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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?

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.

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.

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?

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 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

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.