Ryan Lanham pointed us out to an interesting article in Science, arguing for recognizing dolphins as persons.

See:

– Dolphins should be treated as “non-human persons” and merit special rights above other animals because they are so bright, scientists claim.

This prompted the following interesting commentary by Andy Robinson, providing interesting context for the debate:

“We have a lot of animal peers… Dogs are the most obvious example, they seem to see us as part of their pack, which itself is based on a contingent affinity-power model. I’ve heard it argued that without dogs to do our sniffing for us, humans could never have evolved our brains (which require that our snouts shrink). Horses also have a special kind of relationship with humans over time – and cats would probably question who domesticated whom. Bonobo chimps (humans’ closest relatives) have a societal form which is in some respects ideally horizontal. Then there’s the species which seem to operate solely by collective intelligence, such as ants and bees. Indigenous societies tend to view all of nature as something like a peer-to-peer web. And spookily, the major monotheist religions all developed ethical taboos against eating some of the more intelligent animal species (dogs, pigs, monkeys) way before modern science established their intelligence – perhaps they’re a little too human-like for comfort?

There’s a certain ethical break between theories which operate on a horizontalist, egalitarian and networked basis, but restricted to humans (with the rest of existence viewed as “resources”), and those which attempt to extend the horizontal network of equals into existence as a whole – eco-anarchism, animal liberationism, actor-network theory and the like. Humans are quite resistant to such extension as the big increase in individual-human choice and power which comes from the former extension is undercut to some degree by the latter – we don’t have to worry about being accountable to authorities anymore, but suddenly we have to be sustainable, consume ethically, etc. I wonder, though, if a horizontal world based exclusively on humans could ultimately survive. For one thing, there seems to be a continuity between relating to nature hierarchically and failing to pay attention to it – and the latter leads to unsustainability, which is a problem even from an anthropocentric perspective. For another, divides constructing an excluded Other are always rather porous, and the danger of being “dehumanised” is never far away – all that needs to be done to put someone outside the horizontal peer-network is to redefine them as insufficiently human. I think people also have difficulties with the extension because the idea of nature as egalitarian or abundant runs up against a whole history of Darwinist/Malthusian metaphor in human views of nature, establishing equivalence between processes in nature (predation, extinction, violence) and processes in capitalism, or in a Hobbesian war of all against all. (Ever noticed how TV cavemen are always white, solitary, violent, and prone to clubbing women over the head?) An adequate perspective on nature has to take account of these processes, but the metaphors in question are not the only way of doing so – Amazonian views of predation as absorption rather than elimination, and Nietzsche’s discussion of why the sheep should not be preferred to the wolf are among various contributions which point beyond this particular fantasmatic construction.”