Great Ape Personhood

Post Reply New Topic

They may not speak English, but they do speak. I watch a BBC documentary and did some research, did you know that prairie dogs have a complex set of language?
And animals surely should be given the freedom of life. It doesn't have to be as complex as our amendments, simply because they don't live their lives by amendments. But that doesn't give you or anyone else to treat them like they are objects or product. Because they aren't objects, they are living, breathing creatures.
Who have emotions just like us, they have the same desires of food, shelter, and nurter just like us. To say they aren't or they don't deserve any of what I have is disgusting. Absolutely disgusting and sickening.
They breathe, they feel, elephants can recognize the bones of deceased, elephants mourn their dead, chimps use tools, so do ocotopus, dolphins show a level of understanding emotions, etc.
They are living beings and not to give them the right of a living being is just sickening imo.

@Scratch: Vegetables wouldn't follow under since their life is basically built off of being pruned and picked. Many plants thrive on being pruned and picked.

Does it consist of a pre-determined set of cries that mean something like 'Hide, it's a hawk!'? That may be interesting, but that isn't what language is.

With language, you are expressing your opinion on a complex abstract idea to people you have never met, listening to other people's opinions, disagreeing with them and giving reasons why you disagree. I doubt that whatever communication system prarie dogs have (which may be fascinating) could replicate that.


If we give them a right to life, it would imply that we should punish carnivores for eating.

How far should this be taken? If I water my lawn and drown some ants, should I be considered a mass-murderer?

I agree with treating animals like living, breathing creatures, I don't see how that makes them people.


Some are like us in these ways. I very much doubt spiders have the same sort of emotions we have, though they certainly desire to kill food and eat it.

Kittens IMHO deserve much more than spiders (and not for the incredibly vast improvement in cuteness), but they don't deserve to be people.


Are you saying that plants that don't fit this criteria should never be killed? (This would outlaw weeding.)

I agree that we should not treat animals just like any other object or product, but we cannot give them an absolute right to life because so many types of animal live by eating other animals (including ourselves).



We have a desire to eat other animals and so do wolves. More common desires between us and animals. All completely conflicting with the project of giving the right to life to animals.

Pruning benefits a colony of cells at the expense of individuals. Should we also prune human colonies (ie. kill individuals) to help the group? There are extremists who think we should kill off the entire human race to help Gaea, the planet colony.

I think a better criteria would involve cognitive ability, but that depends on better understanding of how the brain works. At the moment we draw the line along a species boundary, and "biological bigotry" among the religious (based on ignorance of how the brain works) supports that and rejects the idea of extending rights to non-human species. But similar justifications were made before we understood species boundaries to exclude rights for other races and even other genders (ie. women).

Religion tries to explain the dark corners of the universe that we can't see. The brain is currently a pretty shady corner. As we further illuminate it, religion will lose control of it and we'll be able to make solid statements about where to redraw the "rights line" based on brain function instead of species and gender identity. That may exclude some humans, and hence be very controversial.

Making a criteria that is based upon cognitive ability is a disastrous idea, because nobody would be able to determine what particular form of intelligence is most valuable and most constitutes person-ness.

Until we meet other human-like beings that aren't human, the species barrier will do pretty well.

That's like suggesting that we shouldn't base engineering on physics, because no one knows what kind of physics might be valuable to engineering.

It's not a question that really deserves to be asked or solved. The 'engineering' is far too dangerous and no real necessity exists at this time to establish it for well-meaning people.

I voted against the ape-person-hood position because I fail to recognize that apes are really so special in the sense of being different from all other animals, thus whatever rights we give to apes should not differ from those given to other animals.

If we were to meet intelligent alien beings then the question would have to be asked though.

The origin of physics is in engineering (practical tasks).

ruveyn

m. scratch........have you read any foundation novels by isaac asimov? he discusses gaia extensively, and it requires everything , including the planet itself, to be part of a complete organism. unfortunately, human like beings are included, BUT, as part of gaia, they are not the bizarre creatures called humans who 'infest' the earth. they actually mesh in pretty well with the other animals, plants, and rock.

now, i would say isaac was as brilliant as anyone who has ever existed on earth. i like his notion of a complete organism, perhaps because i'm such a failure as a human.

earth humans could not transform as necessary to accept being part of something. genetic flow goes to the creeps and to the arrogant and to the smug. too late for earth humans. count me as one of your 'extremists'. take a few moments to consider what the earth would be if humans had not branched from the tree.

It is what it is, not what you or I might like it to be. Without humans, Gaea would be a mindless world with no one to appreciate it. Without someone to appreciate it, there is no "justification" for it to exist. It just exists.

Justification is a human hang up. In raw, insensate Nature there are no justifications. The Universe knows nothing of justifications because the Universe knows nothing.

ruveyn

It might be fruitful at this point to mention the Is-Ought Problem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem