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I was reading the BBC today and came across these articles in this fascinating case. I'll quote them as a bit of a sounding-board to start off with: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29542829 quote:A panel of five appellate judges heard Mr Wise's petition for a writ of habeas corpus - a request for a custodian to prove he or she has lawful authority to detain a prisoner. A decision is expected in the next four to six weeks. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30338231 quote:A chimpanzee is not entitled to the same rights as people and does not have be freed from captivity by its owner, a US court has ruled. Now actually the group seems to have made an interesting point -- we accept that certain things have the rights of personhood, corporations for instance. And apparently the state has ruled that in certain cases, animals have the rights of personhood as well, like when their owners have willed a trust to take care of them after their owner's death. A further point I'd make is that we already grant certain rights of personhood on people who are incapable of bearing legal duties or submitting to societal responsibilities, such as those who have severe mental handicaps, the senile, and minors. So to me, the judges' ruling seems a tad odd if it's justified on the stated basis, since, on that basis, could we not then take that as an allowance to deny rights of personhood to the certain groups I mentioned? Also, it strikes me as a bit circular: the chimp does not have legal rights as a person because it cannot bear legal duties, and it cannot bear legal duties because it isn't a person! Well, at least it's food for thought, and at any rate, I'm not a lawyer. What are you folks' opinions on this?
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Dec 5, 2014 05:30
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 13:36 |
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I'm for personhood for all tetrapods. Possibly some molluscs and social arthropods.
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Dec 5, 2014 06:12
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DrSunshine posted:I was reading the BBC today and came across these articles in this fascinating case. I'll quote them as a bit of a sounding-board to start off with: I think that personhood for great apes, new caledonian crows, and other highly intelligent animals is hard to justify without inventing tiered levels of personhood, which might not be such a bad thing. But we can't reliably communicate with our intelligent brethren so it's hard to make them fully people socially, let alone legally.
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Dec 5, 2014 06:16
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Effectronica posted:I think that personhood for great apes, new caledonian crows, and other highly intelligent animals is hard to justify without inventing tiered levels of personhood, which might not be such a bad thing. But we can't reliably communicate with our intelligent brethren so it's hard to make them fully people socially, let alone legally. Yeah, it's kind of a complicated issue -- that's why I think it's interesting and worthy of discussion (and even debate)! While I feel like I'm in favor of treating highly intelligent apes like chimpanzees, or dolphins and orcas (see the film Blackfish) as a "special class of person", it probably would open the door to a huge number of legal loopholes and just nonsensical things. The idea of having "tiers of personhood", with, say a chimp being on a rung somewhere around a pre-speech toddler or a severely mentally retarded person, would introduce a big headache with trying to classify different types of animals (and possibly even people!) based on their proximity to some kind of "ideally cognizant" person.
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Dec 5, 2014 06:29
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I may not be understanding your statement, but many jurisdictions do restrict some of the rights of personhood on the impaired groups that you mention, particularly in terms of equality under the eyes of the law and personal liberty. Now these restrictions are often tempered to weigh the "best interest" of the impaired person and usually err on the side of preserving rights where possible. Guardianships and conservatorships over incapable adults are a prime example. This wasn't always the case, in the US we are still only 60 years out from the compelled sterilization of the mentally handicapped as a "societal good." I'm also not sure the argument is circular. Its more pyramidal. Personhood rests on being capable of rights and duties. The difference with chimps is that a human being is presumed to be capable of rights and duties, at least until some legal process or procedure strips some portion of that presumption away. If you think about the highest states of (living) human impairment, i.e. brain death, things definitely can get hugely complicated. Planet of the Apes rehash: It would be very interesting if they could find a chimp who was capable of some legal duty or otherwise find some simple legal duty that chimps are capable of. Watch the requirements change.
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Dec 5, 2014 07:12
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DrSunshine posted:Yeah, it's kind of a complicated issue -- that's why I think it's interesting and worthy of discussion (and even debate)! While I feel like I'm in favor of treating highly intelligent apes like chimpanzees, or dolphins and orcas (see the film Blackfish) as a "special class of person", it probably would open the door to a huge number of legal loopholes and just nonsensical things. The idea of having "tiers of personhood", with, say a chimp being on a rung somewhere around a pre-speech toddler or a severely mentally retarded person, would introduce a big headache with trying to classify different types of animals (and possibly even people!) based on their proximity to some kind of "ideally cognizant" person. This would be a challenge. On the other hand I think it would be relatively simple to free from captivity those animals which we deemed sufficiently intelligent to understand and bemoan their own imprisonment. That, I think, would be a fantastic first step.
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Dec 5, 2014 07:29
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Even if a person has no rights for any social contract because of impairment or because those rights were stripped from them, there are still some fundamental things we grant all people regardless of their legal status in a society. A guy with an IQ of 25 can't communicate or consent to any kind of legal contract, but he still has the right to live, to not be experimented on medically or have his organs harvested. I think in the future we are going to have to re-assess what has human rights when we start replicating human tissue on a larger scale, so maybe at one point in the future a brain dead person could be considered property in the same way as a laboratory animal, though maybe only if created specifically for that purpose. Right now the extremely mentally impaired have rights so I think it's only fair to share them with other thinking, feeling beings that may not be able to communicate with humans or comprehend contracts.
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Dec 5, 2014 07:30
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Maybe I'm just too cynical now, but "tiers" of personhood (even if for other species of animal) just sounds like more ammo for anti-abortion activists to me. "Well, if we can't do x to them, and they aren't even human, then..." That said, in general inhumane treatment of animal does make me 
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Dec 5, 2014 07:33
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The Balearic Islands granted personhood to great apes! quote:In its ruling, the judges wrote: "So far as legal theory is concerned, a person is any being whom the law regards as capable of rights and duties. I agree with the OP. Under this definition children and the mentally infirm are not persons. Grogquock posted:I may not be understanding your statement, but many jurisdictions do restrict some of the rights of personhood on the impaired groups that you mention, particularly in terms of equality under the eyes of the law and personal liberty. Now these restrictions are often tempered to weigh the "best interest" of the impaired person and usually err on the side of preserving rights where possible. Guardianships and conservatorships over incapable adults are a prime example. Right, but I don't think that the personhood of apes is substantially different; even with the restriction of some of their rights of personhood, this should be balanced against their best interest. I think at very least a ban on testing and experimentation should be reasonable.
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Dec 5, 2014 07:51
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How is a chimpanzee any less capable of bearing, much less fulfilling, a legal duty than a newborn baby?
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Dec 5, 2014 08:44
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Smudgie Buggler posted:How is a chimpanzee any less capable of bearing, much less fulfilling, a legal duty than a newborn baby? Maybe you are right about this, but at the end of the day the baby is Human. And like it or not that is the most important argument you can make as regards personhood.
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Dec 5, 2014 08:46
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Randarkman posted:Maybe you are right about this, but at the end of the day the baby is Human. Is it? A species is just a (very useful) category of organisms made up by scientists. Why does it matter particularly when we are talking about rights? And it doesn't seem to worry the court so much. Without having read the full judgement, if the argument is that chimps cannot bear or fulfil a legal duty and are therefore not persons, the obvious answer should be "neither can some humans."
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Dec 5, 2014 08:50
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Smudgie Buggler posted:Is it? A species is just a (very useful) category of organisms made up by scientists. Why does it matter particularly when we are talking about rights? And it doesn't seem to worry the court so much. Without having read the full judgement, if the argument is that chimps cannot bear or fulfil a legal duty and are therefore not persons, the obvious answer should be "neither can some humans." The argument does not rest on whether or not you can fulfill a legal duty, it is solely that they are not Human. e: Also drawing on cases concerning slavery of black people to legally justify granting personhood to apes is horrendously insulting. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 09:00 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 08:53
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Apes are way, way dumber than people. They should be respected as living, intelligent beings, not as people.
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Dec 5, 2014 09:30
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Smudgie Buggler posted:How is a chimpanzee any less capable of bearing, much less fulfilling, a legal duty than a newborn baby? We don't grant infants or children in general anywhere near full personhood, they're (correctly) denied a ton of basic rights that an adult has. e: Not talking about esoteric poo poo like signing a contract either, I mean a lot of the most mundane everyday actions of parent raising a toddler would be kidnapping and assault if you did them to an adult. Kids barely get to control anything about their lives. Torka fucked around with this message at 10:03 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 09:48
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German Shepherds are much better people than Germans. While I am not in favor of granting person hood to dogs, I am in favor of revoking person hood from Germans.
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Dec 5, 2014 10:13
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Bob James posted:German Shepherds are much better people than Germans. While I am not in favor of granting person hood to dogs, I am in favor of revoking person hood from Germans. I think a dog's right to personhood ≥ an ape's. Dogs are civilized. Yes apes are more intelligent (and we flatter ourselves about our unique intelligence) but a person is a social title; no creature has made more strides in civility (and hey, look at that, legal duty) than dogs.
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Dec 5, 2014 10:58
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say no to scurvy posted:I think a dog's right to personhood ≥ an ape's. Dogs are civilized. Yes apes are more intelligent (and we flatter ourselves about our unique intelligence) but a person is a social title; no creature has made more strides in civility (and hey, look at that, legal duty) than dogs. By this metric dogs have a greater right to personhood than most people.
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Dec 5, 2014 11:02
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SedanChair posted:Apes are way, way dumber than people. They should be respected as living, intelligent beings, not as people. This. People need to remember that gorillas, elephants, chimps, etc. only qualify as "intelligent" when graded on the steepest curve imaginable.
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Dec 5, 2014 11:23
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Smudgie Buggler posted:How is a chimpanzee any less capable of bearing, much less fulfilling, a legal duty than a newborn baby? Because a newborn baby will grow up to become an adult and fulfill said legal rights. An ape cannot do the same thing. Even the most intelligent chimpanzee isn't able to match against human intelligence.
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Dec 5, 2014 11:47
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In all seriousness, we still confer personhood on individuals who are severely mentally retarded. If a chimp is more intelligent that, say, the most mentally retarded person on earth does the chimp deserve personhood?
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Dec 5, 2014 12:16
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kordavox posted:In all seriousness, we still confer personhood on individuals who are severely mentally retarded. If a chimp is more intelligent that, say, the most mentally retarded person on earth does the chimp deserve personhood? Because its not a human. Why would you need any more reason than that?
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Dec 5, 2014 12:30
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Fojar38 posted:This. People need to remember that gorillas, elephants, chimps, etc. only qualify as "intelligent" when graded on the steepest curve imaginable. It's a bit of a weird curve though. Remove humans from it and the great apes look like, to the rest of the animal kingdom, what we look like when we are included. They are vastly more intelligent than most beings on earth. Right of personhood? I don't know about that. It's nebulous anyway. Just treat them better. Much much better.
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Dec 5, 2014 13:05
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WMain00 posted:Because a newborn baby will grow up to become an adult and fulfill said legal rights. An ape cannot do the same thing. Even the most intelligent chimpanzee isn't able to match against human intelligence. not in all cases, yet babies who grow up to become adults that can't fulfill said legal rights still have personhood.
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Dec 5, 2014 13:23
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tbp posted:It's a bit of a weird curve though. Remove humans from it and the great apes look like, to the rest of the animal kingdom, what we look like when we are included. They are vastly more intelligent than most beings on earth. plus, how accurate is the curve? when i talk to other scientists, they are frequently surprised that certain animals (such as crows) are able to observe human behavior and adapt themselves to live alongside it. a surprising number of them also find it unbelievable that crows and other birds are capable of constructing tools. i think the public is mired in a mindset of animals being barely lucid entities for the most part, with the exception of monkeys who are perceived as barely lucid with a capacity for mimicry.
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Dec 5, 2014 13:32
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Condiv posted:plus, how accurate is the curve? when i talk to other scientists, they are frequently surprised that certain animals (such as crows) are able to observe human behavior and adapt themselves to live alongside it. a surprising number of them also find it unbelievable that crows and other birds are capable of constructing tools. i think the public is mired in a mindset of animals being barely lucid entities for the most part, with the exception of monkeys who are perceived as barely lucid with a capacity for mimicry. I think you are right. I'm interested a lot in great ape cognition and whatever else kind of as a hobby and it's weird the amount of ppl that don't know of their communicative abilities and general level of intelligence. Regardless of any of that it's such a shame that such a close species (gorilla mainly im thinking but all of the g. apes really) are going to be extinct before too long
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Dec 5, 2014 13:40
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what like, right now? no i'm pretty sure they dont
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Dec 5, 2014 13:45
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Serious question: are there are any philosophers or writers on natural law that advocate animal personhood? Plus, if it ain't in the bible, it's never gonna happen in any western culture.
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Dec 5, 2014 13:55
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to illustrate just how poo poo our understanding of animal behavior is, we're just now discovering that multiple species aside from humans laugh http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15880045
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Dec 5, 2014 13:56
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radical meme posted:Serious question: are there are any philosophers or writers on natural law that advocate animal personhood? Plus, if it ain't in the bible, it's never gonna happen in any western culture. Yup.
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Dec 5, 2014 14:43
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Gorillas are the best animal on earth. Gentle and intelligent if they were allowed to live unthreatened in their big salad bowl worlds they would do it. They're ftw, and to kill and hurt them is among the most evil things that I can think of due to their goodness of heart.
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Dec 5, 2014 14:54
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tbp posted:Gorillas are the best animal on earth. Gentle and intelligent if they were allowed to live unthreatened in their big salad bowl worlds they would do it. They're ftw, and to kill and hurt them is among the most evil things that I can think of due to their goodness of heart. Are we allowed to emptyquote in D&D?
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Dec 5, 2014 14:55
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I would like to pay money for some well prepared bush meat in a sanitary western restaurant.
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Dec 5, 2014 15:01
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If we can eat monkeys, then why can't we eat babies??
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Dec 5, 2014 15:04
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tbp posted:Gorillas are the best animal on earth. Gentle and intelligent if they were allowed to live unthreatened in their big salad bowl worlds they would do it. They're ftw, and to kill and hurt them is among the most evil things that I can think of due to their goodness of heart. Chimpanzees are loving dicks though. I think killing or keeping some animals in non-scientific/conservational captivity can be made illegal and carry enough of a severe penalty that we don't need to get into personhood issues. On the other hand this is some crazy poo poo and primates probably deserve some category of their own: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_ape_language#Primate_use_of_sign_language
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Dec 5, 2014 15:06
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I have long been thinking that some sort of tiered system of according rights to different species could be a good thing. It would have to be handled very carefully and subject to constant review (as we uncover more evidence about animals' intelligences), but it would ideally provide better protections for various creatures. Something like humans and any theoretical aliens or robots we might meet/built who are self-aware, reasoning beings. Treat those as we already (are supposed to) treat our own species. Then highly intelligent animals like great apes and elephants, dolphins and whales, and some cephalopods, who we treat largely as we would treat the severely mentally disabled human, i.e. we can make decisions on their behalf because they are unable to, but we must do so with their best interests in mind, we may not eat them or test things on them (except where doing so would benefit them rather than us), and we do our best to keep them in their natural habitats or in habitats that closely resemble the ones they would live in in nature. Then we'd have the general animal population, things like cats and dogs, cows and sheep, pigs and rats, all that great swathe of animals that clearly have some intelligence as well as emotional lives, and are capable of suffering. We would be able to eat and test on these, but subject to very strict regulations and standards, e.g. any food animal would have to be allowed as full a life as possible in free-range circumstances until slaughter, and that slaughter would have to be quick and painless. Then I guess you get to really barely-intelligent animals like insects and stuff, where we don't go out of our way to be dicks, but we don't really take them into account when we do human stuff either. The part I'm unhappy with is food animals, though. I hope that will be mostly solved when we can vat-grow meat on a commercial basis; at that point we just say "Nope no killing animals for food (unless you're starving or whatever)" and it's more consistent, but I don't think vegetarianism on moral grounds has much chance of making headway before that point.
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Dec 5, 2014 15:21
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Smudgie Buggler posted:How is a chimpanzee any less capable of bearing, much less fulfilling, a legal duty than a newborn baby? We specifically deny children a lot of legal ability though.
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Dec 5, 2014 16:03
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By the way, here's the text of the full court ruling. Here's the interesting part: quote:This appeal presents the novel question of whether a chimpanzee is a "person" entitled to the rights and protections afforded by the writ of habeas corpus. Notably, we have not been asked to evaluate the quality of Tommy's current living conditions in an effort to improve his welfare. In fact, petitioner's counsel stated at oral argument that it does not allege that respondents are in violation of any state or federal statutes respecting the domestic possession of wild animals (see e.g. ECL 11-0512). According to petitioner, while It's a really interesting move on the part of the Nonhuman Rights Project to make the argument on the basis of habeas corpus, rather than the conditions in which Tommy is kept. quote:While petitioner proffers various justifications for affording chimpanzees, such as Tommy, the liberty rights protected by such writ, the ascription of rights has historically been connected with the imposition of societal obligations and duties. Reciprocity between rights and responsibilities stems from principles of social contract, which inspired the ideals of freedom and democracy at the core of our system of government. Here is the crux of it: quote:To be sure, some humans are less able to bear legal duties or responsibilities than others. These differences do not DrSunshine fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 16:06
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No OP. You can close the thread now.
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Dec 5, 2014 16:22
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 13:36 |
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Apes will get representation before the citizens of DC.
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Dec 5, 2014 16:26
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