The International Court of Justices March ruling against Japans scientific whaling program was not as decisive as whaling opponents had hoped. Scientific whaling is likely to continue in some form, alongside coastal whaling and small cetacean hunts.

The Whale Wars are, therefore, also likely to go on, pitting environmental and animal rights nongovernment organizations and anti-whaling governments against Japans whaling establishment.

We can expect little change in either sides positions. There will be the usual arguments about culture, environmental values, science and morality; and while such arguments may rally home front support, they are ineffective at changing minds, let alone fostering mutual understanding.

A recent call by former Asahi Shimbun reporter Akira Ozeki for a more philosophical approach to the whaling debate should therefore be welcomed. On both sides, there is a need for housekeeping to tidy up the muddled common-sense beliefs framing their arguments. With better organized thoughts, all parties could, as Ozeki hopes, fight each other with reason, come to a compromise and make concessions though at present his hopes do seem rather optimistic.

And as Ozeki rightly suggests, many Western, humanitarian opponents of whaling like myself do have to tidy up their thinking. Less reflective carnivores protesting the cruelty of whaling need to look more closely at factory farming methods that deliver cheap animal protein to their dinner plates, at often appalling costs to animal welfare.

Humanitarian opponents of whaling argue that cetaceans, like some primate species, have special cognitive and emotional capacities that justify respecting them as persons. It may or may not be valid to derive cetaceans moral personhood from evidence of such capacities, and differences in those capacities between different cetacean species also need to be addressed.

The question arises of how to accommodate growing evidence of cognitive and emotional capacities in other animals including livestock animals. If whaling critics are consistent in acknowledging this evidence, they must rethink their principles for humans duties to animals (and not just cetaceans) and adjust their dietary preferences and moral judgments accordingly.

How can they achieve this adjustment? That depends on how much they think different cetacean species and other animals eaten by humans meet the emotional and cognitive criteria that they associate with personhood, or with other morally significant categories like sentience. They could do as philosophers like Peter Singer recommend, become humanitarian vegetarians, and campaign against both livestock meat farming and whaling.

Or, like the philosopher Roger Scruton, critics could deny personhood to animals and maintain their humanitarian credentials as ethical meat eaters. Then they could oppose factory farming and inhumane slaughtering methods for both livestock and cetaceans.

Either way, they can dodge accusations of hypocrisy leveled at them by whaling advocates.

View original post here:
102.48 /$ (5 p.m.)