Should Chimps Have Human Rights? 1019
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."
Short Answer: (Score:5, Insightful)
Animal cruelty is one thing, but writs for Chimps? Seriously now...
How about human rights for humans? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's sad how poorly they are treated (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How about human rights for humans? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great Apes Project (Score:5, Insightful)
Treating them humanely doesn't have to mean giving them human rights.
The chimp is being used by the activists (Score:1, Insightful)
They're mocking their own legal system instead of using the political way to outlaw that specific activity in their country.
Re:sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, more generally: rights come with responsibilities. Which is something most of the animal rights movements fail to acknowledge.
Re:Kinda self-explanatory... (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes (Score:1, Insightful)
There are now anthropologists who argue that modern man has been systematically eradicating the other hominids because of our peculiarly aggressive and expansionist nature, and we are now eradicating the other primate species. Is this something to be proud of? We won't even allow chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans a quite small range in which to survive. And we have a depressing tendency for one human group to apply this to other human groups. Not long ago - in fact, until now - some white Americans were arguing that black Americans belonged to an inferior species. It's part of a most unpleasant mindset that has given us genocide and species extinctions, and in a world where growing populations cause more competition for food, air, water and energy, it is something we somehow have to combat if we don't want the last World War to look like an Episcopalian convention by comparison with the wars to come.
Admitting that other large primates deserve the same rights we give ourselves in the West - the right not to be killed because somebody wants our land, the right not to be locked up in a featureless room and gawped at - is not only not unreasonable, it's part of rising above the aggressive little monkey in our own brains and improving our own chance of long terms survival.
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.
Re:Great Apes Project (Score:1, Insightful)
"Rights come with responsibilities" is such an irritating sound-bite meme that doesn't really carry any meaning. Responsibilities are whatever burdens society deems fit to leverage on you that you are unable or not interested in removing.
Rights are whatever freedoms society either grants you or that you have managed to claim and defend.
I, personally, don't see the connection between the two. I don't "purchase" my right to life by paying my taxes.
Re:Not *full* humans rights, but see Spain... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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:Great Apes Project (Score:3, Insightful)
- By order of: The Supreme Court of Kangaroos
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.
Primate Rights vs. Young People's rights (Score:2, Insightful)
First it's important to note that human rights are not universal. The right to free expression and free assembly, and the most of rest of the rights in the UN charter and US bill of rights are only given to adults. Young humans generally only have the right to life and the right to not be severely abused. Adults are free to subject the young to all sorts of twisted environmental conditions, such as a religious upbringing.
I highly doubt that anyone would seriously consider giving chimps the same rights as adults (the right to trial by a jury of it's peers; it's peers being what? other chimps?) However, I think we should seriously consider treating chimps as well as young children (which sadly isn't that big of a step up from their current status).
You can pretty much legally do whatever you want with a chimpanzee: forcefully train it to do menial tasks, cage it, even dissect it while it's still alive. If anyone did this to a young child, they would be thrown in jail. The only difference between a young child and a chimp is that that child has a slightly greater genetic complexity than the chimp. However, depending on the age of the child, it may be less developmentally complex than the chimp.
We aught to define how human someone is by their developmental complexity. Why shouldn't an adult chimp have the same more more rights than a small child if it is more physically capable, and more importantly, of far greater intelligence than the child? Most people would argue that the chimp cannot have the rights of young humans because kids have the potential to become adult human beings. This argument doesn't hold because few people are willing to universally apply it. A human zygote and fetus have the potential to become fully capable adult humans, yet abortion is legal. Every sperm and egg has the potential to become a human, yet male masturbation and female menstruation are not considered murder. Potential isn't what makes us human. Our ability to perceive our conditions and make rational and ethical decisions defines our humanity.
Religious idiots believe that humans are made different from animals when a "soul" enters their body sometime between conception and adulthood. There is no scientific basis for this. A fully conscious developed brain is what makes us human beings deserving of human rights. Since adult chimps have brains more capable and complex than human infants and toddlers, they aught to have the same or better rights as those kids.
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.
Re:I don't know (Score:1, 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.
Re:How about human rights for humans? (Score:3, Insightful)
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!
Re:Yes, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not *full* humans rights, but see Spain... (Score:1, Insightful)
Anyway, it's not the worst my people have devised for "having fun". Throwing goats from 3-store heights, piking a bull to death (Toro de la Vega - the most cruel thing you can do to an animal), etc. Yeah, It makes me feel ashamed of my nacionality sometimes.
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:It's sad how poorly they are treated (Score:1, Insightful)
We also share 60% of our DNA with bananas [thenakedscientists.com] (4th question down). Genetics is no basis for granting someone (or burdening someone with) legal rights; rights should be based on behaviour. For instance a computer in the future may become self aware and have emotions like a human but have no DNA at all, while we can genetically engineer pigs to have human organs, and that doesn't make the pig more deserving of human rights.
Re:Yes, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
You would therefore argue that a baby has no rights?
Re:Great Apes Project (Score:2, Insightful)
You cannot trade some jailtime for the "right" to commit murder or assault or whatnot which is the logical extension of retribution-based sanctions. You go to prison because society needs to protect itself from you (and to establish an example to those planning on committing similar crimes), not because you "pay the price" that your crime warrants.
Yes and no to you also. (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, bugs don't even have brains, as we know them. I'll have to check my sources, but I strongly doubt they could have feelings, as we know them. In fact, I would argue that most insects are only slightly more sophisticated than artificial intelligence currently used in games -- and I don't see anyone up in arms about killing an AI, yet.
I would not have responded except for your comment about "I hate bugs". Well, I do -- and I see nothing wrong with killing a mosquito -- or even a fly, even if it's absolutely no danger to me at all (though I suppose it could be carrying disease). That doesn't mean I go around spraying the wilderness with pesticide, but it does mean that I don't allow so much as a gnat to live in my house.
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..
Re:Yes (Score:1, Insightful)
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'.
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.
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: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:Soul? (Score:1, Insightful)
I can't stand it when people force their beliefs on others.
Re:Not *full* humans rights, but see Spain... (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree. Cows evolved to live, it just so happens that they don't often succeed in this when pitted against certain predators. There is no fine line between predators and prey, and even humans are considered prey in some comparisons.
However, another side to this coin (surprise, it isn't 2-sided), in the hybridization process the humans have "evolved" the cows into something more suitable for the human goals. So, yes, in a way they were evolved with a particular use in mind, however that does not mean we have the right to torture them. Essentially , the humans created these creatures, wouldn't it seem somewhat cruel to create these creatures and then torture them?
Re:Yes and no (Score:3, Insightful)
I sense irony here.
The faculty which is most often cited in humanity's moral superiority to other animals is reason.
The GP post is attackable and defensible on several grounds. It may be wrong, but it is reasonable -- in the sense that it has content to which the faculty of reason can be applied. Setting up a straw man representation of the argument, then calling that straw man "insane" is not an argument at all. It resembles non-rational forms of animal communication, say bird songs, which certainly communicate things that important to other animals (a highly fit mate is available, predators are present), but don't carry anything complex enough to be built upon.
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:Kinda self-explanatory... (Score:2, Insightful)
No, no it's not. Had you said "speciesist" or some such, maybe I'd have listened. But when people are so intellectually lazy that they group every bit of so-called discrimination they see into racism, I engage in my own bit of laziness and refuse to keep reading.
No (Score:3, Insightful)
As many pointed out, rights go together with responsibilities. Can you hold a chimp responsible for a crime, then? Apparently not. FYI, occasionally chimps kill other apes (bonobos) and eat them. Do you seriously propose that chimps are tried and sent to jail for premeditated murder/bonobo-slaughter/cannibalism-of-some-sort ? Trying to extend what is now human rights to not only apes but all animals (I can see efforts in that direction) leads automatically to paradoxes: animals kill each other all the time, that's the way life is. Believing in so called "animal right to life" implies (in case the person believing in it is consistent and smart, which is seldom the case) automatically that all the predators and omnivores are criminals. Furthermore, many (most?) carnivores cannot possibly survive without eating other animals; so, if the spider kills a fly, it is a criminal, but if you deny the spider its prey it (the spider) will die, so indirectly you become a criminal.
Some common sense is needed to stop the non-sense...
Re:How about human rights for humans? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not *full* humans rights, but see Spain... (Score:2, Insightful)
I have no problem with eating beef, but chimps are much smarter than cows. Actually, I'd say being able to recognize themselves in the mirror is as a good a litmus test for self awareness in non human animals as any.
I.e. all humans have human rights. Chimps, dolphins, whales have Great Ape Project [wikipedia.org] style rights based on behavioural complexity. Elephants have Great Ape Project style rights too because they pass the mirror test [livescience.com].
Re:Animals deserve rights... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Short Answer: (Score:3, Insightful)
absolutely not (Score:3, Insightful)
YES, a chimpanzee has rights as a living thing and deserves some legal protections. but not, in any way, HUMAN rights
i passed an animal rights activist on the street the other day, and she had a t-shirt that read "animals are people too"
no. never. no way. no how
but her t-shirt does just about sums up the essential disconnect between reality and delusion going on here:
YES, animals deserve some protections from suffering. yes, cruel treatment against ANY life form is incompatible with any sense of morality. yes, yes, yes
but NO: the rights of animals NEVER rise to that of your fellow human beings
that's the line in the sand
the rights if animals are not zero. but the rights of animals also do not rise to the rights of your fellow human beings
that's the only common sense reality on the subject matter
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: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.
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: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:One asks, they all get it (Score:3, Insightful)
What if they've been saying this for years and years, but we're too stupid to understand?
Re:Lemme explain better (Score:3, Insightful)
My 20lb Bombay mix killed a cat that would not submit to him after it got it's ass whupped. It kept attacking, escalating the scale of violence until my cat found it intolerable and ended the problem. Unfortunately, I knew they were having issues but I didn't think they kill over it. I figured they'd end up avoiding each other...
Also, my Bombay (the far more expressive of the pair. The Bengal is more feral and reserved) gets pissed off when I remove him from something he was doing... often he will chew on the skull of the Bengal in retaliation.
Don't romanticize the nature of animals. It does no good to lie to yourself or others about the nature of a thing. Primitive human cultures were not beautiful pastoral utopias dotted throughout the planet living in harmony with nature. They killed, made war, used nature for whatever seemed useful, and died.
Apes are apes... They are very interesting, use tools, have sex for fun, can use a mirror... but they will still bite your face off and dismember your genitalia if they don't like the way you smell.
Love animals, work with them and appreciate their unique nature, but don't confuse them for humans.
Re:I don't know (Score:3, Insightful)
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: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.
Sentience And Intelligence Is Irrelevant (Score:2, Insightful)
No one is debating whether animals are capable of feeling or reasoning, to varying degrees many are.
What is at issue here is Sapience. It is humanity's sapience (ability to act with judgment concerning complex issues) that makes us human, and thus guarantees us rights apart from every other organism on this planet.
A monkey can kill another monkey, and the monkey can use their sentience and intelligence to feel sad that they will now be deprived of the other monkey's company, but a monkey is incapable of using judgment to determine that killing the other monkey was morally wrong.
It is that judgment, between right and wrong, that sets humanity apart.
Re:Awesome! (Score:4, Insightful)
Even among humans, its possible for someone (i.e., a child) to be protected by laws that provide causes of action that are not symmetric with the causes of action available against the protected person.
Nor would I expect a human infant too understand the law and the consequences of its actions. Nevertheless, I would expect such an infant to be entitled to protection against, e.g., arbitrary detention by the government and be entitled to the full benefit of protections like habeas corpus.
If they had no capacity to exercise the right (a questionable supposition, chimps can learn rudimentary human sign language and express preferences with it, which is all that is necessary to exercise free expression) there would be no effect at all (and thus no harm) in granting it to them. If they have the capacity, there is clearly a point in protecting them for punishment for pure exercise of that capacity.
Or more importantly... (Score:1, Insightful)
Slippery slope (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Soul? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Great Apes Project (Score:3, Insightful)
An interesting point. To take it one stage further - sometimes breaking the law on purpose is fully justified. Who would nowadays look back and accuse the Suffragettes of being unreasonable by breaking the law to protest illegaly, given than women were denied the vote?
Or who would like to step up and say that Rosa Parks should have moved to the back of the bus?
I suppose that the people of any given society decide for themselves which laws are worth following and which not. If there's too much disagreement between the people and the government, then the govt get voted out (in a democracy) or end up like Nicolae Ceausescu.
Here in the UK, judges also play a part, and will not uphold a law which contravenes the Common Law, even if Parliament has passed it. Indeed, judges make the Common Law which is why, in the UK, there is no written law against murder - it's always been against the Common Law, which is based on "common sense" and previous rulings.
On a related note, slavery was never abolished in the UK for a similar reason - previous judgements based on the Common Law made it clear that one person owning another was clearly ridiculous, had no existing basis in law, and therefore could not be abolished as it had never existed (Feudalism aside, of course). Such a shame that slavery was legal in the colonies for so long, then.. but again, nobody today would blame any slave who broke the laws which said they were property...
Re:Intelligence? (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's a thought: Allowing animals to be abused, imprisoned, and generally shat upon creates a culture of acceptance of casual, utilitarian violence. While we do draw a pretty stark line between humans and other species, it could be argued that a society which is disrespectful of the "rights" of animals is especially vulnerable to treating each other badly.
It's called "dehumanization" for a reason. One group of people characterizes another as "subhuman", thereby instantly justifying all manner of abuses towards them. Since our society already has a category for "sentient beings who suffer but are not entitled to respect or rights", it's not that much of a stretch to place a group of particularly hated humans in the same category.
However, if we foster a general understanding that even beings who everyone acknowledges are "less" than us, and more "savage" are entitled to a base level of rights, it becomes harder to justify treating other humans worse than that simply because they're perceived as being "less" or "worse" than us.
I realize that this argument doesn't make logical sense, but it's much more based on the vague illogical psychology of society at large, and I think there's some truth to it.