Philosophical debate question:
If it were scientifically possible to create a half-human, half-animal creature…
…would or should such a creature have the same legal rights and protections as a 100% human being?
…would such a creature have a soul? (if you believe that humans have souls)
…how much of a percentage/fraction would be necessary? Perhaps a 1/2 human, 1/2 animal creature would be considered human, but what if it’s only 1% human, 99% animal?
A lot needs to be clarified before any sensible answer can be given.
How is it created? Genetic engineering, surgery, or what? That could certainly make a difference.
What do you mean by a soul? Are you suggesting that, if there is such a thing, non-human animals don’t have them? (I know of no good grounds for believing that, aside from religious ones.)
Apart from all that though, I take the crucial issue to be, can it talk, can you hold a meaningful conversation with it? If the answer is yes, I would consider it a person with the rights of a person.
njtt has the right answer: can we converse at a certain level of abstraction?
One of the reasons animals don’t have rights, in the sense that we humans do, is that animals are not capable of making contractual agreements. You can’t say to a wolf, “Hey, let me go, and I’ll bring you twice my weight in hamburger tomorrow.”
They aren’t able to grasp the concepts of futurity, of deliverance on promises, etc.
If the chimera in question can conduct trades, and keep to the terms of the bargains – “Okay, I’ll trade you two Oreo cookies for a carton of orange juice” – then it has the necessary cognitive comprehension to justify basic rights and at least limited self determination.
Full civil rights and legal emancipation might require a higher level of abstract thought.
(The online comic strip “Freefall” has been dealing with the question of robot intelligence and the intelligence of artificially created or “uplifted” wolves. Good writing, average art, and a very slow plotline, but some clever ideas regarding intelligence and rights.)
re souls, I don’t believe in the concept. But a Christian friend of mine insisted that, in Star Wars, C3PO had a soul. So the half-man/half-wolf would probably have one also, according to at least some Christians.
I think the thought is so disgusting that even research should be banned.
I think I should clarify that I am 100% **against **any such scientific research or experimentation and consider it to be even worse than the Nazi Holocaust experiments. This is a philosophical question. I am, obviously, not advocating such things.
There are many mentally handicapped people who cannot hold a conversation but we consider them human beings (as we should).
Legal rights? It depends on whether they can grasp such a question. (As for the severely mentally handicapped, they get rights due to their commonality with the vast majority of humans who can indeed grasp abstract concepts).
Protections? Almost certainly. Special protections? Well yeah, given that we’ve created such an issue.
Also, the concept of a percentage is ill-defined. Set aside their origins and focus on what they can do. That said, we should strive for protections on their terms rather than our own. Different things upset different creatures in different ways.
[INDENT]“May I urge you to consider my liver?” asked the animal, “it must be very rich and tender by now, I’ve been force-feeding myself for months.”
“A green salad,” said Arthur emphatically.
“A green salad?” said the animal, rolling his eyes disapprovingly at Arthur.
“Are you going to tell me,” said Arthur, “that I shouldn’t have green salad?”
“Well,” said the animal, “I know many vegetables that are very clear on that point. Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am.”
It managed a very slight bow.
“Glass of water please,” said Arthur.[/INDENT] Word Hoard: Douglas Adams's cow that wants to be eaten
Banning research into something innocuous such as this is even more disgusting
Which half is human? If it’s human legs on a dog, and the dog is still no smarter than any other dog, then no. If it’s a human head on a dog body, and just as smart as you or I or any other thinking human being, then yes.
Laws that are specific to “humans” should be rewritten based on intelligence or the expected development of human-level intelligence.
Most traditional cultures thought that all living things had souls. The modern interpretation of Christianity is odd in this respect.
I don’t believe in them, though. So no.
Braaaaaaainz.
Based on Second Life, I think we can expect that as soon as it becomes physically possible, you’re going to start seeing cat people, cow people, fox people, and triple-breasted people walking around. The first stages will probably depend on surgery (like sex change surgery), but so long as you have cat people walking around, you might as well figure out ways to let them do so without having to undergo life-threatening surgery.
And once you have two genetically modified cat-people having a child, it would presumably be a cat-person too.
I mean, I guess I can’t say that there’s no holding back the future, but considering what that generally looks like (see Wahabism), I’d vote against.
Many people swear I am half Yeti.
Sometimes my behavior makes me think they are right.
Is it self-aware? Does it have problem-solving intelligence levels?
Many mentally handicapped people do not have problem-solving intelligence levels.
Judging by current human behavior, I’d say there are two factors that would influence how the hybrid would be treated.
The first is its intelligence level. Can it speak? Can it behave intelligently? Perform tasks? Be part of human culture? If not, what level are we at - chimp? Dog? Horse?
The second is its rarity. If there’s only one individual of its kind, we’re likely to protect it and treat it as special. If there are a million of the buggers running around, we’re likely to be less impressed.
Last I heard, we are all 100% human and 100% animal.
Anyway, the premise is absurd. We share I think I read recently, 97% of our DNA with chimps. Suppose a creature existed that we shared 99% of our DNA with humans. What then? Well, it depends. Roger Taney opined that blacks were not people. Unfortunately, his opinion had the force of law. Until the Civil War was over and it was written in the US constitution that he has wrong. Although I am sure he was wrong, on what basis could such a determination be made? It is just an opinion, not one subject to factual determination.
Hari Seldon: I’ve read and re-read your post, and I don’t see that you explained why you think the premise is absurd.
Far as I can tell, it’s not absurd at all.
We know that the bioluminescent gene can be grafted into other animals, making them glow in the dark. There’s no reason this couldn’t be done to humans. Cool, I now have glow-in-the-dark fingernails. Still 99.999% human, 0.001% animal.
Now just slowly move the slider from left to right. Toss in some genes for additional retinal cells from eagles. Toss in some genes for stronger immune systems from vultures. Toss in genes for stronger muscles and bones from gorillas.
It isn’t absurd. It might not be wise. There could very well be unanticipated negative consequences. It might lead to incredible suffering. But it might also be really wonderful, leading to improved quality of life in any number of ways. I favor very careful research in this direction.
And, yeah, I’m a furry, and would love to see uplifted animals brought to full sapience. Also cute neko cat-girls.
“Do I have a soul?”
If such a hybrid creature can ask the question, then I say the answer is yes.
You shoulod look into the writings of Cordwainer Smith
"…
The Underpeople, animals modified into human form and intelligence to fulfill servile roles, and treated as property. Several stories feature clandestine efforts to liberate the Underpeople and grant them civil rights. They are seen everywhere throughout regions controlled by the Instrumentality. Names of Underpeople are based on their animal species. Thus C’Mell (“The Ballad of Lost C’Mell”) is cat-derived; and D’Joan (“The Dead Lady of Clown Town”), a Joan of Arc figure, is descended from dogs.
…"
Yes! Beautiful, beautiful stuff, haunting and rich and poetic. The title of one of Smith’s collections was prophetic: “You Will Never Be The Same.”
Smith explored the question, “What does it mean to be human” by blurring the boundaries between humans and animals – and then having his fictional humans insisting on that boundary as a matter of life and death. It’s one of the best moral questioning ever done in the form of fiction.
(And I’m also a Tintin fan!)
OK, I understand that many humans possess some residual genetic material from Neanderthal DNA. So, let’s suppose that a group of people who have relatively high Neanderthal genetics decide they want to reestablish their species, and they voluntarily form a collective. As children are born, those with very little Neanderthal DNA are expelled from the collective, and only those with DNA above a certain threshold are allowed to reproduce. This threshold is gradually adjusted upwards, with the goal of making a society that is predominately Neanderthal.
At what point does the general human population decide that those in the Neanderthal collective are non-human?
If push came to shove, I predict the “single drop of blood” doctrine would arise.