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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?
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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
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.
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.
I'm all for this. . .after we grant human children some basic rights (such as a say in custody hearings).
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.
I hate this argument. The PEOPLE of the corp can act as individuals, they should not be allowed to pool that power into something that is more than the sum of its parts.
Good-bye
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.
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."
And of course you apply this equally to all groups that attempt to affect policy, right? Corporations, unions, the AFL/CIO, the NRA, the ACLU, AARP, the ASPCA, the EFF, OWS, open source advocates, etc. None of them should be allowed to state their opinion ,monetarily or otherwise, as a group, right?
Corporations also fling poo.
Table-ized A.I.
What about insects' rights? Will cockroaches sue me for mass murdering?
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?
All the boys who are strapped down and circumcised...
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.
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It's not like they're corporations.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
They are people, They have the same freedom of assembly as everyone else.
Then let them stand trial on behalf of the corporation and go to jail when unlawful activity has been found.
Their unlawfull speach? What unlawfull speach are they being shielded from? Also only shairholders are protected from criminal liability. Leadership of companies can still go to prison.
Leadership of companies can still go to prison.
Unless it's massive corruption they generally don't. Normally the company is charged a fine, shareholders lose a tiny bit of value, and life goes on. Meanwhile, peaceful protestors are routinely arrested. I don't think your analogy matches reality.
Nah You'll be fine.. At least in NYC you almost certainly won't be given a traffic ticket, let alone be charged with a crime.
http://gothamist.com/2012/02/15/heres_why_drivers_get_away_with_mur.php
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/05/michael-mckean-hit-by-car-nyc-no-criminality-suspected.html
http://www.citylab.com/commute/2012/04/invention-jaywalking/1837/
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.