Are Dolphins People?
I normally tweet things like this, but I have been reading Thus Spake Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil for what seems the 21th time (they should be read together, I have found) and this post really spoke to me.
From EcoGeek.org
Lori Marino at Emory University is taking a scientific approach to determining how human dolphi[n]s are. She’s simply running them through an MRI and measuring the complexity of their brains. The result, unsurprisingly, is that dolphins are extremely smart. Their brains, according to Emory, are more complex than any other non-human brain, beating out Chimpanzees for the title.
The question that post raises is how this fact should impact the way that treat dolphins and the ethics associated with that.
My question is a little more in depth, as I would love to question the fundamental values that led us to believe that (generally) humans are more valuable than dolphins.
As absurd as it may seem, ask yourself the question, “Why am I more valuable than a dolphin?” and then follow the chain down to your axiomatic values.
You may think that has a simple answer, but under careful scrutiny you end up with a teleological question and those sorts of questions are very hard indeed.
That aside, I think it is wonderful that we are getting some quant that we can use to determine the intelligence of a given non-human species.
“Why am I more valuable than a dolphin?”
Because I am me… but I think the real question is “why are you more valuable than a dolphin to me?”. Or if I had to, for example, choose between saving the life of a dolphin or a human which would I pick? Or a dolphin and a leech? My offspring or a deadly virus?
I think your own life is more valuable than a dolphins from your own perspective… but everything is relative. I bet in general, in order of value, it would go like:
1. offspring
2. self
3. immediate family
4. own species (which can have it’s own highly complex ranking system)
5. endangered species
6. intelligent lifeforms
7. own kingdom
8. other benign lifeforms
9. parasites / predators
It seems that people seem to put more value in a life form the more closely it resembles themselves. Do you consider dolphins more valuable than spinach? Seems most vegetarians do. Really they’re both alive in the same sense though. What if on the proverbial train tracks was strapped your parents and the last two (1 male and 1 female) dolphins on the entire planet? Or how about the last spinach seeds in existence and one of a billion dolphins (supposing there were that many for the sake of argument)? What if your child was dying (100% fatal and short life-span) and requested that you spare the other life-form? Complicated. I think value is totally relative to the other facts of the situation.
I think it’s complex and the value of a particular organism is different from the perspective of every other organism.
Justin Chase
5 Jan 10 at 22:13
@Justin Chase
I think it is worthwhile returning to the “Because I am me” statement; not that I don’t believe your line of inquiry was interesting, but rather because I think that explaining your statement can better inform your chosen line of thought.
Why is your existence of any value whatsoever and to whom/what would it be of value?
douglasp
6 Jan 10 at 00:02
“… to whom / what would it be of value?”
It would be of value to me, if anything has any value at all I would value myself. This would be from any individuals perspective. Everyone values themselves (mostly at least, the psychologically troubled excluded), I think all valuations are done relative to ones self. Therefore the objective value of any person / thing differs from person to person.
No?
So to try to layout some thoughts linearly, I’m thinking that:
- if anything has value I have value
- my offspring (or theoretical offspring since I actually have none) and spouse are the only things I value more than myself.
- the rest of the evaluation is described above (though it’s not rigid, in reality its much more complex).
- I probably value things in this way mostly instinctually.
- Natural selection has cultivated self preserving life forms since the very beginning and I am not excluded from that process.
- If I didn’t have self preserving instincts I would likely already be dead or, rather, would have never been born at all.
- Furthermore, survival or self-preservation seems like an objectively fair moral position.
- From an intelligent beings perspective, self preservation can take on a whole new level when you realize that our very lives are inextricably interwoven with and dependent upon complex ecosystems.
- Which means that our survival, our self-preservation, necessitates also ensuring the survival of as diverse a set of other life as possible.
- As a result, the unnecessary killing of any life ultimately decreases our own survival.
- That being said, unless you photosynthesize, your own survival is dependent upon the death of other organisms. The energy we depend upon to survive is taken directly from other life forms. Killing is a necessity.
- We have to intelligently select our food sources such that it ensures our own survival but also the survival of our own species and all other life forms.
- Dolphins seem to have more in common with humans than most other animals (mammals and they’re very intelligent) and they are also almost totally harmless to humans and actually friendly and helpful (nearly domesticated).
- And because of that I would place a much higher value on them then most other lifeforms.
I hope that didn’t degenerate too much at the end there. My general point is that while killing is natural and necessary unnecessary killing is actually counter-beneficial to the survival of our species. Which implies that while various things and lifeforms may have lower value to me than my own life, there are very very few things worthy of indiscriminate killing (polio virus is one, for example).
What do you think? How do you evaluate anything?
Btw, most of this is not concrete. I’m just thinking out loud. Don’t hold me to this 10 years from now
Justin Chase
13 Jan 10 at 17:17