Obviously apes are fundamentally different than humans in some really crucial ways, and anyone who suggests we should treat apes exactly the same as humans is a lunatic. (If anyone disagrees with that “obviously”, please consider the example of giving an ape “the right to bear arms.”) But I don’t think anyone is advocating for this (except the actual lunatics).
But apes also bear significant resmblance to human beings, and so there’s certainly a case to be made that they’re entitled to some human rights. It’s a difficult question to settle, because there’s no widespread agreement on why humans are entitled to those rights. If their intelligence is what justifies granting them those rights, then shouldn’t an ape have the same rights as a human of comparable intelligence? Even among adults there are certainly some mentally disabled people who have less intelligence than certain apes.
I’m not sure granting rights based on intelligence is a good way to go, but I’m not sure what a reasonable alternative would be. Simply saying “humans get certain rights just because they’re human” seems as arbitrary as saying “primates get certain rights just because they’re primates.”
If we asign rights based on average intelligence within a given category (e.g., “Even less intelligent humans get more rights than apes because the average human is smarter than the average ape”), then I think you need to provide some justification for how you pick your categories. Giving the less intelligent humans rights based on the intelligence of average humans seems no better justified than giving less intelligent primates rights based on the intelligence of average primates.
Your second post demonstrates that granting these rights to all humans is actually the least abritrary solution. Otherwise you get involved conferring varying degrees of rights based on intelligence measurements that are going to introduce greater levels of arbitrariness.
Having considered the question a bit more, I’m going to somewhat dispute my own claim above that the granting of rights to different categories of creature (and that even the categories themselves) are arbitrary . . .
I suppose you could say: “We pick categories based on what’s readily distinguishable, and grant rights (and associated responsibilities) based on the mental capacity to enter into a social contract exhibited by a typical member of that category.”
That is, “adult humans” is a justifiable category because we can easily recognize members of this group. Thus it makes sense to grant certain rights to adult humans proportionate to their mental capacity to follow the rules of our society. Likewise, humans as a whole are a well-defined group, and get certain rights based on their average mental capacity. Those who are also adults get additional rights for belonging to a subgroup with higher average mental capacity. And primates as a whole, or particular species (gorillas, etc.) likewise get some rights based on their mental capacity, but substantially less than if they belonged to a smarter group like humans.
It’s still somewhat arbitrary, but it’s not as arbitrary as saying “everyone with an IQ over 80.” The difference between a person with an IQ of 81 vs. 80 is basically nil, whereas the difference between a human and some other species is clear cut. (This argument doesn’t work as well for justifying distinguishing 18-year-olds and 17-year-olds, but what can you do?)
I agree with what you’re saying here, since your objection to your first statement is similar to my objection to that statement.
There’s very little justification for any of those cutoffs. They exist because of tradition, and to a lesser degree, the lack of a recognizably better alternative. With age-related rules, you can move the numbers around but it’ll never fix the fact that people develop at different rates and to different degrees, and that at some point people need to be given the respect for making their own decisions.
I didn’t read this until after I just posted my third post in the thread, but as you can see after further consideration I’ve basically come to the same conclusion. We have to have some way of distinguishing which organisims get more rights and which get less, and going by what species they (as opposed to what their IQ scores are) gives us a sharply defined boundary between these groups.
That said, it doesn’t follow from this that all rights should be restricted to humans, just that apes don’t necessarily get an identical set of rights as humans. The article cited in the OP describes granting apes a right not to be killed or imprisoned. Even accepting that we can grant different rights based on species, I don’t see an obvious reason why humans should be the only species granted those specific rights.
True. And I don’t think animals should be treated cruelly for any reason, and that goes beyond mistreating apes that are intelligent. But I’m not sure about the “imprisonment” issue in this case, and I have questions about its application to medical testing.
This is a dicey issue, to be sure. On the one hand, as I have already stated, I feel the laws specified in the OP cannot really be a bad thing. But, can something that can (and has) helped many people also really be considered a bad thing? Confusing. Tough to find the true answers. I guess my point is that in a way I see your point… but it seems like there should be a better way…
Wait, is this the same Peter Singer that argues that infants aren’t people? The Peter Singer who argues that it’s not as bad to kill a newborn as an older person? The one who thinks parents of disabled babies should be able to kill them with impunity the first month of their lives?
If so, it seems rather odd that he’d want to give rights to another creature that isn’t as “self-aware,” and “capable of perceiving themselves as individuals through time” as a real person…
I’m seeing the argument from several posters here that, because the majority of humans are capable of reasoning/taking on responsibilities/whatever, that all creatures identifiable as humans should be granted rights, “human” being a readily-identifiable, unambiguous category.
Here’s the problem with that, though: It is also true that the majority of great apes are capable of taking on responsibilities, etc., and “great ape” is also a readily-identifiable, unambiguous category. If we give mentally impaired humans rights because non-impaired humans deserve rights, how is that any different from giving non-human apes rights because human apes deserve rights?
Well, I think you can do both. We could say all great apes are entitled to rights based on the level of responsibility a typical great ape is capable of assuming, and humans have additional rights based on the (much higher) level of responsibility a typical human is capable of assuming (and likewise for other species that are above the Great Ape average).
Of course, it matters how we define “average” and “typical”. You could, I suppose, say that the majority of apes are human (what with there being billions of us), and thus we should equate “typical ape” to “typical human”. But I don’t think that’s reasonable, since that would mean that population growth among humans has somehow caused gorillas to be entitled to more rights. I’d say it would be more reasonable to say a “typical ape” is what you get when you take an average member of each ape species and take the average over these species.
Defined in that way, a “typical ape” is far less capable than the typical human, and thus apes, while entitled to some rights, don’t get nearly the same rights as human beings.
Yes, it is the same Pete Singer. Note, however, that his approach to the ethics of these situations begins from a different perspective than traditional ethics, so his positions are not necessarily contradictory from within his philosophy.
It seems to me entirely reasonable to have a law precluding the killing, imprisonment or torture of any of the great apes (chimps, bonobos, gorillas, orangs, etc) without a specifically applied for and judged court order. That would take care of medical research that absolutely had to be done with a great ape and couldn’t be covered with anything else.
This is not granting them human rights equal to ours. This is granting them humane rights. I’ve felt the same thing for a long time about elephants, a herd animal which (that?)not infrequently goes crazy in captivity, I believe because it is isolated from other elephants. (No, I don’t have a cite - this is my WAG) There are probably other animals of especially high intelligence that (which?) are particularly ill-suited to captivity as well.
Peter Singer may be driving this, but personally I don’t give a darn what his rationale for this is, nor what his attitude toward babies is. This seems to me to be the right thing to do.
I’m sorry that my previous post was so confusing. Here’s what I was trying to say.
If you look at the language at rhetoric that’s being used to back the Spanish law and others like it, it’s clear that we’re not going to stop here, but rather we’ll continue moving towards more rights for animals. When people describe apes as “brothers”, “bona fide persons”, or “a community of equals”, those phrases clearly suggest that the Spanish law is just the beginning and we’re likely to see more demands soon. The central argument that proponents are making goes like this: “Apes have certain mental capabilities, and hence are entitled to certain rights.” But since the list of rights is arbitrary, there’s no guarantee that these people won’t demand more rights for apes in the future.
Lastly, certain animal rights groups are noted for being wholly dedicated to this one issue to the exclusion of all else, and for pursuing their ends by any means. As a result, they can wield more power than you might expect, despite their small numbers. In some countries they’ve already won seats in the legislature. I fully expect that we’ll soon see more “human rights” granted to apes and to other animals as well.
Even if this statement were true, it still comes back to why we assign humans special rights. There should be a reason behind allowing certain classes rights and not others - and if we’re saying it’s because humans are more intelligent than apes, to me it makes sense to assign greater rights to apes than to lobsters. Further, we run into the difficult case that children (at various ages) and the developmentally disabled are less intelligent than the great apes.
I don’t think anyone in this thread is arguing for truly equal rights for apes - it just doesn’t seem possible. But, there is a case to be made for protection rights, the same rights we’d offer to an infant or a person in a vegetative state, e.g. not being bought and sold, used for meat, abused, or exploited. What rights would be appropriate for apes is a legitimate discussion, but handwaving that rights are for humans only just because doesn’t make any sense. Why? We extended rights to various other groups that were not offered them in past; we should have a strong reason for making such a choice.
