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Hmm... yes slowly as I used it is a relative term...
What do you mean by "slowly"?
Yeah but give that chimp millions of dollars and tax cuts...turn that chimp in to a business and you should have the correct formula for personhood.Trying to give chimps personhood rights might have been well meaning but was in fact a stupid waste of time and money and it didn't help that poor chimp in the cage at all.
BBC News - US chimpanzee Tommy 'has no human rights' - court
I'm curious what people think about this case. I feel like chimps, as well as the other great apes, and a few other species of animal inhabit a weird in-between status. They aren't human, but they're clearly more intelligent and self-aware than the vast majority of other animal species.
I've talked about this in a previous thread on this topic, and think while it was unrealistic for chimps to get human rights, per se, they definitely deserve a higher tier than other animals due to their high intelligence.
And how do you establish those theoretical "tiers" and the hypothetical rights that go along with those tiers? What would that look like?
It's not something I've thoroughly thought out, but the right not to be hunted or experimented would almost certainly be at the top of the list. I'm not suggesting "free speech" or the "right to vote" if that's where you thinking I'm going with this.
What animals should have "the right not to be hunted"?
Did you know that chimpanzees hunt and kill other chimpanzees, eating the flesh of their victims after they dismember them and pass around the body parts for other troop members to enjoy?
So how do we enforce these rights? What should be the punishment for the successful hunters?
Your graphic and emotional description doesn't do anything for your argument. Did you know that humans [insert list of grisly things people do to each other here]? That doesn't mean people don't deserve rights.
You don't get it yet, do you? Of course people deserve these rights and we actually can and DO enforce them. Now how do you propose that humans, as a completely different species of animal, create and enforce rights for animals that conflict with their natural behavior?
Are you saying that the only way to properly act towards them according to their natural behavior is to hunt and kill them, eat their flesh after we dismember them and pass around the body parts for us to enjoy? And is scientific experimentation in line with their natural behavior?
WHY ANIMALS HAVE NO RIGHTS
"A right, properly understood, is a claim, or potential claim,
that one party may exercise against another. The target against
whom such a claim may be registered can be a single person, a
group, a community, or (perhaps) all humankind. The content of
rights claims also varies greatly: repayment of loans,
nondiscrimination by employers, noninterference by the state, and
so on. To comprehend any genuine right fully, therefore, we must
know who holds the right, against whom it is held, and to what it
is a right.
Alternative sources of rights add complexity. Some rights are
grounded in constitution and law (e.g., the right of an accused
to trial by jury); some rights are moral but give no legal claims
(e.g., my right to your keeping the promise you gave me); and
some rights (e.g., against theft or assault) are rooted both in
morals and in law.
The differing targets, contents, and sources of rights, and their
inevitable conflict, together weave a tangled web. Notwithstanding all
such complications, this much is clear about rights in general: they
are in every case claims, or potential claims, within a community of
moral agents. Rights arise, and can be intelligibly defended, only
among beings who actually do, or can, make moral claims against one
another. Whatever else rights may be, therefore, they are necessarily
human; their possessors are persons, human beings. [p.865]
The attributes of human beings from which this moral capability
arises have been described variously by philosophers, both
ancient and modern: the inner consciousness of a free will (Saint
Augustine); the grasp, by human reason, of the binding character
of moral law (Saint Thomas); the self-conscious participation of
human beings in an objective ethical order (Hegel); human
membership in an organic moral community (Bradley); the
development of the human self through the consciousness of other
moral selves (Mead); and the underivative, intuitive cognition of
the rightness of an action (Prichard). Most influential has been
Immanuel Kant's emphasis on the universal human possession of a
uniquely moral will and the autonomy its use entails. Humans
confront choices that are purely moral; humans -- but certainly
not dogs or mice -- lay down moral laws, for others and for
themselves. Human beings are self-legislative, morally
auto-nomous [sic]. [p.865-866] (more)
see full text here: http://people.ucalgary.ca/~powlesla/personal/hunting/rights/cohen.txt
You're not very good at this "debate" thing, are you? I suggested no such thing as you stated there. I'm merely suggesting that if you believe we should establish some sort of bill of champanzee rights and make "No chimpanzee shall be hunted" part of their bill of rights, I have no idea how you would propose getting their buy-in on that and/or enforcement for all the violations of their "rights" that they inflict on each other.
That's why discussions about animal rights usually end up in a bunch of silliness and AREN'T going to end up as US law anytime soon. The dumbing down of America has been somewhat successful but we're still a long way from being THAT dumb.
BBC News - US chimpanzee Tommy 'has no human rights' - court
I'm curious what people think about this case. I feel like chimps, as well as the other great apes, and a few other species of animal inhabit a weird in-between status. They aren't human, but they're clearly more intelligent and self-aware than the vast majority of other animal species.
They don't have human rights because they're not human.
It was always overly ambitious. Again, they're highly intelligent for non-humans, and for that alone they should have qualified for a special status. But trying to give them human rights was absurd and a waste of time, and I can't believe the animal rights group believed for a second that they ever stood a chance.
That being said, ruling against the human rights effort using the argument that 'Tommy could not be recognized as a "legal person" as it "cannot bear any legal duties"' is terrible reasoning because human children can't bear legal duties either, yet we obviously afford them human rights. It's just bad logic.
BBC News - US chimpanzee Tommy 'has no human rights' - court
I'm curious what people think about this case. I feel like chimps, as well as the other great apes, and a few other species of animal inhabit a weird in-between status. They aren't human, but they're clearly more intelligent and self-aware than the vast majority of other animal species.
BBC News - US chimpanzee Tommy 'has no human rights' - court
I'm curious what people think about this case. I feel like chimps, as well as the other great apes, and a few other species of animal inhabit a weird in-between status. They aren't human, but they're clearly more intelligent and self-aware than the vast majority of other animal species.
The problem with your argument is that you're using extremely selective reasoning. On one hand people do terrible things to each other every day, yet you agree (I would hope) that we keep those things illegal. Yet when chimpanzees hunt and kill each other, you argue that it's their "natural behavior" and therefore we shouldn't temper our behavior toward them. Applied to humans we could use your reasoning to conclude that if we came upon two countries locked in warfare, it would be appropriate to step in as a third party and just start bombing and killing the bejeezus out of them because, after all, that's just what they're doing to each other and clearly they're not policing themselves. So you need to analyze more carefully why you (again, I hope) disapprove of going in and wantonly bombing everyone in that example, but find it acceptable to hunt and experiment on chimps because that's what they do to themselves (well, the hunting part that is) and they're clearly not policing themselves.
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