Abstract
The discoveries of marine mammal scientists over the last 50 years have made it clear that whales and dolphins demonstrate advanced intellectual and emotional traits once believed to be unique to humans. Sadly, discussions of cetacean captivity are regularly marked by unsophisticated approaches to ethics. Senior scientists regularly fail to demonstrate even the most rudimentary skills of ethical analysis. As a result, most discussions of cetacean captivity in the marine mammal community are intellectually +weak—marked by the combination of formal and informal logical fallacies and a flawed understanding of such key concepts as “consciousness,” “personal identity,” “self-awareness,” “moral standing,” “moral rights,” “personhood,” and “flourishing.” Not surprisingly, similar weaknesses are evident in the arguments offered by representatives of businesses that profit from cetacean captivity. A fundamental problem regarding cetacean captivity, then, is blindness to the ethical significance of scientific facts already known. This essay argues that a proper understanding of the problem of cetacean captivity lies in an interdisciplinary and multi-faceted approach that combines both scientific and philosophical methodologies.
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Notes
- 1.
J. D. Gory and S. A. Kuczaj II, “Can Bottlenose Dolphins Plan their Behavior?” Paper presented at the Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals, Wailea, Maui, Hawaii, November–December, 1999; L. M. Herman, D. G. Richards, and J. P. Wolz, “Comprehension of Sentences by Bottlenosed Dolphins,” Cognition 16 (1984): 129–219. L. M. Herman, “Cognition and Language Competencies of Bottlenosed Dolphins,” in Dolphin Cognition and Behavior: A Behavioral Approach, eds. R. J. Schusterman, J. A. Thomas, and F. G. Wood (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1984), 221–252; L. M. Herman, A. A. Pack, and P. Morrel-Samuels, “Representational and Conceptual Skills of Dolphins,” in Language and Communication: Comparative Perspectives, eds. H. L. Roitblat, L. M. Herman, and P. E. Nachtigall (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum Associates, 1993), 403–442; L. M. Herman, P. Morrel-Samuels, and L. A. Brown, “Recognition and Imitation of Television Scenes by Bottlenosed Dolphins,” Eighth Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals (1989); L. M. Herman, A. A. Pack et al., “Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) Comprehend the Referential Character of the Human Pointing Gesture,” Journal of Comparative Psychology, 113, no. 4 (1999): 347; D. L. Herzing, “A Trail of Grief,” in The Smile of a Dolphin: Remarkable Accounts of Animal Emotions, ed. M. Bekoff (New York: Discovery Books, 2000), 138–139 and Dolphin Diaries: My 25 Years with Spotted Dolphins in the Bahamas (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011); S. A. Kuczaj II and R. S. Thames, “How do dolphins solve problems?” in Comparative Cognition: Experimental Explorations of Animal Intelligence, eds. T. R. Zentall and E. Wasserman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 580–601; J. Mann, R. C. Connor, P. L. Tyack, and H. Whitehead, eds., Cetacean Societies: Field Studies of Dolphins and Whales (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); L. A. Marino, “Brain-Behavior Relationships in Cetaceans and Primates: Implications for the Evolution of Complex Intelligence,” PhD diss., State University of New York at Albany (1995), 173. L. A. Marino, “Convergence of Complex Cognitive Abilities in Cetaceans and Primates,” Brain, Behavior and Evolution 59 (2002): 21–32; P. J. Morgane, M. S. Jacobs, and A. Galaburda, “Evolutionary Morphology of the Dolphin Brain,” in Dolphin Cognition and Behavior: A Comparative Approach, eds. R. J. Schusterman, J. A. Thomas, and F. G. Wood (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1986), 5–30; R. Diana and L. Marino, “Mirror Self-Recognition in the Bottlenose Dolphin: A Case of Cognitive Convergence,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 98, no. 10, May 8, 2001: 5937–5942); K. S. Norris, Dolphin Days: The Life and Times of the Spinner Dolphin (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1991); K. S. Norris, B. Wϋrsig, R. Wells, and M. Wϋrsig, The Hawaiian Spinner Dolphin (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994); K. Pryor and K. S. Norris, eds., Dolphin Societies: Discoveries and Puzzles (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991); J. E. Reynolds III, R. S. Wells, and S. D. Eide, The Bottlenose Dolphin: Biology and Conservation (Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2000); S. Ridgway, “Physiological Observations on Dolphin Brains,” in Dolphin Cognition and Behavior, ed. R. Smolker, To Touch a Wild Dolphin (New York: Doubleday, 2001), 31–60.
- 2.
Rendell, L., and H. Whitehead, “Cetacean Culture: Still Afloat after the First Naval Engagement of the Culture Wars,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24, 360–373.
- 3.
H. Whitehead, “The Cultures of Whales and Dolphins,” in Whales and Dolphins: Cognition, Culture, Conservation and Human Perceptions, eds. P. Brakes and M. P. Simmonds (London: Earthscan, London, 2011).
- 4.
For a full explanation, see my In Defense of Dolphins: The New Moral Frontier (Oxford: Wiley, 2007). The set of criteria I use sets the bar quite high: being alive; aware; the ability to experience positive and negative sensations (pleasure and pain); emotions; self-consciousness and a personality; self-controlled behavior; recognizes and treats other persons appropriately; and a series of higher order intellectual abilities (abstract thought, learning, solves complex problems and communicates in a way that suggests thought). The most recent extensive philosophical discussion of personhood and nonhumans is Gary Varner’s Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition: Situating Animals in Hare’s Two-Level Utilitarianism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Because Varner labels dolphins as “near persons,” it should be no surprise that I disagree with his analysis. However, it is beyond the scope of this essay to detail my reservations with his analysis.
- 5.
S. J. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man, revised and expanded. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996).
- 6.
C. W. Morris, “The Idea of Moral Standing,” in The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics, eds. T. L. Beauchamp and R. G. Frey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 255–275.
- 7.
Society for Marine Mammalogy, “Letter to Japanese Government Regarding Dolphin and Small Whale Hunts,” May 29, 2012.
- 8.
Immanuel Kant, Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. J. K. Ellington (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1981), Ak 4: 434–435.
- 9.
It is important to note three important points related to “moral rights.” First, “moral rights” are different from “legal rights,” which are the province of a legislature or other political body. All that is required for an entity to possess legal rights is that the legislature assigns them. As is apparent from the fact that corporations have a variety of legal rights, not even being a living being is necessary. “Moral rights” are different and, as will be shown below, are grounded in the defining properties and basic needs of the beings in question. Second, to argue that “persons have rights” should not be taken to imply that “nonpersons lack rights.” Third, there are many other bases for arguing that nonhuman animals deserve better treatment. Best known is Peter Singer’s position that sentience is enough to grant moral standing (Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for our Treatment of Animals (New York: New York Review/Random House, 1975)) which echoes Jeremy Bentham’s classic statement about nonhumans, “The question is not, Can [nonhumans] reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” (Principles of Morals and Legislation (New York: Hafner, 1948), 311). However, because personhood is a particularly strong basis for asserting that a being has rights, and because whales and dolphins qualify as persons, this essay offers this concept as a foundation for evaluating the ethical character of human actions towards these cetaceans.
- 10.
- 11.
The most important thinker to advance this perspective is Martha Nussbaum. Her “capabilities approach” makes central the concept of a being’s “flourishing.” First used in her Women and Human Development (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), Nussbaum approached issues of justice through “human capabilities, that is, what people are actually able to do and to be—in a way informed by an intuitive idea of a life that is worthy of the dignity of a human being.” She then applies this approach to nonhuman animals in her Frontiers of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006) and “The Capabilities Approach and Animal Entitlements,” in The Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics eds. T. L. Beauchamp and R. G. Frey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 228–254. Rejecting consequentialism’s view that “the best choice is defined as the one that promotes the best overall consequences,” Nussbaum endorses “the Aristotelian idea that each creature has a characteristic set of capabilities, or capacities for functioning, distinctive of that species, and that those more rudimentary capacities need support from the material and social environment if the animal is to flourish in its characteristic way.” Combining this with a Kantian idea that “we owe respect to each sentient creature considered as an end,” she observes “we should then find a way to argue that what we owe to each animal, what treating an animal as an end would require, is, first, not to obstruct the creature’s attempt to flourish by violence of cruelty, and, second, to support animal efforts to flourish in positive ways” (Oxford Handbook of Animal Ethics, 235–238).
A capabilities approach addresses major limitations of personhood by using the “flourishing” of a being as a central ethical issue and by recognizing the “species-specific” character of flourishing. Nussbaum’s reference to “species-typical ways of flourishing” and a “species norm” immediately requires that attention be paid to the differences, as well as the similarities, between humans and, for our purposes, whales and dolphins.
- 12.
While it is beyond the scope of this essay to draw out the details of this point of view, the general perspective being advanced is that these “basic needs” point to behaviors that are essentially adaptations which Homo sapiens has developed as mechanisms that make our survival, growth, development and well-being possible. That is, a claim that we have a right to “equal and nondiscriminatory treatment” would be viewed as a restriction on the way humans treat each other that grew out of the fact that human communities (and their individual members) likely have greater odds of survival and a sense of well-being when equal and nondiscriminatory treatment is the norm.
- 13.
It is critical to note that one of the most important teleological implications of personhood is that the advanced cognitive and affective abilities that persons possess produce a unique vulnerability to pain and suffering. Because persons are beings who experience life as self-aware individuals with sophisticated intellectual and emotional abilities (for example, the capacity to plan and control behavior, to form significant emotional relationships, to recall past events, and the like), they are vulnerable to a greater range of harms than is the case with nonpersons—not simply physical pain, but complex emotional pain such as traumatic memories, fear in the present, dread regarding the future, etc.
- 14.
As suggested earlier, the ultimate ethical implication of these differences in “basic needs” is that “moral rights” is a species-specific concept.
- 15.
L. Marino, “The Marine Mammal Captivity Issue: Time for a Paradigm Shift,” 207–231.
- 16.
Marino, 207.
- 17.
Unfortunately, this failing is currently very common in the marine science community. To cite just one example, Diana Reiss writes, “Since dolphins are, like humans, intelligent, self-aware beings with personalities, emotions, and the capability to govern their own behavior, [Thomas White] proposed they be viewed as ‘nonhuman persons’ … I worry about this argument, however—does it mean that other species may be mistreated?”(The Dolphin in the Mirror (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011), 248–249). Reiss’s findings (with Lori Marino) about mirror self-recognition in dolphins are one of the key pieces of evidence for supporting the claim that dolphins are persons. However, Reiss is unaware that her worry is unwarranted. First, as noted above, arguing that “persons have rights” does not imply that “nonpersons do not have rights.” To say that it does is to commit the logical fallacy of denying the antecedent. Second, personhood is clearly not the only basis for arguing that members of a nonhuman species deserve appropriate and compassionate treatment. Presumably, a deeper knowledge of the relevant literature in philosophy, environmental ethics and animal rights would have reassured Reiss.
The Presidential Letter of the Society for Marine Mammalogy to the Japanese government was noted above. Noteworthy in its absence, despite the large amount of data that supports the claim that individual dolphins have moral standing, is any reference to the ethical issues involved in the drive hunts.
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White, T.I. (2018). Whales, Dolphins and Humans: Challenges in Interspecies Ethics. In: Linzey, A., Linzey, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics. The Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-36671-9_14
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