Concerning the news that Spain recently granted certain human rights, I feel a need to respond. There should be no laws that treat apes as “brothers” of humans. Apes are not humans. They are very much inferior to humans. It doesn’t matter what measure we’re using. If it’s a meaning measure of mental ability, then apes are inferior to humans.
Chesterton once said, “Wherever there is animal worship, there is human sacrifice.” Peter Singer, who started the drive towards ape equality, is famous for two things: believing that killing animals is wrong, and believing that killing people is right. In point of fact, there’s a direct relationship between granting rights to animals and removing those rights from humans.
Let’s take, as an example, the idea that apes deserve “due process of law” before having their freedoms removed. An orangutan cannot go through the due process of law. Its mind is not adequate for it. It cannot testify, select a lawyer, plea bargain, or even understand what the law is. So if apes are to receive “due process of law”, we must do one of two things.
First, we can devise one process of law for humans and a different one for apes. If so, we’ve just admitted that the idea of ape equality is hogwash.
Second, we can drag the human process of law down to the ape level. This would mean deny humans the basic rights to defend themselves, have a jury of their peers, retain lawyers, and so forth. This would be a major violation of human rights.
The laws in this specific case aren’t about treating apes equally. The article itself quotes Singer and his group as saying animals and people shouldn’t be treated equally. The article keeps quoting parts of their stuff that it agrees with.
Who is it exactly that the article (and you) are disagreeing with? I’m sure there are nutjobs out there that would want full and equal rights, but they don’t seem to be here.
This seems to be part of a larger anthropomorphizing of apes and gorillas in general. For instance,
National Geographic’s article has the title, “Who Murdered the Virunga Gorillas?” As a point of order, you can’t “murder” anything that isn’t homo sapiens. The primary definition of murder is:
"Law. the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law. In the U.S., special statutory definitions include murder committed with malice aforethought, characterized by deliberation or premeditation or occurring during the commission of another serious crime, as robbery or arson (first-degree murder), and murder by intent but without deliberation or premeditation (second-degree murder). "
There is an alternate definition, applied euphemistically, that could apply, but again, only euphemistically. I don’t believe NatGeo was using it euphemistically.
If there is a movement “to create legal recognition of bonobos, common chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans (the non-human great apes) as bona fide persons,” then as far as I’m concerned it needs to be opposed. If a reader of Singer tells us “We are presented here with a three-pronged proposal: that great apes are entitled to life, liberty, and exemption from torture–in other words, to the rights of humans, with whom they form ‘a community of equals.’”, then it’s quite clear where this movement is leading us. The advancement of the basic idea of animal equality has reached levels that would have seemed preposterous a generation ago. The “nutjobs” are exactly what I’m responding. Their ideas are rapidly moving towards the mainstream.
Really? Cites, please. More common does not mean mainstream, happily.
And if you’re talking “animal equality movement”, then fair enough, but i’m honestly not sure whether you’re talking about opposing full human rights for them or any rights whatsoever. Could you clarify?
So for what reason do babies have rights? If we talk mental ability, then they should be as equal as monkeys. There are few monkeys that even have the same intelligence as three year olds. Should two year old children have no rights?
You have a gross misunderstanding of Singer. Here is a quote that resembles his position, from your article:
Babies can’t testify or select lawyers either, and yet they still have some rights. There is already a system in place for them, we can use it for animals of similar intelligence.
Just so you know, somewhere, a wannabe Dr. Zaius is reading this & taking down names…
Btw, I’m with the OP, so put me on your list too, you damn dirty ape!
Bingo. Apes do not have the same mental capacity as healthy adult humans, but they have a mental capacity superior to certain people experiencing late-stage Alzheimer’s disease. When we’re talking about humans, it’s a pretty small section of rights that we base off mental capacity (for example, the right to testify in one’s own defense at trial); there are plenty of rights that have no such basis.
Yes, well, I hate every ape I see, from chimpan-A to chimpanzee; they’ll never make a monkey out of me. (Which I agree is one potential outcome if the OP’s example is reasonable.)
I agree that the idea of granting apes rights is a problematic one, and I don’t support it primarily because it sounds stupid. I’m fully against animal cruelty but I think human rights should be reserved for humans. However: what would this mean for practical purposes? Further criminalization of torturing apes or capturing them illegally? I don’t have a problem with that.
I’ve never been any kind of biologist, but defining liberty and the pursuit of happiness for other species seems like a fool’s errand to me. We encroach on their natural territory all the time, for example, and I’m not sure exactly how happiness would be defined for a non human. I accept that a wide variety of animals are able to feel pleasure, for example, but isn’t happiness a little more complicated and nuanced? How do we define it for another species?
This subject has more to do with empathising than anthropomorphising. Instead of looking upon Human Rights as a Universal value, we should be looking more at trying to establish sentient creature rights. IMO.
The problem is that humans are the only standard by which we have to judge rights-worthy levels of sapience. To an extent, this has to be about anthropomorphising, since if we’re taking our current human rights as the baseline of a wider sapience rights concept, we’re going to drawing a line from one to the other, even though it’s not going to be near equality.
Yes, but the fact that sapience extends over such a wide spectrum within our own species, indicates we should not preclude the sapience of supposedly lesser creatures, in our considerations, don’t you think?
