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New Effort To Grant Legal Rights To Chimpanzees Fails
sciencehabit writes Advocates of "legal personhood" for chimpanzees have lost another battle. This morning, a New York appellate court rejected a lawsuit by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) to free a chimp named Tommy from captivity. The group had argued that the chimpanzee deserved the human right of bodily liberty. Despite the loss, the NhRP is pursuing more cases in the hopes of conferring legal rights to a variety of animals, from elephants to dolphins.
Now Hillary Clinton will have to tag her daughter for the VP slot.
this nonsense needs to be shut down
Being held in the cage described in article's i've read sounds like being held in vietcong cages.
While I would definitely argue this is animal cruelty at the least, there is no way I'm ever extending personhood to non homo sapiens.
If freed... wouldn't a stolen bit of food here or there (as presumably it wouldn't be able to grow or buy it's own) or some public defecation get it arrested? If it dared resist arrest might get some additional charges of assault on a police officer and result in some jail time?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
This reminds me of a story from a few years back where some Central American pressure group or possibly government wanted to declare trees as sentient beings. Granted, Chimps are a few rungs up the evolutionary ladder but it's still a ridiculous notion to even posit personhood for primates like Chimps.
Might makes right.
More seriously, we need a concept that grants considerations, if not equal-to-human rights, to other living beings, and for that matter, ecosystems.
In short, we need law to evolve toward a 21st century science-based ethical viewpoint.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I wonder if they're also in favor of granting those same human rights to actual unborn humans.
Please first demonstrate to me that chimps and other animals value bodily liberty, and only then we can talk to give them the right. I never saw any animal besides people to value liberty over food, water or safety. It doesn't make any sense to give some right to some subject that does not even value it or understand it. We don't even give bodily liberty to some mentally handicapped persons, so why should we give that right to an animal?
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
We need a 3 strikes law for poo flinging felonies before this gets out hand. I'm calling my rep.
hymenless monkeys still refuse to shoot each other & continue to share their bananas & honor their mothers..... where did we fail ourselves? tv? wmd on credit genocides? 'weather' wizarding? https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=wmd+weather+media+censorship
Just declare chimps as corporations, THEN they'll have rights.
Table-ized A.I.
We're a long, long way from the kind of philosophical maturity that would let us rationalize our laws with respect to sentience, consciousness, suffering, and freedom. In fact, it's apparently pretty early for us even to have a mature conversation about it.
I hope to see substantial progress in my lifetime, but I'm not really expecting it.
The chimp didn't help his case when he threw his own feces at the judge.
Trees are a lot smarter than most people in Congress and produce useful air.
If you want to prove that a chimp deserves human rights, you don't name him Tommy, you name him Jerry.
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If someone presented a chimp to the court with an IQ of 100 (i.e. that of an average adult) and that same chimp was clearly able to communicate and comprehend things at the level of an average adult, any court using this ruling's logic would be hard-pressed to deny that particular chimp the status of personhood. It might not grant it the status of a "legal adult," but that's another question.
But what if someone presented a particular chimp that functioned at the level just above (but indisputably above) where an 18-year-old human would need to function to avoid having a court appoint a guardian? In practical terms, we are talking the equivalent of someone with a 70s or low-80s IQ, a proven ability to make reasonable financial and other adult personal decisions, a proven general understanding of what is going on in the world similar to that of someone with a 70s- or low-80s IQ, etc. What then?
We already have primates that can communicate with humans in a human language (American Sign Language or something similar) at the level of a child. How close are we to being able to teach a chimp or other primate the skills needed to pass the "able to take on the responsibilities of personhood" test to the satisfaction of a court of law?
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Who is paying for this? Just wondering. I can't imagine services rendered by the "Nonhuman Rights Project" are being performed for free. Who is the biggest benefactor?
I'm all for this. . .after we grant human children some basic rights (such as a say in custody hearings).
Back in 1999, I said I loved the Matrix. I was asked, "So you're a fan of Keanu Reeves?"
I said, "If the story is good, I don't care who stars in a movie. Youcould put a chimpanzee in the staring role and put peanut butter in its mouth so it looks like it's talking and then overdub with a voice actor - like Lance Link, the Secret Chimp - for all I care."
The same goes for news anchors and pundits, like Sean Hannity or Glen Beck.
I mean really, news anchors just read the news. Why do they make millions of dollars a year to do something that requires only an 8th grade education and anyone off the street could do?
The Democrats are just trying to find ways to boost their voter base. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Are you sure? It seems they can kill with impunity. Oh wait... those damned dirty apes are just cops.
People have responsibilities towards other animals. Other animals don't require specific rights until they can integrate to our society as fully functioning citizens. Captivity is stressful to all animals, humans included, and can amount to torture. Unnecessary captivity should be avoided, just like it is avoided with humans. (watches the blue sky, sees birds and butterflies and thinks about the end of the Enlightenment)
"Old Folks at Home (Swanee River)" or "Jingle Bells". Better yet have them lie to get cigarettes.
As stupid as this is, it still makes more sense to me that granting corporations legal standing equal with real, live human beings.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
There's a problem with a philosophy centered around individual rights.
Individuals are like single atoms: they are mostly an abstract concept, and the only thing that anyone is ever concerned about is group interactions. Trying to base a philosophy around individual rights is like trying to base chemistry solely off of atomic physics. You're not necessarily wrong, and what you're talking about is important, but you're focusing on the wrong thing. The real world is completely dominated by group interactions, and if your special-snowflake syndrome doesn't let you see this, you are unlikely to be able to draw correct conclusions about anything.
Freedom of assembly is in the first amendment. It allows groups of people to be involved in politics and speach. If a group of weathy people want to promote canidates they are allowed to do so under freedom of assembly. You can't argue that the CEO and board members of corporations are not people. They are people, They have the same freedom of assembly as everyone else.
...you insensitive clod!
they went about things the wrong way. they should have just had the chimpanzees incorporate, as which point they'd have more rights than people.
Most - but not all - societies treat children and the developmentally disabled as "special cases" when it comes to personhood - someplace above even the most intelligent non-human animal but somewhere below that of an adult with all of the rights and responsibilities that come with being an adult.
Having the right 46 chromosomes (or having parents or grandparents, or not-too-far-back-great-grandparents with them) pretty much gives you a free pass on having to qualify as a legal person. Corporations and other "non-human" legal persons do not get this "free pass."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
How much rights animals should have is certainly a worthy discussion to have. Do some animals deserve more rights than others? Which ones? How many rights? What makes one animal more "worthy" than another? All interesting questions.
But the law is pretty clear: Animals are property, not people. Under the law, they have no rights. We already grant them the special privilege (vs. say, a car) in that they cannot be treated with gratuitous cruelty (and that's highly flexible... I can do a lot of things to, say, rats, that would get me arrested if I did them to a dog.) But those protections are explicit in the law. If you want to grant animals further rights, the courts are not going to be able to do it, it's going to have to be done through the legislative process.
The major legal concept that makes a corporation different from a jointly-owned partnership is the idea that the corporation exists as a separate entity from the shareholders. This confers benefits, such as insulating shareholders from liability for things an "arms-length" corporation they happen to own shares of might do. But if corps want to retain that benefit, they should not expect to be treated as having the same rights as their shareholders. If they are truly "arms length" then the rights their shareholders do or don't have should be irrelevant when determining the rights of the corporation itself. Certainly the constitution has nothing to do with it, as corporations are not citizens (nor residents) and therefore cannot have constitutional rights in and of themselves. They have only the rights we choose to grant them.
People are afraid of death and unable to acknowledge the consciousness in other species for the general fear that we may see our pain, suffering, and death reflected in theirs. It's a discomfort with the notion of our limited mortality, cosmologically short life-span, and general insignificance in the world.
The answer to that existential crisis is to either ignore the issue, or campaign for illogical rights and restrictions. No undue suffering should be caused to anything, absolutely, but instead of going vegetarian because you can't stand the thought of an animal suffering, you should begin to understand that the suffering of one animal is nothing compared to the death stench of the world, and one should accept that all things are temporary anyways. If it's with your religious or personal ethics, sure, but turning away from death because it makes you uncomfortable is inviting those bad faith moments that fill you with gripping dread because you can't absolve your ego in that moment where you can no longer comprehend what happens after you stop functioning and decompose (just to speak of what happens bodily).
There are some really petty, arrogant, ignorant asshats posting in this comment section.
1. Humans are animals (don't care what you "believe"; it's fact)
2. Humans share DNA with every living mammal on the planet
Those two things right there should make any reasonably intelligent person question how we treat other species. If it doesn't then you're not a human I want to ever be associated with.
I'm going to hate to have to break that to my PHB.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I say Tommy can have human rights when he files for them, not his self-appointed human protectors. Did they even ask him whether he wanted human rights? Oh, right, he can't answer, like a human could.
Whether or not he deserves bodily liberty should be an entirely separate issue, anyway. Just because it's a human right doesn't mean it can only be bestowed in the context of human rights.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
They are not persons. They are irrational animals. One can demand responsibility from a person, and retaliate via de judicial system if it is not forthcoming. You can't do that with chimps. The whole thing is incorrectly framed. The problem is to delimit what we, as human beings, are to be allowed to do with chimps. For example, we should not be allowed to torture them for fun, just as we are not allowed to torture other human beings for fun. There are many, many things that, from an ethical point of view, we should not be allowed to do to either chimps or people. But chimps are not human beings, and therefore they should not have the same rights and responsibilities as human beings. They are sentient beings, but they are not persons.
This was nonsense to get as far as it did.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
... then it is only a matter of time before they get rights.
Corporations also fling poo.
Table-ized A.I.
What about insects' rights? Will cockroaches sue me for mass murdering?
I am sure there are many chimpanzees wondering what's next..
No Justice No Peace
A generalization of "thou shalt not kill" is: Act to minimize the number of quality life years lost (in the situation requiring decision and action).
And that can be further generalized to "act so as to maximize the retention of mutual information", since complex life can be quantified in terms of the amount of excess-to-expected (stable) information that is embodied in local matter and energy. Minimize entropy within a system boundary which is growing in capture of matter and energy, is another way of putting it. So information theory, and thermodynamics, are at the root of "life-preserving" ethical behaviour.
The golden rule "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (Christian moral rule) or simply "My religion is kindness" - The Dalai Lama are examples of game-theory strategies. Co-opetition strategies can be modelled mathematically and in computer simulations, and research along these lines is starting to show how and why co-operation evolved.
Anti-social behaviour, generally considered unethical, is generally behaviour which acts against the formation or continuation of stable hierarchical societies with constraints and norms. Hierarchical organization, with semi-autonomous agents consenting to be constrained in some ways that foster market exchange, specialization of labour, organized large-scale coherent behaviour (industry, resource gathering, processing, transport, exchange, constraint enforcement, protection from external threats), etc. will probably soon be shown to be optimal strategies for complex intelligent agents to maximize energy-efficient discovery and exploitation of resources, and to maximize energy-efficient defense against risks and threats. Non-equilibrium thermodynamics of complex systems will be shown to govern the shape and function (and longevity) of societies.
And the essential aspects of moral codes, which recur in many cultures, will be shown to have a common purpose, of encouraging the kind of pro-social behaviour that is compatible with stable, organized, complex, hierarchical (groups within groups within groups, with some measure of coordination in each group and up and down the hierarchy of functional groups) societal function. The essential form of these moral codes will be shown to be driven by simple rules of complex system stability and non-equilibrium thermodynamics system optimization.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
It's really his own fault for violating the cardinal rule: A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client.
While they are at it, lets give human rights to bugs, plants, and rocks. I think everyone who are a part of NhRP have a mental disorder. What was that called again?.....oh yea, the disorder is called being stupid.
Ack! deer ran into street and got hit by my car! Now I will be tried as a murderer!
All the boys who are strapped down and circumcised...
the following would also apply:
1. Nobody should oppose killing the sick or the elderly unless they are willing to pay for 18 years of their lives.
2. Nobody should oppose YOUR very public murder unless they are willing to provide for all your needs for the next 18 years. The manner of your demise is unimportant in this argument as in abortion: you could have your limbs ripped off without any pain killers, be soaked in a lethal toxic stew, or have a large metal object jammed into your skull to stir-up your brains before another giant metal instrument crushes your head. It's just a "choice" - you know, like a choice of beer or pizza toppings, apparently.
3. Nobody can have ANY basic human rights without a very committed "sponsor" who is willing to pay all their expenses for nearly two decades.... or is it now 26 years (as asserted in Obamacare) rather than 18?
It's really appalling to see how barbaric part of our society has become: we were founded on the principle that EVERY INDIVIDUAL has God-given rights, but now YOU propose that nobody has any human rights without a wealthy sponsor, and that parents are perfectly justified to kill their kids for economic reasons. This is a vision right out of a dystopian scifi/horror flick. No thanks.
I prefer America over the Orwellian nightmare world you apparently think is desireable.
it worked for the union thugs - they became "corporate persons" many decades ago and I've never heard a leftist complain one jot about THAT
APES ARE NOT HUMAN therefore they are not eligible for HUMAN rights.
Apes have ape rights - which consist of all the rights which ape laws and ape courts and ape police forces and ape criminal justice systems recognize and enforce.
The big news here is NOT that apes are not qualified for human rights - the big news is actually that lawyers are unprincipled morons who are so over-educated that they are among the most supremely ignorant of all humans lacking even "common sense" and therefore wasted time and money filling a room, with some lawyers arguing in the affirmative, some lawyers opposing, and other lawyers wearing robes to produce a verdict (the room full of idiots actually took the whole thing SERIOUSLY). The newsflash is that lawyers wasted time even CONSIDERING this completely irrational idiocy.
I can only imagine if they had been granted legal rights what could have happened. I'd bet some ambulance chaser would have taken up a class action suit to get reparations for all of the animal testing that's occurred over the years. We'd have to hire them to meet affirmative action quotas. Certain words would suddenly become "offensive".
Please note that I'm not making fun of any one or any group of people currently considered as humans. So, if you took offense to my comment, you can go fuck yourself.
Just another day in Paradise
Now that chimpanzees are legal persons, they can pay taxes just like regular citizens and business entities (which are also not persons in the traditional sense). My manager is always calling me a "code monkey." Well what better way to do the job than to hire an ACTUAL monkey. He can work and pay taxes, I can quit and live off his tax revenue redistributed to low income, unemployed people such as myself.
Dogs deserve citizenship more than apes.
It's not like they're corporations.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
A 2 year old human's social intelligence is generally inferior to a chimp of the same age. Even is the human 2 year old has stronger language skills, deductive skills and tool using skills than the chimp. A 2 year old chimp, which to be fair is significantly more mature than a human of the same age, is capable of having a pretty workable sign language vocabulary of around 500-800 signs that the chimp understands, depending on the individual.
Given that there is sound research documenting that the social-emotional and intellectual capacity of an average Chimp can exceed that of about the first to second percentile of the the homo sapiens, does this then mean that we are saying that those people are no longer people?
Are prions alive? For the purposes of this discussion, why do you think they are they more or less alive than viruses, or why do you think they are the same as viruses with respect to being alive?
If a soul is more or less how we collectively imagine it to be, what possible value is having a soul if some classes of living beings can exist without it?
Many people would substitute the phrase "beings of a type (i.e. species) which at their peak intellect are typically sufficiently intelligent" or "... sufficiently self-aware" for "living", using their own definition of "sufficiently."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.