4.11 A self-assessment 199
inference from its having no obvious practical
purpose to its seeming to be purely
recreational, like dancing etc. The recreational
part seems reasonable, too, though the
comparison with dancing is questionable.
These inferences are defensible. There is
evidence that the dolphins appear to be having
fun and learning tricks from each other. (It is
plausible, too, since dolphins appear to be
having fun a lot of the time anyway.) The
problem with the argument arises when the
author wants to say that tail-walking supports
the contention about special ethical status.
Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that
dolphins do teach and learn and practise skills,
that their behaviour is cultural, and that they
do certain things that are no different from
dancing or gymnastics. There might, on these
counts, be some grounds for giving dolphins a
special ethical status, more like that of persons.
But Dr Bossley does not claim anything as
strong as this. His claims are cautious and
qualified: ‘... dolphins seem to walk on water
for fun’; it ‘appears that [Billie] has passed this
trick on to others in the pod’; ‘“As far as we are
aware, tail-walking is... like dancing”’. And so
on. Dr Bossley is reported as quite rightly
presenting these ideas as speculation, not as
fact. The only hard fact that is documented is
that dolphins have been seen tail-walking. It is
the author of the article who takes it to be
evidence of intelligence on a near-human
scale. But the evidence, so-called, is too weak
to support the much stronger and more
controversial ‘contention’.Clarification
Another point you may have made was that
the term ‘ethical status of non-human persons’
needs explaining and defining, rather than
just throwing in at the end. ‘Ethical status’ in
the case of humans is familiar enough. It
brings with it certain entitlements: not to be
killed or subjected to cruelty, or denied
freedom or justice before the law, and so on.
But what can be meant by the status ofgeneral rule it makes good sense to take them
in the above order. If the conclusion does not
follow from the reasons, it really doesn’t
matter whether the claims are true or not,
since the argument is unsound either way;
whereas even when the premises are true and/
or acceptable we still have to check that they
support the conclusion (or conclusions).
However, on this occasion, there is so little
work to do on the premises that it is as well to
answer the second question first. Yes, the
evidence is credible. We can’t be 100 per cent
sure that the photograph isn’t a fake, or that
Dr Bossley hasn’t made up the whole story. But
we can be sure that this is very unlikely, and
that the purely factual claims are plausible.
Dolphins do learn this trick in captivity, and
some get returned to the wild where it would
be no great surprise if other dolphins copied
them. The claims are also verifiable: they could
easily be checked, so a reputable magazine
would be unlikely to invent them. It would do
the WDC cause no good to be found to have
made false or unsubstantiated claims.
As noted above, the bulk of the claims, and
inferences, are attributed to Dr Bossley. It is
therefore relevant to ask whether he is a
reliable source (see Chapter 4.4). Again the
answer is a pretty confident yes. With 24 years
of experience observing dolphins, Dr Bossley
almost certainly has had ample opportunity
and expertise to make the observations and
draw informed inferences from them.
So we come to the reasoning itself. We
know, thanks to our analysis, that it consists of
two sub-arguments leading to the main
premises that tail-walking is apparently
learned, and apparently performed for fun.
Why ‘apparently’? Because in the text the
claims are routinely qualified by words such as
‘seems’ or ‘appears’. So we have an inference
from increasing numbers of dolphins being
seen to walk on water since the arrival of Billie
and Wave (which are observed facts), to their
seeming to have learned it from each other.
That is a reasonable claim. And we have the