10 ms·

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 responsi

• sethbannon 14y ago
  A 10 month old has no responsibilities. Certainly, though, she has rights.
  • jlgreco 14y 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.
    • crusso 14y ago
      Short of new mutations, no dolphin has ever, is, or will ever be a fully functioning member of society. Rules of thumb regarding treatment of immature or disabled humans is not at all appropriate.
      • mistercow 14y ago
        >a fully functioning member of society What does that even mean?
        • jlgreco 14y ago
          I don't know, but I do know that if we all accepted that as a standard we would be in a much worse off place as a society since most times I hear the phrase "fully functioning member of society" the implied alternative is usually "penniless hippy".
        • crusso 14y ago
          Not sure where to start. How about if you imagine that a member of Society defined here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society Participates in one.
          • jlgreco 14y ago
            What you are suggesting basically just amounts to "dolphins cannot be a part of society because currently society only includes humans, and dolphins are different than humans." We are proposing a re-definition.
            • crusso 14y ago
              What you are suggesting ... That's not in the least what I'm suggesting. Dolphins cannot participate in our society by agreement. They don't understand what participating is. They're captured or born in captivity and then trained to perform a few tricks. They are beautiful and fascinating, but they have no contributions to make to the fiber of our society that can't be made by other animals, machines, or even simple objects. They are able to do nothing further. Giving them a new status is just semantics. They are fundamentally not functioning members of our society. Not individually. Not as a species.
              • jlgreco 14y ago
                What I would like to see is a special legal status/recognition given to dolphins. My motivation for wanting to see this done is that I think it would provide a sort of precedence for extending traditionally human rights to things that are not traditionally seen as equals of humans. I think there is a possibility that doing so may become necessary in the future, when "machines" and intelligence begin to blur.
              • Evbn 14y ago
                Black people aren't functioning members of our society either, said Jefferson Davis. Poor people don't contribute to our fiber of society in a way that can't be replaced by machines, said Mitt Romney.
      • jlgreco 14y ago
        Fully functioning in society seems to be setting the bar too high; we don't consider that a prerequisite for rights in humans by any reasonable interpretation. Now, will dolphins ever communicate their desire to achieve greater legal consideration? Not unless we put some more effort into researching communication with dolphins (and even then, I strongly suspect not). Not really a problem though I think.
        • crusso 14y ago
          we don't consider that a prerequisite for rights in humans by any reasonable interpretation. You miss my point. It's not a requirement for any individual, but it IS a requirement for members of a species in general. Most humans are functioning members of society. The ones that aren't, whether it's temporary or permanent are protected implicitly and explicitly through social contract and the laws we've created. No dolphin will ever be a functioning member of our society, thus dolphins are not part of society, thus dolphins do not take on the responsibilities of being in a relationship with humans, thus dolphins are not entitled to parallel status.
          • jlgreco 14y ago
            >"but it IS a requirement for members of a species in general." Is it? Considering we have never before in recorded history extended such consideration to another species, it seems unlikely that there are existing standards we can look to. There are many things you can observe "most" humans doing, but that does not mean those things are all prerequisites for special legal and ethical consideration.
          • mistercow 14y ago
            >It's not a requirement for any individual, but it IS a requirement for members of a species in general. How can you possibly make that sort of generalization when there is only one species that is commonly accepted as having rights?
          • papsosouid 14y ago
            No, it is not a requirement, that is what the discussion is about. If it were a requirement, we wouldn't be trying to decide if it should be a requirement or not. Using a sample size of one to prove a point is absurd.
  • crusso 14y 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.
  • monsterix 14y 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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM1-DQ2Wo_w
    • lumberjack 14y ago
      >There is no chance any animal/fish is going to survive the brunt of us 9 billion in next fifty years. I won't be so sure considering that unlike a Virus we are aware of the damage we are causing and are already trying to mitigate it.
      • pyre 14y ago
        We can see a 100 ft. wave coming at our rowboat, and some of us are trying to paddle with our hands, and some of us are trying to design a better rowboat (predicting that there is enough time to design/build this before the wave hits), while others are arguing that the wave doesn't exist or will dissipate before it reaches us. I don't have a whole lot of faith.
      • monsterix 14y ago
        For one picture I see in future is us inhabiting an exo-planet; and Elon Musk et al showing us that direction and so on... In this dynamic, we as a virus race will choose the easiest way out even at the cost of all the species of this planet. 9 billion of us will, mark my words, only kill, eat or ridicule whatever that is left of the ecosystem today. I am actually afraid about cannibalism picking up too in distant hungry countries which are already off balance today. It's pretty grim. Dolphins will continue to be enslaved, slaughtered or even ridiculed for any "equal treatment" justified exactly the way this thread shows. Ground reality will of course be worse. To which I do agree with your statement that "we are aware" and that there is an exit for us even though some will definitely try to mitigate, protect and stay behind.
  • gadders 14y ago
    I always wondered where the assertion of "no rights without responsibilities" came from. Any ideas?
• Alex3917 14y 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.
  • analog 14y ago
    Surely this is mainly due to the language barriers though? If we could fully communicate, what then?
    • sageikosa 14y ago
      Not sure what fully communicate would mean? Do you suppose that dolphins have some untapped literary and rhetoric ability that once man figures out how to decode, we will be exposed to the a whole host of new great works?
  • papsosouid 14y 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.
• brudgers 14y 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.
  • Osmium 14y 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.
    • brudgers 14y ago
      If this was the case, then we would be as tolerant toward the house cat who plays with the bird before killing it without eating it as we would be toward a human who acted likewise. The well being of an animal is no better after a slow cruel death than a quick painless one. When well being comes into play we tend to prohibit killing specifically and instrumental uses in general, as is the case with humans. The free range chicken on your plate is no less dead than one raised under factory conditions which make us feel better about ourselves. Neither has any more being to which degrees of wellness may be applied.
      • Osmium 14y ago
        >If this was the case, then we would be as tolerant toward the house cat who plays with the bird before killing it without eating it as we would be toward a human who acted likewise. I don't think that's fair. It's more that we recognise the futility in punishing a house cat, which is incapable of changing its ways nor of comprehending the pain it inflicts.