Putting an end to dolphin exploitation at aquatic theme parks

A number of years ago I visited Sea World in Orlando, Florida. The experience proved to be a formative one, as it would mark the last time I would ever visit an aquatic theme park. What I saw there at the dolphin show that day shattered all illusions I had about the treatment of dolphins at these parks, while at the same time demonstrating to me the obvious ways in which they can express their individuality and intentions—and how this is conveniently ignored by us in ways that are completely self-serving.

The show got off to a rocky start. As the cheesy performance music blared through the loudspeakers, the trainers enthusiastically marched to the stage and assumed their positions. They blew their high-pitched whistles and waited for the dolphins to do their part.

But the dolphins ignored the cue. They swam nervously in their holding tank, circling and circling.

The trainers tried again, but the dolphins remained steadfast. They weren't going anywhere.

So, the trainers stopped the show and addressed the audience. We were told that, as a hierarchical species, the leaders of the troop were preventing the rest of the dolphins from partaking in the show. The reason, they suspected, was on account of a looming storm.

Indeed, hurricane Ernesto was slated to hit the region in the next 24 hours, and it's likely that the dolphins, sensing the low pressure system, were in a state of agitation. The last thing they wanted to do at that moment was to follow commands and perform tricks.

Unfazed, the trainers said they weren't about to let the dolphins have their way and that they were going to try and try again until they performed the show as expected.

Once again, the trainers marched to their stations and the cheesy music began anew. After another short delay, the dolphins finally decided to take part. But I have to say, it was the most half-assed effort I've ever seen put on by dolphins. They consistently missed their cues and went about their jumps and tricks as if they were just going through the motions.

What was happening was blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention: Their hearts were simply not into it.

As I sat there watching this spectacle, I started to feel ill, and I suddenly regretted coming to the park. I was hit hit with a glaringly obvious realization.

These dolphins are slaves.

Indeed, we are making these highly intelligent and emotional animals perform tricks against their will. They are confined to ridiculously small tanks and expected to perform on cue—and should they refuse, they're beaten back to submission by an unrelenting crew of trainers who simply won't take no for an answer—even if it's in front of a live audience.

Now, I realize that the dolphin show brings a lot of money to these parks—but the dolphin tank has got to go. It's cruelty through and through. As nonhuman persons, dolphins need to be protected from these kinds of abuses. They are not ours to play with.

We have no right to compel dolphins to entertain us. They deserve better than that. Moreover, we have no right to contain them in this way. Dolphins need to swim. In fact, in the wild, dolphins swim an average of 65 to 85 kilometers per day. The tanks at these theme parks must feel intensely claustrophobic to them. It's torturous.

And as I learned on that day at Sea World, dolphins are also capable of expressing their discontent. They can show us when they're not happy and they can express their will. We need to start paying attention and put aside our petty desire to watch dolphins jump through hoops.

It's time to stop this kind of animal exploitation.

Check out the IEET's Rights of Non-Human Persons program to learn more.

Peter Singer: Animal personhood by 2020

One of the many things I like about Peter Singer is his patient and pragmatic approach to animal rights. He realizes that major change doesn't happen overnight. So, instead of just hoping for a miraculous shift in public perception, Singer has methodically worked to see his vision for animal welfare and rights come to fruition. And in the grander scheme of things, that doesn't mean he can't dream big.

Writing in the Forbes article, 2020: Animal Advocates Surpass NRA In Political Influence, he speculates about what things might be like in ten years:

Perhaps even more significant has been the change in the legal status of animals, and the way we think about them. That movement began in Europe. Already in 2009 the European Union recognized it was wrong to think of animals merely as "property" and instead gave them a legal status that recognized them for what they are: "sentient beings." That opened the floodgates for court challenges against the confinement and mistreatment of animals.

In the United States the argument focused on our nearest relatives: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans. Supported by expert evidence that great apes are self-aware, rational beings with close personal relationships and rich emotional lives, courts began to recognize them as having rights, and appointed guardians to protect those rights, in much the same way as they appoint guardians to protect the rights of people with intellectual disabilities. In 2019 the U.S. Supreme court effectively ended research on great apes by requiring consent to each experiment from a guardian concerned with the welfare of each experimental subject. The court left open for further argument the extension of this principle to other animals.

Fingers are crossed.

Link.

IEET's Susan Schneider on transhumanism: Will enhancement destroy the "real you"?

Dr. Susan Schneider, IEET fellow, assistant professor of philosophy and an affiliated faculty member with Penns Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science, speaks at a UPenn Media Seminar on Neuroscience and Society on philosophical controversies surrounding cognitive enhancement.

In this video, Schneider wonders if radical enhancement, particularly cognitive enhancement that gives rise to superintelligence, will result in the destruction of the original person in favor of something categorically different. Schneider also discusses uploading and the continuity of experience -- including the apparent problem of destructive cloning/copying.

Via Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

What is a person?

A number of Sentient Developments readers have asked what I mean when I refer to non-human persons and the personhood spectrum. It's a fair question, and to be honest, I have yet to see a satisfying personhood taxonomy with an attendant list of traits that fully circumscribe the personhood continuum. I consider this an incredibly important issue as we move into a 'transhuman condition' and as we work to give non-human animals greater moral consideration. If I ever go back to school I think this will be a likely topic for a thesis.

A big question I would like to answer is, should personhood status be described as a spectrum or as a definitive, fixed state. In other words, are dolphins and bonobos as much persons as a genetically modified and cyborgized transhuman? And is such a distinction even necessary? Should persons, regardless of where they are situated in the personhood spectrum, all have the same moral and legal considerations? More philosophically, given the space of all possible minds, how can we begin to identify the space of all possible persons within that gigantic spectrum?

As for defining and circumscribing personhood, a number of thinkers have tried to give it a shot. First out the gates was Joseph Fletcher, an Episcopalian theologian and bioethicist, who argued for a list of fifteen “positive propositions” of personhood. These attributes are:

• minimum intelligence
• self-awareness
• self-control
• a sense of time
• a sense of futurity
• a sense of the past
• the capability of relating to others
• concern for others
• communication
• control of existence
• curiosity
• change and changeability
• balance of rationality and feeling
• idiosyncrasy
• neocortical functioning

Many of Fletcher's traits are fairly subjective, open to argument (e.g. how do you measure intelligence, and how intelligent is intelligent enough?) and difficult to test scientifically (at least by today's standards). But what's interesting about this list is that not all human beings qualify as persons, and not all persons qualify as human. Moreover, individuals, at one time or another, are not persons. Fletcher argued that some severely developmentally challenged humans were not persons, and that chimeras and cyborgs might someday qualify as persons (what he called "parahumans").

Further, as Linda MacDonald Glenn noted in her paper, "When Pigs Fly? Legal and Ethical Issues in Transgenics and the Creation of Chimeras," Fletcher's list is more of a continuum (which is not necessarily a problem -- an idea I'm rather partial to) than a description of a definitive and fixed state -- the advantage being that it would serve as a better model for application to legal theory and practice.

Looking to the future, and as we move forward with NBIC technologies, we run the risk of denying essential basic liberties to intelligent and sentient beings should we fail to better elucidate what it means to be a person (whether they be non-human animals or artificially intelligent agents). As Glenn notes, we need to be prepared to ask, "How can we preserve our human rights and dignity despite the fact that our 'humanness' may no longer be the exclusive possession of Homo sapiens?"

Thankfully there appears to be a trend in favor of widening the circle of moral consideration to some non-human animals. We obviously have laws against animal abuse, some animal experimentation, and unacceptably constrained levels of confinement. More significantly, however, a number of countries are looking to see highly sapient and emotional non-human animals like the great apes be given proper personhood status along with all the attendant legal protections.

Ultimately, what a lot of people need to realize is that their status as persons will not be diminished should "lesser" animals be granted personhood status. This is a common concern -- that it would be undignified for humans to have to recognize the presence of other persons who are not human.

There are two things I'll say to that: First, it's our humaneness and sense of social justice that's important -- not that we're "human," and second, as we work to develop greater-than-human artificial intelligence, we are poised to lose our exalted status as the the most "highly evolved" creature on the planet. We better position our laws and social mechanisms in such a way that all persons will be protected when the time comes (the caveat being that we'll actually have a say in the matter once we hit that Singularity point).

Support the Great Ape Project.

The myth of our exalted human place - A SentDev Classic

I'm still stewing about Spiked Online and their misguided mission to malign the animal rights movement. In particular, I'm upset at Chris Pile's assertion that animal rights activists are acting misanthropically by putting the welfare of animals on par with those of humans.

It's similar to Wesley Smith's argument that transhumanists, like animal rights advocates, are demeaning humans by ascribing personhood characteristics to non-humans.

In the case of transhumanists, they're anticipating existence outside of the evolved human form and the rise of artificial intelligence and machine minds, whereas animal rights folks are acknowledging the personhood of gorillas, elephants, whales and dolphins. Ultimately, however, transhumanists and animal rights advocates are on the same wavelength in that they support the idea of non-anthropocentric personhood.

In his article, “The Transhumanists: The Next Great Threat to Human Dignity,” Smith declares that humans “are not just another animal in the forest,” and that “human life has ultimate value simply and merely because it is human.”

Of course, the argument that humans have value because they're human is not really an argument at all. Rather, it's a rhetorical tautology devoid of any substance – except for what it reveals about the person making the argument.

Like Pile, Smith believes that humans occupy a special metaphysical or exalted space somewhere between the beasts and gods. Even when framed in secular language, the allusion to religious sensibilities is inescapable and one that informs an indelible part of this ideology. Along similar lines, the whole idea of 'dignity' itself arose during the time of aristocracy, a period when the nobility accredited their 'blue blood' as the essence which separated them from the lesser members of humanity.

Consequently, those arguments that bemoan the demise of human dignity are conspicuously promoted by those who steadfastly cling to these notions as they have been reconstituted and manifested by 21st century concerns. I'm speaking, of course, of inhibitions against ascribing personhood to non-humans. This speciesism, or what James Hughes refers to as human-racism, is one of the worst prejudices of our time.

Today, our gods and kings have been replaced by reason and liberal democracies. As a society, we have grown increasingly tolerant and accommodating of minority groups and those without power. We no longer enslave the 'other' and relegate our women to second class citizenry for fear of undermining human dignity. Similarly, as we are coming to recognize the psychological and emotional workings of non-human animals, we stand to take our morality and ethical commitments to the next level.

At the very core, though, what the speciests cannot bear is when an animal's life is 'put ahead' of a human's. More accurately, what they find repugnant is the thought of a human death when a cure could have been developed through animal experimentation -- the underlying assumption being that an animal's life does not have the same value as a human's. To the speciest, the animal's suffering is either not really happening (i.e. the misconception that animals don't really feel things the way people do), or that its suffering is a justifiable sacrifice in the name of science or in helping more 'worthy' human lives.

These rationalizations are the result of human arrogance and a mass hallucination among those who condone and perform the work; they operate in total denial, deliberately choosing to ignore the overwhelming evidence that animals get frightened and can experience pain the same way we do. There's also the 'blame the victim' mentality. In 2004, for example, PETA recorded the conversations of Covance technicians as they were restraining monkeys: "Goddamn...I'm gonna knock you out...you little bitch...you little hateful ass, you."

There is no doubt that much scientific and medical advancement has occurred as a result of animal experimentation. But this is tainted knowledge, much like the tainted knowledge acquired by the Nazi doctors who tested on human subjects. Nazi doctors weren't so much sadistic as they felt their work was justified. Much like we have devalued the life and well-being of non-human animals, the Nazis de-valued an entire race of people.

Without a doubt many lives could be saved today if we allowed the inhumane testing of human subjects. But what a repulsive and abhorrent idea! It for this exact same sense of repulsion and abhorrence that we cannot continue to allow cruel experimentation on animals deserving of personhood status and moral consideration. Denying the psychological experience of each and every animal that is experimented upon is a gross breach of our reason and moral sensibilities.

And contrary to what Spiked Online, Chris Pile and Wesley Smith believe, animal rights activists are not misanthropic. In fact, they're quite the opposite. It's not just animals whose well-being they consider, it's a concern for all creatures capable of conscious experience and complex emotion.

Consequently, it is when we consider the well-being of both human and non-human animals that we become truly humane.

This article was originally published on April 25, 2006.

Cows are people, too - A SentDev Classic

This article was originally published on March 5, 2005.

As someone concerned with and supportive of non-anthropocentric personhood ethics, I've long insisted that any agent capable of subjective and emotional experience--no matter how subtle or simple--deserves moral consideration. Consequently, even the most "lowly" non-human animals IMO qualify for personhood status of varying degrees; it's been long known that many animals have their own personalities and emotional life. Moreover, most of them are capable of suffering, so as animal rights activist Peter Singer has bravely and cogently argued, we need to look out for their welfare.

Reinforcing this notion, recent studies have shown that farm animals do in fact exhibit human-like qualities in terms of their emotional life and in their relations with other animals. Cows in particular, who are often used as an example to showcase mindless docility in animals, do in fact have a complex internal psychological life in which they bear grudges, nurture friendships and become excited over intellectual challenges. They're also capable of feeling strong emotions such as happiness, pain, fear and even anxiety.

And very importantly, it's now suspected that they are even capable of worrying about the future--a psychological attribute that is often considered a critical threshold in personhood determination (i.e. a person should be capable of making plans and having intentions over time). If cows are worrying about the future, that means that i) they have a sense of self, ii) they are concerned about their welfare (which is intention), and iii) they can imagine themselves in the future (which it can be argued is a type of planning, in that they "plan" or expect themselves to exist in the future). Sounds like a person to me.

Many of these characteristics have been observed in other farm animals, including pigs, goats, and chickens. Consequently, animal rights advocates are urging that animal welfare laws need to be significatnly rethought and reconsidered. Christine Nicol, professor of animal welfare at Bristol University, believes that because remarkable cognitive abilities and cultural innovations have been revealed, "[o]ur challenge is to teach others that every animal we intend to eat or use is a complex individual, and to adjust our farming culture accordingly.” She argues that even chickens should be treated as individuals with needs and problems.

Other observations about farm animal behaviour include:

• cows within a herd form smaller friendship groups of between two and four animals with whom they spend most of their time, often grooming and licking each other
• cows will also dislike other cows and can bear grudges for months or years
• dairy cow herds have a complex and intense sex life
• cows become excited when they solve intellectual challenges; when solving problems, their heartbeats go up and some even hump into the air in excitment
• sheep can remember 50 ovine faces (even in profile) and they can recognise another sheep after as much as a year apart

John Webster, a professor of animal husbandry at Bristol, has just published a book on the topic, Animal Welfare: Limping Towards Eden. “People have assumed that intelligence is linked to the ability to suffer and that because animals have smaller brains they suffer less than humans. That is a pathetic piece of logic,” he said.

Peter Singer: Of great apes and men

Peter Singer says that, as Spain takes one great step forward for animal rights and liberty, activists elsewhere are persecuted:

If we regard human rights as something possessed by all human beings, no matter how limited their intellectual or emotional capacities may be, how can we deny similar rights to great apes? To do so would be to display a prejudice against other beings merely because they are not members of our species - a prejudice we call speciesism, to highlight its resemblance to racism. The Spanish resolution marks the first official acceptance of that view. The use of the term "slavery" in relation to animals is especially significant, for it has been assumed that animals are rightly our slaves, to use as we wish, whether to pull our carts, be models of human diseases for research, or produce eggs, milk, or flesh for us to eat. Recognition by a government that it can be wrong to enslave animals is a significant breach in the wall of exclusive moral significance we have built around our own species. -- Peter Singer

Entire article.

The struggle to make vegetarianism the new normal

Wow.

In my wildest dreams I would have never imagined the kind of negative response I got to my vegetarian rant. My attempt to stir debate was set aflame on account of my tone, which as Martin Striz correctly noted, "psychologically primed [my] readers for a certain kind of response by framing the discourse in a disparaging tone to begin with."

Clearly, I misjudged the severity of this 'disparaging tone,' while my efforts to infuse humour and levity into the piece clearly failed; I obviously need to work on that.

But one thing I certainly learned from this exercise is that people are hypersensitive to rather forceful attacks on their dietary habits and their choice to eat meat. I clearly hit a soft-spot in a way that enraged a number of my readers. I even lost a number of regulars -- a consequence I find most fascinating. While I'm sure that many of these individuals were upset at my attitude and my over-the-top effort to proselytize, I have to think that the subject matter had a lot to do with it as well.

As I learned from writing this article, one cannot yet stand on a soapbox and make the declaration that eating meat is wrong without the fear of severe reprisal (particularly in the way that I did!). This exercise was a very clear reminder to me that vegetarianism is still very fringe, as is the broader effort to advocate for animal rights.

In other words, the debate hasn't yet been normalized in our society. Arguing for an end to livestock today would be tantamount to arguing for same-sex marriage in the 19th Century.

Now, I've pissed off my share of readers over the years. I'm a polemicist and I wear that label like a badge. I'm used to all the negative feedback and ad hominem attacks. In fact, I consider a polemical article a failure if I get very little response; it means I didn't say anything of import, I didn't push any buttons.

But this last article, jeez did I ever hit a nerve.

And over what?

Meat.

It wasn't like I was saying we should abandon democracy or throw away the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I wasn't suggesting that we bomb Iraq or that we should be forced to wear clown suits from now on.

Nope, it was about meat.

I told my readers in very blunt terms that the practice of eating meat is unethical and that they should consider converting to a vegetarian diet. That message earned me the most abuse of any post I have ever written about anything.

Meat.

Yes, I used a big stick approach, but that was very deliberate. It was an effort to get attention.

One commenter suggested that I should have written a very polite article in which I carefully made my points. Sure, I could have done that -- but no one would have read it. Instead, with my sensationalistic approach I brought thousands of people to the article.

Did I change any minds? Well, maybe -- I know that at least one couple has converted to vegetarianism on account of my article. But my intention to change minds was indirect; what I really wanted to do was pass on the message that eating meat is very uncool -- and I think that accounts for a lot of the anger.

The in-your-face nature of the post was intended to upset and cajole. I wanted meat eaters to know what I think of their habits. I wanted them to know that there are people in our society who look at their eating choices with disgust and disdain. This is a very serious issue -- about as serious as it gets because we are talking about the welfare of living, breathing creatures (not to mention the environment).

Another reason for all the negative feedback is that a significant portion of my readership could care less about animal rights. They visit my site to read about transhumanism, science, futuristic technologies, the search for extraterrestrial life, and so on. The sudden shift to animal welfare and vegetarianism must have certainly seemed like a huge disconnect and a real turn-off.

But there is good reason for this; much of my transhumanist methodology is derived from non-anthropocentric personhood ethics. At its very core transhumanism is about the acknowledgment of worthwhile and morally valuable personhood space outside of Homo sapiens -- whether it be the personhood of advanced humans or more 'primitive' non-human animals.

Consequently, this ties directly into my futurist activism; I want to help create a future in which animals do not have to suffer to the degree that they do today. Sure, technology can and will help to make that happen, but today we have to use common sense food choices.

Now, in regards to the accusation that I'm a 'bigot' or intolerant of meat eaters, that's an interesting point. Bigotry, I suppose, is relative. Let's imagine for a moment that I had written an article titled 'Racists are bad people,' or 'Homophobes are bad people.' Do you think I would have received the same kind of negative response? Hardly. Aside from a few anachronistic and unenlightened perspectives I'd get a slew of comments saying, 'right on, brother.'

But the fact that I didn't get these sorts of supportive comments, aside from a small minority, indicates to me that our transition to a mostly meat-free society is a process still in its infancy.

And yes, this is not just my vision for the future, it's also an imperative and a prediction.

The ultimate goal is an end to livestock and to make vegetarianism the new normal (eventually we'll have lab grown meat at our disposal, but until then vegetarianism is a good short-term fix). How do we achieve this goal? Well, we can continue to pussy-foot around the issues and act like everything is okay, or we can raise a stink much like I did. I don't tolerate racism, homophobia, religious prejudice and sexual discrimination, nor do I tolerate speciesist meat-eating culture.

Yes, I realize that this perspective will turn off many of my readers, but for that I make no apologies.

And I don't believe I'm out of line with these sorts of comparisons. I assign high-moral worth to non-human animals. They are not our property to do with as we please. This is a crucial social issue as millions upon millions of animals suffer needlessly every year.

In closing, to those of you were offended by my rude and belligerent tone, please accept my apologies. For those readers who were angered by my message itself, please ask yourself what it is you're getting so upset about and contrast that with what I'm so upset about.

I would like to see less animal suffering, improvements to human health and a reduction in environmental degradation.

You want to eat meat.

Does this not seem disproportionate to you?

William Crawley interviews Peter Singer

Peter Singer on the 'Ashley Treatment'

Influential bioethicist Peter Singer has waded into the Ashley X debate and, as usual, is not afraid to plunge head-first into controversy. In addition to the now-familiar arguments in favour of the so-called Ashley Treatment, Singer questions the whole issue of 'dignity' and how it applies to this debate. He goes even further by posing the difficult but necessary question of dignity and the value of non-human persons.

Here's an excerpt from Singer's NYT article, A Convenient Truth:

Finally, there is the issue of treating Ashley with dignity. A Los Angeles Times report on Ashley’s treatment began: “This is about Ashley’s dignity. Everybody examining her case seems to agree at least about that.” Her parents write in their blog that Ashley will have more dignity in a body that is healthier and more suited to her state of development, while their critics see her treatment as a violation of her dignity.

But we should reject the premise of this debate. As a parent and grandparent, I find 3-month-old babies adorable, but not dignified. Nor do I believe that getting bigger and older, while remaining at the same mental level, would do anything to change that.

Here’s where things get philosophically interesting. We are always ready to find dignity in human beings, including those whose mental age will never exceed that of an infant, but we don’t attribute dignity to dogs or cats, though they clearly operate at a more advanced mental level than human infants. Just making that comparison provokes outrage in some quarters. But why should dignity always go together with species membership, no matter what the characteristics of the individual may be?

What matters in Ashley’s life is that she should not suffer, and that she should be able to enjoy whatever she is capable of enjoying. Beyond that, she is precious not so much for what she is, but because her parents and siblings love her and care about her. Lofty talk about human dignity should not stand in the way of children like her getting the treatment that is best both for them and their families.