Great Ape Personhood

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good to have you on wp clyde. not many of us who believe in animal rights.

Like I said, there are other ways to gain protection for animals then to give them personhood under the law.

I'm guessing you're a vegetarian or vegan? I would be pretty upset that I couldn't have a burger anymore because personhood made it illegal to eat them.

One of my threads I stated I have a lot of empathy towards animals simply because I have been poorly mistreated because I "didn't speak the same language" as the people around me. So I understand at some standpoint what the cows, dogs, chimps, etc. go through. I feel a lot of empathy for them and will speak upon their behalf because no one spoke about my behalf.
I'll do them the favor no one did me.

And how do come to that conclusion? This "rights comes with responsibility" thing is bit cliché and probably not applicable in this case. There cases made by scientists, philosophers and others to grant personhood to the great apes, dolphins etc. based on specific qualities of these species. However, granting them personhood would not do a lot more from a legal point of view other than giving them more protection.

Also, from a philosophical point of view, there is no specific reason to consider humans special if anything else has the qualities sufficient to make it a person. Without talking about animals, we could hypothetically talk about aliens like the Prawns from District 9 or the Na'vi from Avatar, or we we could talk about artificial intelligence like the android from Bicentennial Man. At least we can imagine cases where the word "person" might not apply to human beings.

What do you mean by people?

In a colloquial sense, I consider my cat a person. But she doesn't have the same legal standing as even the most incompetent human.

A better question would be what requirements are there for an entity (animal, AI, human, space alien) to be give the same rights and responsibilities as either adult or child humans? Why should a smart animal have less rights than a developmentally-disabled human with lower mental faculties? If aliens visit us, should we treat them as smart animals, with no rights under the law except the anti-cruelty statutes present in some locales? How do we decide when a computer gets smart enough for us to grant it equal rights? And remember that many competent humans weren't granted equal rights until historically recently (ie. within the last two centuries).

The definition of the word "person" is determined politically. There is no scientific definition. A person is whoever/whatever the law says a person is.. If one bases the definition of mental capability then a newborn human infant is NOT a person. It has less than one third the brain mass it will have in early adulthood.

ruveyn

Well I don't really care if you would be upset to have your burger. Unless that animal was treated with respect and treated that even though it is food or a "product" its still life granted life unto us. It deserves every right to be treated like a living being. Every right. So if you didn't have a burger, I really don't care.

I am not vegan for ethical reasons. I am vegan for medical reasons.

I have always felt this way and it had nothing to do with my diet, it had more to do with the way I felt.

As I said: Every human has different responsibility and it doesn't always equal the same thing as someone else. We all have responsibilities, but one responsibility may not be the same as another.
You didn't answer the question

Because these people have different responsibilities to each other, does that mean that they shouldn't be considered people?

Honestly, take your logic. Because another species' responsibility is different from ours, you're not going to grant them personhood.

So, if another human being has a different responsibility compared to yours, they aren't considered a human being because they don't have the same responsibility as you?

Animals have those rights which humans give them.

ruveyn

And we humans do need to begin giving them more.

That is your opinion. Opinions are like rectums. Everybody has at least one. Write to you legislator.

ruveyn

At least one? Do you mean that some people have two?

As rectums go, it seems that some do have more than one.

No, this is bs.

If the cow was really rampaging, then giving it the rights of a human wouldn't have helped. If a human is running around with a gun (or even a plastic toy that looks realistic enough), and acts in such a way that scares people and makes them think that a rampage is imminent, then that person is likely to get shot before they can hurt somebody.

If the cow wasn't rampaging, then someone at that fair was stupid. If someone is stupid and perceives a human to be threatening when they aren't, that human is still potentially in danger of being shot. There was a case when a black guy in a bad part of town seemed suspicious to some cops, and when the black guy took out his wallet, the cops thought it was a gun, panicked and shot him.

In neither case would giving human rights to cows actually have helped this cow.

What are human rights? Things like freedom of speech (animals don't speak), freedom of the press (animals don't run presses), freedom of religion (animals don't have religion)...

in this context Dawn Prince-Hughes's book Songs of the Gorilla Nation has to be mentioned.

i'm all for extending personhood. basically, that means ending wanton destruction. why should that stop at the nearer boundaries?

first we save the humans, then the whales & the apes. (then see what else is left, if anything.)

those who take a restricted view, fail to understand how easily this can be pushed back; you & me being next on the list; yeah, you & me.

m.

No, there is no reason to draw a distinction between Great Apes and other forms of non-human animals.

There is no reason to give Apes more rights than other animals, because there is no reason to give other animals LESS rights for not being Apes.

So where do you draw the line, then? At vertebrates? Insects? Vegetables? What's the defining characteristic that establishes who and what has the legal equivalence to a "person"? Note that in many ways, corporations have the legal characteristics and rights of a person, giving you yet another data point.