Should Chimps Have Human Rights?
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Apr 04, 2007 03:30 AM
from the our-brothers'-keepers dept.
from the our-brothers'-keepers dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A Brazilian court has already issued a writ of habeas corpus in the name of a chimp. And now an Austrian court may well decide that a chimpanzee is a 'person' with what up until now have been called human rights." From the story in the Guardian/Observer: "He recognizes himself in the mirror, plays hide-and-seek and breaks into fits of giggles when tickled. He is also our closest evolutionary cousin. A group of world leading primatologists argue that this is proof enough that Hiasl, a 26-year-old chimpanzee, deserves to be treated like a human. In a test case in Austria, campaigners are seeking to ditch the 'species barrier' and have taken Hiasl's case to court. If Hiasl is granted human status — and the rights that go with it — it will signal a victory for other primate species and unleash a wave of similar cases."
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Great Apes Project (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Great Apes Project (Score:5, Insightful)
Treating them humanely doesn't have to mean giving them human rights.
hooh! (Score:5, Funny)
How about human rights for humans? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about human rights for humans? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How about human rights for humans? (Score:5, Informative)
I watched a tv program the other day (that's easy too) about a guy who just woke up one day and said "I'm going to quit my job and start a charity". He told his wife and she said "if you think we can, I'll do everything I can to help". So they did. They took all the food out of their kitchen pantry, put it in a cane basket and went down the pub to raffle it off. People bought the tickets because it was "for charity". With the money they bought more cane baskets and more food and did it again, and again.
I live in Australia, and like many parts of the world we're going through a drought. This guy went out to farms and gave farmers some food to keep them going, etc. He went out to cattle farms where the cattle were getting really skinny due to a lack of grass and bought them hay. One of the farms he went out to was struggling not just because of lack of feed, but also because of lack of labour. I thought his solution to this was phenomonal.. he went back to the city and found a half dozen homeless young guys and convinced them to come out and work on the farm.
My point is.. everyone who says "there's nothing I can do" and has a big bleeding heart for all the pain and suffering in the world then goes back to posting on Slashdot.. there is something you can do. You can dedicate your life to helping people and making it easy for other people to help people. You choose not to. So don't cry about it, live with it.
Re:How about human rights for humans? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How about human rights for humans? (Score:5, Informative)
Awesome! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
You're joking, but you hit on a salient point. Whether chimps should have more rights than something stupid like a cow is an important question, just like whether a cow should have more rights than a cockroach. I think it's pretty ridiculous to expect the same rights to be given a chimp as you give to a human, though. Rights come with responsibilities as well. You certainly wouldn't expect a chimp to be able to understand the law and understand the consequences of things such as the aforementioned flinging poo at people. If a chimp can sue me for abusing it, then I damn sure better be able to sue the chimp for abusing me. Could you imagine someone at the zoo suing a monkey for throwing shit at them? To anyone paying attention, that's pretty god damn ridiculous.
Besides, what the hell is the point in chimps even having rights like freedom of speech and freedom of religion? Obviously they don't need them, so it's pretty ridiculous to claim that they should have them. If they don't even have the ability to exercise natural rights, they probably don't have them.
Rights and responsibilites (Score:4, Insightful)
Not in our society. Certain rights are only granted if certain responsibilities are upheld, but even our most despised criminals are granted the right to food, shelter, freedom from torture and so on.
I would grant at least these minimum rights to any animal that can pass the mirror test.
By that standard (Score:5, Interesting)
On Penn & Teller's Bullshiat, a show with many many many subtle flaws despite it's many many many good parts, they once had a little bit in the PeTA piece about how if animals have rights, then therefore they should have responsibilities. When I first heard this I thought at first that this was just a bit of flat humor, but then it occurred to me that this was actually a very powerful argument. Fine - if the primate deserves equal protection under law, then he should get equal treatment under law as far as paying taxes, sending his offspring to school, not assaulting people by climbing on them, being hygenic, etc.
It's sad how poorly they are treated (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's sad how poorly they are treated (Score:4, Insightful)
Are they superior in a way that we can't hunt them down with a shotgun?
Cause that's what it would take. We have human rights because we demand them. We have the power to fight for them and we did. This really shouldn't be too hard to understand..
Discrete errors (Score:5, Interesting)
If we go by similarity to humans - we are apes. African apes, to be specific. That means that chimps are closer relatives to us than say orangutans are to chimps.
The intermediate stages from the common ancestor to the human and chimp branches are extinct, but that's just a coincidence, something that could have been the other way around. Looking at it that way the ethical questions become more difficult. When you can't define clear groups, the in-group/out-group ethics becomes difficult to rationalize.
Rather than an ethics based on questionable categories we need one based on functions - especially cognitive capabilities relating to suffering. When it comes to chimpanzees an the other great apes, the answer is very clear - we do need to give them rights. They may not understand it themselves, but neither do human children and we offer them rights and protection. Apes are a trivial problem - it becomes more difficult when you distance yourself further. What about cats, mice or even insects or one-celled organisms?
Yes and no (Score:5, Insightful)
I want to point out right now I'am not some nutter who runs around bombing animal testing labs. I accept some things must be done such as conservation and culling of over populations in the animal world. This while not pleasent if something we need to do to keep a balance in wild life, I would not wish to stop it nor would I ever attempt to.
woa, what about (Score:5, Interesting)
They also play hide and seek and are smart enough to anticipate what the other will do and make strategic counter moves to "cut em off at the pass" when playing in the yard.
And they enjoy being petted and tickled, that's obvious to anyone with a brain. And they even have favorite words. Like my puppy, when I call her by her regular name she responds and comes, sits, stays, etc..
But when I call her "wiggly dog" she explodes into a fit of tail wagging like you've never seen, she wags her entire body, like a snake wiggling on the ground. You can tell she takes extreme pleasure in being called "wiggly dog".. The male, his favorite thing is when I call him "big dog", he gets all excited about that just like the puppy.
My dogs are intelligent. I demand they get equal rights too damn it!
What are the human rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
- security rights that protect people against crimes such as murder, massacre, torture and rape
- liberty rights that protect freedoms in areas such as belief and religion, association, assembling and movement
- political rights that protect the liberty to participate in politics by expressing themselves, protesting, participating in a republic
-due process rights that protect against abuses of the legal system such as imprisonment without trial, secret trials and excessive punishments
- equality rights that guarantee equal citizenship, equality before the law and nondiscrimination
- welfare rights (also known as economic rights) that require the provision of education and protections against severe poverty and starvation
- group rights that provide protection for groups against ethnic genocide and for the ownership by countries of their national territories and resources
Please explain to me how these apply to animals? What we need is animal rights, a set of rules which apply to animals specifically.
Yes, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Yes, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
A few faulty assumptions... (Score:5, Insightful)
first, there seems to be a confusion between what it means to be a human being as opposed to animal (as a general rule), and what makes humans valuable. It is not because humans can laugh, think, etc. that they are valuable. Else, as soon as you are sedated, you'd stop being human because you wouldn't have those characteristics anymore. Humans are intrinsically valuable (their rights come from natural law), and an animal can never be biologically human.
Second, it is always quite dangerous to start defining what you 'need' to be a human being. Think about slavery, most genocides,etc. What happened is that some people decided to use arbitrarily defined criteria to strip people from their human status. Who says the criteria animal rights activists use are correct?
Third, why do they believe that chimps should have the same rights as humans. It is as logical to say that human beings should have the same rights chimps enjoy presently (i.e. none). The very idea of human rights is based on the premise that there is something intrinsically valuable in human beings, regardless of their mental capacities or physical abilities.
What about humans? (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, this might sound like a troll, but hear me out. I'm not interested in getting into a discussion about abortion, but it makes a pertinent example, regardless of whether you are opposed to it or not.
I have a hard time believing that chimps would be granted any rights in today's society, especially considering that roughly half of the population argues in favor of a woman's "right" to have her unborn child killed. If the rights of an unborn human child are so small that they may be outweighed by the convenience of the mother, I fail to see how a chimp's right to life would ever take precedence over the possible value of the medical research obtained.
Abortion doesn't cure disease - in fact, it is, more or less, last-resort birth control. If you can't convince society to respect human life, I doubt you'll be able to convince them that medical research should be halted so that chimps can be spared. After all, at least the medical research has the potential of providing cures for disease someday.
I'm not trying to troll here - you can believe what you want with respect to the merits of abortion. That's not the issue. The issue is that in order to convince people to give animals the same rights as humans, you are going to have to offer a compelling case for doing so. People (sadly) aren't interested in the moral arguments, and the arguments against giving animals rights are strong:
It isn't an easy subject to take on. Granted, we shouldn't ever intentionally inflict pain on living things, but then, how would we eat? There are vitamins and minerals our bodies need which are only present in living things. So without a binding set of moral principles, the debate is going to remain centered around the pragmatic aspects, and I doubt this will result in any action being taken.
After all, the Democrats successfully convinced Americans that it is wrong to "imposing your private view of morality on the general public". Given this is considered evil, how could one convince the general public that your particular moral imperative applies to the public at large? Isn't religion supposed to be a private thing now? (I suppose we could get involved in the related discussion about private versus public morality, and how law reflects the morality of the public at large, for better or for worse.)
Re:What about humans? (Score:4, Interesting)
For me, a chimp has a lot more qualities that make it deserving of protection than an embryo. A chimp has a brain and thoughts and feelings and experiences and interpersonal relations. An embryo has more qualities in common with wood than it does with humans. It is brainless, thoughtless, chunk of living cells. If I were to decide which is more deserving of rights, I'd definitely choose a chimp. For that matter, cows are more deserving of protection of their life than embryos. At least cows think and have emotions and care if you kill them.
What do you mean by "convince?" I respect life, human or otherwise, that I find deserving of that respect, based upon the qualities I value and my own ethics. Some human life is worthy of protection and some is not. If a person is born without a brain or their brain dies, I have no problem with them being killed or used in experiments, so long as that is not inflicting emotional pain on still living relatives or the like. I can be convinced to support limited rights for chimps if it is demonstrated that they take responsibility for those rights and exercise those rights in a way that is acceptable to society. I don't see anyone ever convincing me that a mindless bundle of cells can take responsibility for anything. If you have a logical reason why you think embryos should have rights, lets hear it. But if by "convince" you mean you want me to change my mind because you say so without a logical reason or because of an illogical reason based on emotion or your irrational and unsupported beliefs, well that isn't convincing.
People shouldn't be interested in moral arguments, just ethical ones. Morality is subjective and has no place in a reasoned discussion.
Interestingly, we're discussing law. Theoretically, all law should be about mitigating conflicting rights between individuals. Otherwise, it is simply a matter of personal choice and is not the place of government to interfere. For example, the role of government is to decide if my right to throw rocks supersedes or is superseded by your right to own and protect your car's windshield. It is not the place of the government to decide if my throwing of rock on my own property and which does not affect anyone else is "moral" or not.
Already the rights of animals have been recognized and the law mitigates the conflict of those rights. Laws against animal cruelty, for example, have held that an animal's right not to suffer horribly is more important than a person's right to torture said animal or own said animal. The proposed law is simply a new stratification granting more rights to a certain type of animal based upon the qualities of that animal.
I believe the law has mostly ruled that we don't have the right to unnecessarily inflict pain on animals. We can kill them painlessly or relatively painlessly. Not that all pain is "wrong" simply that we need to be aware of it and not intentionally create more of it.
Short Answer: (Score:5, Insightful)
Animal cruelty is one thing, but writs for Chimps? Seriously now...
Not *full* humans rights, but see Spain... (Score:5, Informative)
FYI there was a proposal in Spain [blogspot.com] to give to all the non-human Great Apes some very basic rights (they cannot be killed, tortured or keep in captivity).
And the scientific name for Great Apes (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans) is hominids [wikipedia.org] and we have in common more of 97% of our DNA even with the more different of them (this obviously doesn't make them automatically humans).
Re:Not *full* humans rights, but see Spain... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not *full* humans rights, but see Spain... (Score:5, Insightful)
"If you're going to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite."
I think all animals deserve at least a painless death, if nothing else as a right. Even when I kill a bee in what I consider self-defense, I don't want the bee to be in pain. I just want it dead.
Re:Not *full* humans rights, but see Spain... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't care about any spiritual penalty it may have. Slippery slope stuff aside. It's an animal and I will prioritize it below the majority of humanity. I might give it a break if it's cute, but only because the cuteness is offering something to me, a human.
Re:Not *full* humans rights, but see Spain... (Score:5, Interesting)
Her talent was spotted when a company was thinking of scrapping it's yard and building a new one because the cows were constanly panicking. He thought the animals could sense their impending death, she overheard this and said "it's too dark", opened a roller door and the cows walked in calmly. Since then she has consulted to abitors and yards all over the US, one of her inventions is the "stairway to heaven", aparently cows prefer cow sized steps to the traditonal human centric ramps.
My point being, apart from the moral aspect of fear and pain there are also some sound economic reasons to pursue humane treatment.
On the subject of chimps, IMHO they deserve to be left in relative peace but for many that also means being left in captivity.
Re:Not *full* humans rights, but see Spain... (Score:5, Informative)
Peta have links to the ALF for example, and the ALF have come close to killing humans involved in animal research. They gave over $100,000 in non repayable loans to Rod Coronado who firebombed laboratories [wikipedia.org] for example. Ingrid Newkirk [wikipedia.org], President of Peta was has been accused of having prior knowledge of ALF actions. She was also quoted as saying "no movement for social change has ever succeeded without 'the militarism component'". Note militarism [m-w.com], not militant [m-w.com].
Seems to me you're better off joining the RSPCA / ASPCA which are against both animal cruelty and the terrorists of the ALF.
Re:Not *full* humans rights, but see Spain... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not *full* humans rights, but see Spain... (Score:5, Funny)
Which implies that a banana only has 1/112th of a soul.
Funny but accurate! (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. It is intellectual dishonesty to speak of "Rights" for any of the lesser orders (and a non trivial number of humans these days, rant for another day) in the same way as we speak of them for us. Every Right has an equal and opposite set of Obligations, no chimp I have heard of is capable of fulfilling said obligations. At a minimum they must respect the same Rights for fellow citizens. There is a reason we keep em in zoos and other highly supervised environments when they live in human settings.
Stretched to the most extreme a chimp can have similar Rights as a small child, i.e. as a dependent of a full Citizen who assumes responsibility for the actions of a minor child and makes decisions in its name. But even that doesn't make total sense because in the case of a child it is assumed the child will eventually assume all of the full rights and responsibilities of citizenship and those rights are only being held in trust until that time.
If as a society we decide that inflicting medical experiments, etc on em is a bad thing, so be it. But lets recognize that is it is US making the decision and it has nothing whatsoever with any daft notions that semi intelligent species have "Human Rights" because it does not a damned thing for them while the intellectual dishonesty can only lead to a reduction in what the term means for us in the long run.
Besides it is obvious what the real agenda is, get chimps "Rights" and then groups like PETA will use that thin end of the wedge to extend the flawed logic behind it to all animals and then all living things. These days PETA and the US Humane Society (National, not the local unrelated groups doing good works running the local animal shelter) are nothing more than front groups for terrorist groups like ALF anyway, if we ignored and defunded em they would go away.
Re:well ... (Score:5, Informative)
This is a common misconception. There's no missing link that shows chimpanzees ever evolved into humans. The "missing link", if found, would demonstrate that both species came from a common ancestor millions of years ago before the two evolutionary paths diverged.
Re:well ... (Score:5, Informative)
http://chimprescue.wordpress.com/2007/03/03/a-wor
Daniel
Sure... and we can take it one step further... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly! And the same applies to human babies. I say human rights starts at age 2. It certainly shuts up those anti-abortionists.
Now I have no idea what I would like for dinner, but I'm not that fond of monkeys. They smell of bananas. I'll just look around the house an see if I can find something tasty.
Re:Sure... and we can take it one step further... (Score:5, Insightful)
And the mentally retarded. Let's just keep the ones that can put up a fight.
Re:Sure... and we can take it one step further... (Score:5, Insightful)
I just want to point out that we humans *in general* can take responsibility for the rules we impose in our society. Children and mentally retarded are not the norm. The Norm is the average adult that understands our society and all the responsibilities that goes with it.
So, Children, even though they can't think for themselves, learn to think for themselves over time. The mentally retarded have to be taken care of, and cannot be expected to behave responsibly, and therefore have to be protected in varying degrees. You would not hand a gun to one, would you? And if you did and he/she shot you, would a mentally retarded person be held legally responsible for it?
If we give the monkey human rights, then we have to expect it to behave responsibly. Ain't gonna happen.
Re:Sure... and we can take it one step further... (Score:5, Funny)
I agree that killing your child should be legal up until it's two years old. I mean, sometimes you don't know if you really want a child before the third trimester rolls around. It's not civilized to put a mother under that kind of stress. Give her some time to think about it. Then, if she doesn't want he baby after a year or two, she can just drop it off in a dumpster or something.
The only reason even pro-abortionists are against late term and post-natal abortions is because that's when the child starts looking cute. It's just like those damn baby seals everyone keeps crying about.
Re:Sure... and we can take it one step further... (Score:4, Informative)
Stop citing babies and the severely retarded (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, a chimp doesn't get "human rights" simply because they're not human. If you want to propose a "chimp rights" campaign, go right ahead.
Secondly, babies and the severely retarded are a poor example, because they usually DON'T get the same rights as grown-up, normal humans. Do babies have the right to free speech? Do they have the right to travel wherever they want to go? Do they have the right to vote? Do they have the right to petition their government, or serve in it? Hell no! Mom and Dad are their dictators.
What about someone who is severely retarded (not even capable of speech or understanding "rights," the way chimps are). Odds are they're under strict care of an institution or family members, which means they don't have any meaningful rights either.
Now, if by "rights," you mean simply "the right not to be wantonly abused or killed," then sure. I suspect that's what most people mean when they're talking about chimps. But there are already laws on the books giving those "rights" to most animals (in the U.S. we call them "animal cruelty laws"). That's not to say that it's absolutely illegal to kill animals already, by any means. But generally it must be done under regulation and with minimal cruelty (slaughterhouses are regulated, hunting is strictly controlled, etc.). In the U.S., at least, you can't just walk out into the woods and start killing animals. And (if you're not working in a licensed medical lab) you sure as Hell can't torture animals. Both will get you heavily fined at minimum, thrown in jail at worst.
Re:Animals deserve rights... (Score:5, Insightful)
My personal view is that rights are not granted unless there is a reciprocal responsibility. This is because a right has no meaning without some sort of context. What the article describes is actually not a 'right' for animals like chimps, it's more a restriction on human activity so should just be called that. There is nothing that will keep chimps from recognizing the 'rights' of other chimps, and I think that is the key here: Not the ability to request rights, but the ability to recognize rights. (Now there are cases where handicapped members of a species may not be able to do this, but that doesn't mean the rights don't apply; what I mean is that, as a class, a species must have the capability.)
If it can be shown that other animals have the capacity to understand, recognize, and uphold rights, then I'd be willing to accept granting them rights. Same goes for artificial intelligence: rights should only be granted when the entity receiving the rights is able to recognize the rights of others. So far as I've been able to observe, only humans have the concept of 'rights'. In the greater animal kingdom it's all about dominance and hereditary hierarchies, not 'rights'.
Re:sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, more generally: rights come with responsibilities. Which is something most of the animal rights movements fail to acknowledge.
That gives me an idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Come to think of it, you have a point there, my cat certainly deserves citizenship.
After all, the fuzzy things managed to tame humans, so it kinda says something about where they are in a sorted list by IQ. Plus, you've seen how they're attracted to books you're reading, or to your keyboard. They're natural nerds, I tell you
Second, but probably more important, giving cats a right to vote can't _possibly_ make it any worse. When was the last time you saw a cat torturing another cat for fun, or to scare the other cats into submission? When was the last time you saw a cat go to war? For that matter, when was the last time you saw a cat kill another?
I mean, sure, they fight, but with the natural weapons they have they'd be perfectly capable of taking each other apart if they wanted to. The species however has clear rules of engagement and of signalling "I surrender" or "I'm not a threat, don't attack me". Plus, most of the fights you get to see are either (A) actually playing/training, or (B) because humans force them into situations where the normal conflict resolution mechanisms don't work. E.g., bringing another cat on the territory of another without all the "rituals" (so to speak) normally associated with joining another group, and without the possibility to just go away.
Plus, they have built in mechanisms to avoid needing a war in the first place. Most felines release a number of eggs based on how well fed the mother is. So if the cat can barely feed itself, it will at most give birth to one kitten or two. If it's doing perfectly well, it will do its part for population growth. So it's hard to end up in a situation where they'd need to start a war for resources.
So I have to wonder how much worse it could possibly be if the cats could vote on issues like the stupid war in Iraq. My take is that it couldn't be any worse than letting humans do it.
Lemme explain better (Score:4, Interesting)
I meant crap like: person A humiliates/tortures/kills/whatever person B, just to make a point to persons X, Y and Z. Innocents get made an example of, just to remind everyone else what their place is, and what can happen if they get ideas above their station.
I can honestly say that I've never seen anything even remotely similar in cats. And, trust me, I grew up with cats around since I was a baby. If cat A has a problem with cat X, it takes it on cat X directly, not on some bystander to make a point.
Oh, they'll make a show of power all right, but then one gives up and that's it. I can't even remember hearing about a cat fight that ended up lethal for one of the combatants.
And I don't think lack of opposable thumbs is what's lacking there to make them lethal. The same cats are perfectly able to tear a larger animal apart. E.g., I've seen cats hunt rabbits or rats larger than their own size. The teeth and claws are perfectly enough to do a _lot_ of damage to another cats, if they wanted to kill each other.
Compare that to some of the genocides the humans did, and I can't help liking cats a lot more. There's stuff we humans do which isn't even about power or territory, but just killing someone else because they're from a different country, race, religion or voted for the opposite party. (See, civil wars.)
Basically: when a cat signals "I give up", that's it, the fighting stops. When a human comes up with his hands up, on the other hand, the others just want to kill and torture him. And then there are the countless cases where people took out their frustration upon non-combatants who didn't fight in the first place. It took millenia and several international conventions and harsh laws to tell everyone to freakin' let go... and as we see in the recent cases in Iraq, they still don't.
Re:I don't know (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets take the example of someone so profoundly brain damaged that they walk about with a knife and stab someone thinking that person is a loaf of bread. Generally most reasonable minded people accept that as sad as it is, the person with the knife simply is not capable of aprehending the responsibility of not stabbing the person, as its understood that to enact a responsibility, you have to be rational enough to understand it.
So instead we might put the crazy person in some sort of care with some protections to make sure they cant do it, but we are not *punishing* them for failing that responsibility, because we understand they are incapable of fullfilling it.
But that doesnt mean the crazy person doesnt have some basic rights, such as the right to life, or the right to not be beaten up or whatever. Rights dont necesarily justify an ability to understand them to be valid. Responsibilitys do, because I'd argue rights are passive and responsibilitys are active.
Not ALL rights are removed from responsibility admitedly. Someone crazy enough to think its ok to shoot people for lols SHOULDNT have a gun. But someone with the rationality to be responsible with the gun arguably SHOULD have the right (assuming you think its a good right).
Now, lets look at the monkey. The monkey has a bunch of attributes we associate with personhood. They appear to be self aware. They appear to possess a basic level of empathy. They can, with the correct training, communicate basic abstract concepts. They fall in love, and love to fuck. They get angry and hate on stuff. Pretty much stuff "people" do.
But they cant read a book, or drive a car (perhaps) or hold down a steady job, or surf the net. But many "people" cant do this either. Infants cant. People with profound downs syndrome cant either, but we'd never deny them personhood.
Peter singer (slightly contraversial australian philosopher) argues the capacity for suffering is a pretty good determinant for judging the right to moral consideration, and who'd deny a monkeys capacity to suffer.
I'd suggest whilst the full range of 'human' rights would not fully be apropriate for monkeys, as they cant cope with the responsibilitys or understand them (although arming chimps WOULD be hilarious at a distance) , we can certainly derive a subset of rights they should be able to expect (the right to life, the right not to be tortured, the right for a human advocate to sue on their behalf for loss of rights, etc) based on the facts at hand.
If, as many scientists believe, chimps experience the world with similar emotional colour to us, vivisection and shit really does become an horrible horrible thing to contemplate empathetically.
Give the fuzzy guys some rights!
Chimps are not people! (Score:5, Insightful)
Chimps are chimps. They don't want to be people, they want to be chimps. The only right we need to grant them is the right to be chimps in peace. It has nothing to do with their capability, that's a red herring. They're chimps. Highly intelligent, self-aware, sentient if you ask me (but don't ask me to define it), and also not human. They're chimps. Anthropomorphizing them and asking if they should be considered "people", or comparing them to disabled humans, is to violate their right to be chimps.
So as far as I'm concerned, it's very clear. We shouldn't be performing medical experiments or capturing or hunting chimps or destroying their habitat (more), but that's it. That's all they need. We just need to start respecting the other life forms on this planet, not dressing them up in suits and expecting them to be people. They won't be, don't want to be, and are just fine as they are.
Re:Chimps are not people! (Score:4, Insightful)
The real question being debated here is not if chimps are humans, but if they are deserving of a given set of rights/protections. It is fine to say that we should respect life forms, but it is a matter of degrees and based upon qualities. If I'm hungry should I be able to kill a human and eat them? What about a chimp? What about a cow? What about a banana? What about yogurt? What quality of these life forms makes them deserving of legal protection from my hunger? What if I need an organ transplant to survive? What animal would not be acceptable to kill to preserve my own life even if it is not threatening me?
Personally, I consider all life to be similar in certain ways. I consider animals to be more akin to humans (or vice versus) than most people seem to assume. Animals have emotions and thoughts along the same lines as humans, but to differing degrees. To some degree their similarity to humans is considered as a criteria, but I think that fails if you look at it from a scientific perspective. Intelligence is a somewhat valid criteria, but I don't see it as the only one necessary for something to be deserving of "rights." Usually in my personal life I consider rights to be related directly to responsibility. Anything that takes responsibility, has the right to manage that responsibility, but must also deal with the consequences. When rights conflict, it is usually the responsibility portion of the equation that clarifies the situation.
Re:I don't know (Score:5, Insightful)
If a human "baby" is born without a brain, it's a human. By extending human rights on the basis of manifest intelligence alone you either end up in the lawyer driven hellscape of genetically modified sheep, mice, even rocks being people, or the eugenic distopia of a more sanitary version of ancient Sparta.
I endorse the latter (though I wouldn't call it so).
A brainless (anencephalic, technically) human baby is genetically human, but it (no, nor he or she: it) shouldn't be really considered human. It's a mindless body -basically, it's meat. Sorry for the rudeness, but technically it's nothing different.
To me, rights should follow ALSO from mental capabilities. No being should suffer if it's not necessary, but why can we do medical experiments -and thus cause sufference- on well aware, thinking, self conscious chimps and we cannot do them on mindless human bodies (that wouldn't practically suffer)? To me it's pure non sense.
Re:Should all Human rights (Score:4, Interesting)
Your past point is interesting, because if we were to take a step outside our species for a second, by a standard of rational thought an intelligence, there's no reason to value a human baby over that of a chimp unless we bet on its presumed, but unknown, future potential.
It's quite possible that a proper definition of what a human being "is" would disqualify fetuses and some babies. I don't think fear of that should necessarily stop us from defining it anyway. We can find other reasons to keep our kids around, like, say, because we love them.