5 ms·
I am surprised that nobody has raised this issue? If elephants are smart enough to recognize an enemy, avoid it, and warn other elephants that have not seen th
by crpatino 9y ago
I am surprised that nobody has raised this issue?
If elephants are smart enough to recognize an enemy, avoid it, and warn other elephants that have not seen this enemy first hand... do they qualify as people?
They certainly seem at least as smart as dolphins, and their trunks allow for a crude form of tool manipulation that dolphins lack. We humans define our personhood in terms not just of raw intelligence, but also by our ability to modify our environments, so...
- adjkant 9y agoAs "people" is quite a bar and one I don't think is relevant. I think they do require agency/respect/laws fitting of a properly conscious being though. Often people put humans on a pedestal, but in reality, we aren't special in regards to morality.
- toasterlovin 9y agoYeah, but we're special in regards to human morality. There's nothing wrong with giving your own species a higher moral weight. It derives quite naturally from us being the result of self interested genes.
- adjkant 9y ago> There's nothing wrong with giving your own species a higher moral weight. Without reason, I'd say there absolutely is something wrong with that. In fact, I'd argue there's no such thing as "human morality", only morality, which applies to humans (and other species). There are certainly some applications of moral law that only apply to humans, but that also applies to other species as well. Again, there's no rightful pedestal to put humans on. > It derives quite naturally from us being the result of self-interested genes. You're making an implicitly claim here that what results naturally from our DNA is morally right. You'll have plenty of people arguing that as well.
- toasterlovin 9y agoEverybody treats different categories of living things differently. Most of us would save ourselves before a stranger. We prefer family to non-family, our in-group to our out-group, human life to non-human life, and dog or cat life to rat or cockroach life. You can argue that all of these different categories have inherent moral worth and that moral worth is not dependent on the perspective of the person making the judgement about moral worth, but almost nobody actually behaves that way. And I would argue that the people who do behave that way are mostly confused.
- joshmarlow 9y agoTangentially related, but if this train of thought interests you, you may be interested in the "Great Ape Personhood" project. From [0]: > Great ape personhood is a movement to extend personhood and some legal protections to the non-human members of the Hominidae or great ape family: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_personhood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_personhood
- kraig 9y agoElephants are known to knock down trees and vegetation to make it easier to get to the things they want. If you have ever been on a safari you will see how easy it is to spot if there are elephants near by, they destroy just about everything in their path. AFAIK the only animal that regularly does this. I don't know if modifying the environment for your purposes is consideration for being a person, but as humans we are often poor at understanding intelligence, comprehension, and empathy when something doesn't speak our native tongue.
- rosser 9y ago> AFAIK the only animal that regularly does this. Humans? Deforestation, strip-mining, dumping waste, drilling, war... Just because we wrap all that up in an "economy" or "politics" doesn't make it non-destructive.
- always_good 9y agoTheir whole point in mentioning that is that humans already do it. Look at their second paragraph. Not sure how you thought someone else didn't know that.