they literally don't exist; phantoms tools that appear to exist right up to the moment when you pick one up whereupon it is revealed to be a trick of the light.

Babies are lent their basic rights against their future obligations, and the difference is made up by their parents. Babies and children are extended fewer rights because of their decreased ability to service the resulting obligations, too, so your example isn't even all that great as children's rights are necessarily quite curtailed.

Certainly our law could easily deal with obligationless-psuedorights enjoyed by animals, but our society can not deal with them having true rights. Dolphins can be extended unilateral protection, but they can't have actual rights until they can also discharge the resulting obligations.

Some would define "right" to include this sort of "unilateral protection" but I think that strips us of a valuable word, and encourages category errors as what are "unilateral protections" one minute silently get upgraded to "rights" (as I have defined them) the next. I am quite certain this is considered desirable by animal "rights" advocate, even if they are not consciously using this exact line of thought. I'm fairly confident that if you asked, animal rights activists would not care to be classified as animal-"unilateral protection" advocates.

(Moreover, giving dolphins rights would just be an open invitation to yet more corruption, in the form of "legal representatives" of the en-righted animals suing in the legal system for some recompense or other which oh-so-coincidentally will go back in the pockets of the representatives. If we're really lucky we'll set up a parallel "animal's right court" so the whole system can be set up as a rent-extraction racket. There is in fact an upper limit on how much of this sort of corruption we can tolerate as a society.)

(Applying my definition of "right" to the current discussion of a "health-care right" is an interesting exercise left to the reader. For every right, the question of "where's the corresponding obligation?" must be answered.)

Right, I was speaking a bit tongue in cheek, but I think you got the gist of my point. Since we cannot communicate with these animals in such a fashion as to learn their intent beyond the most basic needs (hungry, angry, sleepy) if that, granting rights without obligations to self-service those rights seems inappropriate beyond the rights we already grant any other animal.

Granting those rights would assume that there is some type of obligant who could service those rights, and those would almost certainly be people. Thus this opens up a fascinating thought experiment of parallel non-human persons rights courts and legal systems....imagine a stuffy wood paneled court room with a couple of water tanks, where the lawyers argue their cases for clients that could not possibly participate of understand what was going on. This opens the situation up for massive exploitation by the people taking on the roles of non-human person obligants.

Well, a nice definition of rights, but also one I don’t share. In my mind rights don’t come with obligations, and I would argue that many (for example) constitutions share that definition with me. (I know the German one does. It’s less clear with the US constitution but in context I would say it does – you know, all the talk about inalienable rights and stuff.) It’s kinda pointless to argue about definitions so I’ll stop here.

It's not a definitional matter. You can't have a right if nobody is obligated to honor it. Someone can walk up to you and say you have the right to free speech, but if in fact you say something the government doesn't like, you get tossed in jail, and nobody defends you, including the government, then you don't have the right to free speech, no matter how much you are told you do.

Mistaking being told you have rights for actually having rights is extraordinarily dangerous. An amazing number of so-called "rights" enshrined in Constitutions around the world are of this nature, and it's both sad and funny when somebody waves around, say, the Chinese constitution [1] and claims that it actually means that the Chinese have free speech (article 35) or freedom of religious belief (article 36), both of which are transparently false. People have died or been imprisoned for life for making that mistake. You may have the "right", but nobody has the obligations... so you in fact do not have the right. Just words.

(One of the great innovations of the Anglo-Saxon legal system was not just saying the word "right", but taking it seriously. Many countries around the world have learned how to say the word "right", far fewer have actually discovered how to follow up on it.)

[1] http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/constitution/constitution.... - in fact this entire document is a steaming pile of bullshit rights that don't actually exist.

> Why not give certain animals a similar status?

I think that we do don't we? What this appears to be raising is a new category or rights, between humans and animals. The ethical considerations for this will most likely also be new.

Yes it was a bit tongue in cheek, but I was also semi-serious. If we are to consider dolphins and great apes and such as something in that category, and provide them with an abridged set of rights (I think human infants is not a good, model, more like human children under 18), then we should also expect a certain level of lawfulness to go along with that.

How to make those laws? Should we start electing dolphins and great apes to congress? Unless we also figure out uplift (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_uplift) then probably not. But perhaps that limitation can also help guide us as to how to craft appropriate rights recognition and lawful behavior for these creatures.

I'm not against this kind of recognition per se, just that I think we have to really think carefully through it. Rights are not typically given out without some level of responsibility to go along with it.

You are totally correct. This is known as "argument from marginal cases" and the contortions people must enter to get around your argument are frequently hilarious. See http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/magazine/an-animal-s-place...

Why can't cats be persons? They certainly have personalities. And they can recognise themselves in mirrors; at least, my cat reacts differently to seeing himself than he would do to another cat.

They are also a lot cuter than dolphins.

Why not? We've tried to abuse test like IQ and apply them to dolphins and apes and such. Dogs and cats also seem to have a measurable IQ and they certainly have personalities and emotions. And outside of a few notable areas, eating any of these animals is generally considered taboo.

Finding about dolphins not mentioned in article:

Dolphins have names in dolphin speech. Sequence of sounds unique for each dolphin by uttering which other dolphins that know him might call him.

Personally I think it would be great if humans started treating other humans categorically in an ethical way.

That's a ways off I'm afraid though. It's important to see that these are obviously non-related issues but I don't have much hopes for our stance towards Dolphins as long as we haven't learned to do this with each other.

To me this is quite obviously a very related issue.

As long as people refuse to recognize the moral interests of animals, it is not logically consistent for them to respect moral obligations to other humans. The moral distinction between animals and humans is a completely arbitrary prejudice and should be immediately identified as such by anybody with even a basic understanding of evolutionary biology.

Humans are animals.

> Humans are animals.

I wished that was a universally accepted truth, alas that is very much not the case (not in the least in the US).

Somehow we seem to have gotten it in to our heads that we are special instead of simply evolved.

And then there are subsets of all humans that think that they in turn are even more special. Go figure...

Reminders me of this time article about whales:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/magazine/12whales-t.html

An elegant piece on them.

Does non-human person make them better than us?

I would think Bonobos are first in line for 'non human personhood'

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