Scientists say dolphins should be treated as 'non-human persons'

I would think Bonobos are first in line for 'non human personhood'

> Why not give certain animals a similar status?

I think that we do don't we? What this appears to be raising is a new category or rights, between humans and animals. The ethical considerations for this will most likely also be new.

Yes it was a bit tongue in cheek, but I was also semi-serious. If we are to consider dolphins and great apes and such as something in that category, and provide them with an abridged set of rights (I think human infants is not a good, model, more like human children under 18), then we should also expect a certain level of lawfulness to go along with that.

How to make those laws? Should we start electing dolphins and great apes to congress? Unless we also figure out uplift (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_uplift) then probably not. But perhaps that limitation can also help guide us as to how to craft appropriate rights recognition and lawful behavior for these creatures.

I'm not against this kind of recognition per se, just that I think we have to really think carefully through it. Rights are not typically given out without some level of responsibility to go along with it.

Right, I was speaking a bit tongue in cheek, but I think you got the gist of my point. Since we cannot communicate with these animals in such a fashion as to learn their intent beyond the most basic needs (hungry, angry, sleepy) if that, granting rights without obligations to self-service those rights seems inappropriate beyond the rights we already grant any other animal.

Granting those rights would assume that there is some type of obligant who could service those rights, and those would almost certainly be people. Thus this opens up a fascinating thought experiment of parallel non-human persons rights courts and legal systems....imagine a stuffy wood paneled court room with a couple of water tanks, where the lawyers argue their cases for clients that could not possibly participate of understand what was going on. This opens the situation up for massive exploitation by the people taking on the roles of non-human person obligants.

Does non-human person make them better than us?

Pain?

When you poke a Euglena[1] with a pin while looking at it under a microscope, its sensors detect an intrusion and immediately start flapping the flagella (the thing it uses for locomotion, analogous to a leg) to get out of the way. That's a super-simple nervous system. Many plants do this as well, using a slow production of chemicals which move branches and leaves.

As you get more advanced, going up the biological totem pole, every creature uses that exact same sensor => action mechanism. Pain is the brain's complex interpretation of the pin prick, and an animal attempting to remove itself from the source of the pain is the same as activating the flagella.

My brain has mirror neurons which make me literally feel your suffering as you experience it, which is why humans are so against "pain" and "suffering". It's also why I personally will never injure another human, or even another animal, purposefully.

Is it more "wrong" in any scientific way to injure a human instead of a dolphin or a bear or a chimp or a plant -- or even to break a window? Absolutely not. This is why science should never be used to prove or disprove human "morals" and morals should never dictate the functions of science.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euglena