Dolphin Rights

according to wiki, "in 2009 a group of researchers concluded that dolphins are second in intelligence to humans, and suggested that their status be elevated to that of "non-human persons". there is no doubt that dolphins possess amazing cognitive abilities and self-awareness. Just watch this youtube video of dolphins acting towards themselves in mirrors https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=YBYU1eayaXs. But is that enough to give dolphins rights usually applicable to human beings. If so, it could give a whole new meaning to countries like Japan that engage in the slaughter of dolphins for food.

Chimps are smarter than dolphins, IIRC.

So do a number of other animals. Elephants for example as well as many species of apes and monkeys. I could care less about flipper

What about my small dog who frequently checks her self out in a mirror and communicates with us in a meaningful fashion?

edited 2nd Dec '10 9:38:54 PM by TuefelHundenIV

in b4 evil dolphins

There definitley among the smartest animals, but I'd say human rights are a stretch, especially because what Japan does is pretty much illegal already, isn't it?

Sort of illegal but they seem to push beyond the legal limits anyways.

Oh god do not mention the evil dolphins.

edited 2nd Dec '10 9:40:39 PM by TuefelHundenIV

I'd say we should get Human Rights for humans before we move on to other animal groups.

Dolphins aren't human, therefore they can't have human rights.

Smart animals might be a grounds for taking animal rights more seriously than we do, surely? I mean, I don't think animal rights are generally taken as seriously as human rights. Maybe they should be.

I think it's an interesting thing to consider, anyway.

Taken seriously yes. As seriously as human rights no.

Well, obviously human rights would have precedent if they were to conflict with one another, but under other circumstances, why not?

Why limit it to Dolphins?

Eh?

EH?

Yeah, I feel that some animals deserve a few more rights than others, if we're going to keep this whole "sapience as advanced sentience" schtick we have going for ourselves. And I think that we should try to keep it.

Especially controversial case, the only real evidence I've seen for it has been self-recognition in a mirror and ability to play simple video-games at a very low level.

Pigs.

It seems that being omnivorous or at least opportunistic helps. I dunno if that's cause or effect though. I try not to eat pig-meat, these days, anyway. And I'm definitely cutting down on Dolphin.

But they're soooo tasty. Seriously they are; grill with some lemon zest and rice.

edited 3rd Dec '10 11:34:40 AM by Kino

One day an ape is going to manage to make an irrefutable announcement that it demands human rights in some way or another and then there will be massive controversy.

that will be an interesting occurrence.

Bobby I would not give them the same level of rights as humans simply because they are not human they are animals. Highly intelligent and so much more yes but still not humans.

Your avatar is...appropriate.

PURGE THE XENOS!

I wasn't suggesting that animals be given the same rights as humans, merely that there possibly ought to be the same taboo attached to the breaking of animal rights as human rights.

If dolphins have rights, do they have a right to not be killed by another dolphin? How about a right to not be raped?

Animal Rights, according to most people on this thread, would work differently to Human Rights, and thus would probably be designed to allow for natural occurrences such as the ones you are talking about without a need for preventative measures or punishment.

Are killing and raping natural when dolphins do it and unnatural when humans do it?

No. Killing and raping are still (sadly) natural human behaviours.

However, I think humans are sufficiently advanced overall as to be unnatural — you might use the word 'civilised', which I think amounts to the same thing. This means we get to use civilised morals. But imposing these civilised morals on the wild is something that we simply cannot yet do, for two reasons:

• It sets a dangerous precedent.
• We cannot predict the knock-on effects of interfering with natural events like these in many ways.

"It sets a dangerous precedent" is especially relevant here, as dolphins killing dolphins, one might say, is clearly immoral, as it occurs between individuals of a certain level of sapience, and should be punished or prevented — but then, what if a shark looks like it's about to kill a dolphin? Do we now have an obligation to intervene there? If not, why not? And it gets worse from there.

Civilisation, the 'unnatural' laws of morality, don't and should not apply to the wild, but they should apply to our relationship with the wild.

EDIT: Another argument would be when we give people an exemption from responsibility. For instance, the mentally disabled or ill are generally held by law and by most morality systems (perhaps not yours, I'm not sure how off-topic this could get though) to have diminished responsibility for their actions.

I haven't thought this through very much, so there's likely to be some flaws in my thinking. Thanks for subjecting this thread to some more serious analysis, this has made me think hard.

edited 4th Dec '10 11:01:28 AM by mmysqueeant

Ahh makes more sense now bobby. I thought there was a taboo about that already such as animal abuse or doing deliberately cruel things to them is not only highly frowned upon but is criminal and a sign of mental disorder?

There are still plenty of places in the world where humans don't have the rights they ought to. Maybe we should fix that before moving on to the near-impossible task of giving animals rights proportional to their intelligence.

Isn't it funny, though, that we automatically leap to dolphins and monkeys, the cute ones, as a candidate for rights? Some species of birds and cephalopods are extremely intelligent, but people eat cuttlefish and octopus all the time.

I see you read my posts then...

Yes, I agree that we should sort out the pressing issues of human morality first.

As long as there are humans, there will be human morality issues. That doesn't give us a free pass to ignore complex non-human moral issues.

Perhaps "as a priority" would have been better than "first", sorry. Bad way of expressing myself.

-slaps self-.

I do think it should be a clear priority though.

They're Completely Missing The Point. It's about sentience, not sapience. If it can feel pleasure or pain, then for all intents and purposes, it's a person. If it's a super-intelligent AI, but it has no emotions, it won't care what happens to it, so you can feel free to do whatever you want to it.

Also, I'm a utilitarian, so I don't think people really have rights, unless you count happiness.