Real freedom for all turtles in Sugarscape? - Presses universitaires ...

146A r g u i n g a b o u t j u s t i c eissues of ethical concern. I apologise for the over-simplification that spacerestrictions necessitate. I also hope not to offend, and intend only to sharesome findings that seem important in order to learn more about theirplausibility and implications.Maternal investment: the patternI never expected to devise a plausible biological hypothesis. However, byfocusing on Lockean persons (intelligent, self-aware creatures that can thinkof themselves in different times and places) (Locke 1995: 246-56) I havespotted a pattern that seems not to have yet struck any of the biologists Ihave read or consulted, including Frans de Waal and Robin Dunbar (Casal2010, 2011). My conjecture is that, at least among mammals, some morallyrelevant properties, such as self-awareness or ability to take the perspectiveof others and respond to their needs, correlate with degree of maternalinvestment – which only in very long-living species is above the relevantthreshold for these properties to emerge. For example, the Gallup tests formirror self-recognition was passed by elephants and orcas (who can live upto 80 and 90 years) (Brault & Caswell 1993) and bottlenose dolphins andhominids (who can live up to 45-60). 1 These species’ pregnancies are (i)almost invariably singleton, (ii) extremely long (22 months for elephants, 18for orcas, 12 for bottlenose dolphins, 8-9 for hominids) 2 and (iii) veryinfrequent (average birth intervals are 8 years for orang-utans, 5 for orcas,chimpanzees and bonobos, and 4 for humans, gorillas and elephants(Galdikas & Wood 1990). Maternal investment continues through years oflactation (7 for orang-utans, 5-6 in other apes, 2-4 for elephants andcetaceans), which is followed by many more years of care, protection,education and cultural transmission, extending into adolescence.Females’ lasting usefulness is responsible for the unique phenomenon ofmenopause: only humans, orcas and elephants live long after fertility ends.Whilst most species have very large numbers of offspring, and careproportionally less for each, mammalian persons occupy the other extremeof the spectrum. They all have long-term emotional memory, highly unusualimitative, linguistic, mathematical, and problem-solving abilities; they allcarry corpses for days or weeks – with elephants and gorillas also buryingthem – and only elephants, hominids and some cetaceans (orcas, bottlenoses,1This is why Marc Hauser’s claims to have proven that tamarinds (tiny monkeys born astwins, reaching adulthood at 2 and living only 17 years) passed the Gallup test, alwaysseemed suspicious to me.2The fact that length of pregnancy tends to correlate with size may contribute toexplaining the pattern but does not invalidate the hypothesis.