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Should Chimps Have Human Rights?
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."
No. Just no.
Animal cruelty is one thing, but writs for Chimps? Seriously now...
Not long ago certain former "leader of the free world" took away its citizens' habeas-corpus provision. Every MINUTE a person (in the up-until-now traditional sense) dies of malnutrition or trivially treatable diseases. I'm all for the ethical treatment of animals but we do have more pressing problems.
+Raider of the lost BBS
Rights come with responsibilities. If we give chimps human rights will they pay their taxes and obey the law?
Treating them humanely doesn't have to mean giving them human rights.
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Or, more generally: rights come with responsibilities. Which is something most of the animal rights movements fail to acknowledge.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
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.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I do not believe chimps should have human rights, but that we should improve the rights of all animals. It seems us humans see animals as... well animals. We often forget these are things with feelings and emotions just like we do. We should never think of killing another human because "that's wrong" but at the same time we rarely think twice about killing hundreds of animals for the sake of cheap wood or because some stupid reason like "I hate bugs". Basicly we're that asshole kid who runs around hitting everyone and it's about time we faced up to this, we scream and shout about global warming while at the same time completely missing the little picture where we're wiping out entire species of animals because we can't use basic birth control and have an over populated planet in some areas.
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.
I like muppets.
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.
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
From the discussions going on I get the feeling that alot of people don't know what the human rights are, so here they are (taken from wikipedia):
- 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.
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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.
There are quite a few faulty assumptions regarding human rights and whether animals should have them:
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.
I think the problem with this is we really have to ask what does it *mean* to be a 'person'. Lets drop the word 'human' and use 'person', and *why* do we consider 'people' to be so important.
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!
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
> Animals deserve rights when they can specifically ask for them. The moment a chimp makes a sign on its own asking for equal treatment, I say we give it to them. Until then, it's monkey brains for dinner...
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.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
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'.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Whenever I think of how we kill animals, I think of a quote by Winston Churchill.
...Or something like that. The point is, I'm not a fan of meat, but we're human, and we're omnivores. Our bodies are designed to eat some meat. It's just a fact of life. But why do we have to do it in such horrible ways? Why aren't we banning what are clearly appalling methods of raising and slaughtering livestock? Of forcing them to live in tiny cages or pens their whole lives with not even a foot of space to move?
"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.
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.
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.
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.)
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I don't think there's anything good in harming an animal for no reason. But I don't agree with giving them any rights if it will cost humans money to do so, or if it stands in the way of research that helps a human. All cost/benefit comparisons will have to be framed from a human perspective to affect my opinion(for example, damage to the ecology which humans dwell in).
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.