3 ms·
Scientists say dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons'
- leed25d 16y agoso, uh, would they be able to make contributions to political campaigns?
- chc 16y agoDid the scientists say why their opinion on moral matters is headline news? I don't even disagree with them. It's just that whether something should be treated as a "non-human person" is a matter of values, and I don't think the common set of values around personhood has anything to do with intelligence. If you want it to, you need to change that first.
- sigzero 16y agoI agree with your first sentence. I do disagree with them though. I don't think there is such a thing as a "non-human person" let alone applying it to the animal kingdom. Edit: PETA must love it though
- chc 16y agoThen I think you agree with my entire comment. What I meant to get at is, my values and these scientists' values are both uncommon and non-normative, so they're pretty much irrelevant — most people don't care about the intellectual or emotional qualities of the creature in considering whether it's a person. The general heuristic is something along the lines of "Is it identifiably H. sapiens and alive?"
- jpwagner 16y agoprevious discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1875014 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1875014
- TNO 16y agoWhat does that mean anyway? We can't even come to an agreement on how to treat human persons.