Dolphins deserve same rights as humans, say scientists

&#62;&#62; They believe dolphins and whales are sufficiently intelligent to justify the same ethical considerations as humans.<p>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 <i>sole</i> criteria.<p>For instance, could a person with Down's Syndrome be denied protection from murder?<p>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."<p>Especially considering how slippery the definition of "intelligence" is.

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?<p>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.

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.

Ok, so if dolphins were given the same rights as humans, what is done when one dolphin kills another dolphin or other offenses[1]?<p>1) <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2009/05/13/dolphins_are_violent_predators_that_kill_their_own_babies.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2009/05/13/dolphins_are...</a>

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.

I'd like to reference an argument presented here before when this same issue came up.<p>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?<p>SO either, the escaped dolphins did not communicate the danger, were unable to communicate, or just didn't care what happened to other dolphins.<p>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?

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.<p>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 <i>all</i> animals deserve <i>equal</i> rights to humans, which is an absurdity that doesn't help their cause, since it drives more reasonable people away from the idea that <i>some</i> animals really do deserve these rights.

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

&#62; 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<p>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.<p>I wasn't aware of any scientific method to prove self awareness.

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.

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

<p><pre><code> 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.</code></pre>

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.<p>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.

"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.

Philosophically related Podcast [About 15 minutes] on animal abolitionism with Gary Francione at Philosophy Bites.<p>It contains a well reasoned critique of Peter Singer's approach to animal rights which has become mainstream.<p><a href="http://philosophybites.com/2012/10/gary-l-francione-on-animal-abolitionism.html" rel="nofollow">http://philosophybites.com/2012/10/gary-l-francione-on-anima...</a>

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

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

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

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

I'm okay with this.

so long and thanks for all the fish..?<p>aquatic jerks?

P

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

Dolphins voting you say. Obama, to the aquarium!