Quite frankly if you want to ban whaling then you also have to try to ban bacon, anything else is not ethically consistent. Indeed if you want to ban whaling you should be EVEN MORE eager to stop the eating of pigs, since pigs generally live fairly miserable lives up to the point that they're slaughtered.
Indeed. I have moral problems with factory farming in general. And I am somewhat uncomfortable eating pork, especially pork raised under such conditions. However provided a pig is killed painlessly then my objections die. It is somewhat difficult to kill a whale painlessly isnt it? What with the harpoons or in some cases anti-tank rounds...
Still a false analogy though as the situations are not the same. Pigs have been selectively bred as food. They literally exist FOR our use, because we created them for that purpose through millenia of selective breeding. The whale does not exist for our purposes. And neither do chimps, orangutans, or gorillas.
Admittedly it's somewhat old, but that's not the complaint you made against it.
14 years. Given that research in cetacean cognition is about 30 decades behind research into primate intelligence, that thing is the equivalent of a primate paper from the 60s. As for the article itself, the original source was in their own publication, if you check the top. So no, they did not quote it. They commissioned and published it. And it did not go through peer review.
As for her position on whale intelligence, She does not study the actual behavior of the organisms, the mere fact that she has been known to compare the intelligence of a humpback with that of a cow, despite the behavior observed within them and other cetaceans that indicate otherwise, renders her misinformed at best and deliberately misleading at worst
Studies of the internal structure of carefully preserved dolphin brains using a variety of techniques (e.g. Kesarev, Malofeyeva and Trykova, 1977; Morgane, Jacobs and Galaburda, 1986; Garey and Revishchin, 1990; Glazer, Morgane and Leranth, 1990) show that these animals have not developed the latest stage of brain evolution, characteristic of land mammals. It is thought that this line of evolution began about 50 million years ago in land mammals, whereas the cetacean ancestors returned to the water some 70 million years ago, well before this stage was reached.
This is idiotic. Why? because evolution does not progress in stepwise "stages" progressing toward a common goal. And the lack of a given brain structure, one that evolved after they diverged from land mammals, is no indication of their intelligence because it is more likely that evolution would have taken a different route to achieving the same ends.
A lot of behavioral work has been done in the 14 years since this un reviewed paper was published. Here is the citation for a decent review.
Simmonds, Mark Peter. Into the Brains of Whales. Applied animal behaviour science [0168-1591] yr:2006 vol:100 iss:1-2 pg:103 -116
In this review, the author looks at the methodological problems of studying whale, and in fact all animal intelligence, and then does a review of the informative behaviors seen in dolphins and orca, with a look at the harder to study baleen whales, which indicate some of the same patterns (despite being very hard to study)
These patterns include self awareness, the ability to be taught artificial human languages, obvious grief for the dead, abstract thinking and forethought among other behaviors.
Now as for your moral stance. I will flat out say that it is inconsistent with any reasonable metaphysics.
The reason that we don't eat children is that they're human. Even if they're at a developmental level where they're not sapient or even fully self-aware we still grant them honorary human rights.
From what derives these rights? Are they a metaphysical property of the universe? Why are humans the only beings that have rights? The holes in rights based arguments, especially ones that beg the question and assume that only humans have them, are the size of the red spot on Jupiter. Are rights an inherent part of the universe or are they just a logical construct? If they are a part of the universe where do they come from? (the only answer to this question is a deity BTW) If they are a logical construct then A) there is a more fundamental principle that we can and should appeal too, and B) it is inconsistent to exclude other organisms A Priori
There is a way around that, and that is to recognize that our notions of morality in the end come from our evolved sense of empathy, the ability to put ourselves in the shoes of another individual. From this we can derive real consequentialist ethical systems. We do not sympathize witht eh victim of a crime because their rights were violated. We sympathize with them and feel moral outrage at the perpetrator because the victim is suffering and we know what it is like to suffer. We have created elaborate systems of morality in order to systematize this emotional reaction. The problem is, we can empathize with every other species, and to the extent to which we can is the extent to which we should take into account that suffering. When you shoot a chimpanzee, listen to it scream. Is that suffering good? What if it shot you?
What about a sapient android? Or an alien species? The moment you grant a priori ethical consideration only to hominids, you open up a HUGE can of worms.
And that is only an argument regarding inter-individual relations. There are other arguments derived from other metaphysical precepts which grant direct moral consideration to ecosystems. But those do not need to be touched here. Or should they be?
A different species wouldn't have to reach fully human standards before I would consider it morally wrong to kill it (except for self defence, etc). I'd consider something on the level of Homo Habilis / Homo Erectus to be too developed to hunt for food. E.g. the ability to use secondary tools, a tool to make other tools.
In other words you have defined the qualities which lead to moral consideration such that only highly derived hominids possess them, and have done so with no justification. The argument is circular. 'We only grant moral consideration to humans because only humans are developed enough to be granted moral considerationâ€
