Dolphins, Apes, Pigs, Whales, and.... Parrots!

Whales and Apes, Whales and Apes, Whales and Apes.

I've noticed in recent readings that many of the authors cite examples of animals with high cognitive ability; the most commonly cited demonstration of high cognitive ability is the ability to recognize oneself in a mirror. People overwhelmingly use the examples of dolphins, apes, and whales; sometimes this list includes pigs. I would agree that these animals certainly display high intelligence and cognitive ability. However, I have noticed that one particularly bright animal is left out of the mix almost every time; I have not read a scholarly defense of animal sentience that uses the example of the parrot.

Many kinds of parrots are incredibly intelligent. There are many documented cases of parrot intelligence. The most famous of these is the African grey parrot, Alex. Alex is credited with several cognitive feats - among them are the following:
- Seeing himself in a mirror and, being unfamiliar with the color grey, asking "what color me?". When he was told that he was grey, he was thereafter able to identify the color grey on other objects.
- Alex also became aware of the concept on none before being taught about zero - he was asked how many red objects there were in a mess of green, blue, yellow, and orange objects. Seeing none, he just shook his head. Note that the concept of zero is relatively new to human knowledge.

Also, one African grey parrot was taught the concepts of bigger and smaller, and, using that knowledge, said "I want bigger" when his owners tried to put him in his cage; he refused to sleep in his cage until his owners bought a sufficiently large enough cage. It turns out that the parrot would stand for nothing less than his own full room. Fortunately, the owners obliged.

So, my question, related to this, is why is it that people tend to exclude parrots as examples of intelligent animal species? Is there something that is gained or lost from doing so?

A Tailored Mandate

In response to Sean - full post here

Personally, I think that vegetarianism isn't imperative for everybody; I think the need for vegetarianism should be tailored to each individual person.

Fortunately, humans are generally omnivores (somewhat lousy ones, but that is nearly besides the point), and as such they are able to choose between animal  and vegetation sustenance; omnivorism is a matter of choice and opportunity rather than necessity. So, the majority of humans could likely maintain a vegetarian diet with few (if any) problems.  However, there are certainly some individuals who, for a variety of reasons, cannot get all the nutrients they need from plant-based sources alone. As such, they are well within their rights to continue eating animal meat.

To go along with this, I would also add that ethics about a sliding scale in many ways. Veganism, for instance, is perhaps more ethically ideal than vegetarianism, but some people lack the resources and have allergies, which prevents them from being full time vegans; still, they should opt to be as ethical as they can be. So, in the case of a person who can't be a vegetarian due to being unable to get all the nutrients they need from plant-based foods, that individual should try only to eat the animal(s) with lowest value and only do so around as often as they need to in order to get the proper nutrients.

I suppose, also, that I would slightly alter Rollin's conclusion before I agree to it. I would say that if we are to use animals out of necessity, it is morally incumbent upon us to make that they benefit as well, by at least living decent lives, not lives of misery, fear, and pain.

Humans as Marginal Cases

In response to Raj. - full post here

Related to the problem of the infinite regress is the possibility of transhumanism and of the existence other intelligent life forms.

If we place value on something that falls into the infinite regress, as you mentioned, our system of ethics leaves itself open to the problem of devaluing a life purely on the basis of the existence of a more aware life form.

Transhumanism - the augmentation of humans through technology and different sciences - brings the possibility of humans who will have higher order thinking skills that would be better than our own and would therefore supersede our moral rights. So, if we value C+1, a being with C+2 could make C+2 the cut-off line for value.

The notion of transhumanism in general is useful in ethics because it places humans in a place that is similar to the marginal cases; human capacities will be marginal compared to transhumans. Even if transhumanism weren't an eventual reality, if the results from even a thought experiment including transhumanism or intelligent aliens do not ring well with us, then it is probably something that we need to seriously consider.