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Rexicon1 posted:Can we all at least agree that just because a thing does an action like people do, does not make them people? This is true in general, but in the case of, for example, elephants and their, well, funerary rites, I think we really need to look into it. What evolutionary purpose at all is served by retrieving, burying, and visiting the graves of dead elephants? They've even been known to go into danger for it. "Leave no pachyderm behind." If I remember right there's also elephants that have paid tribute to dead humans.
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Dec 11, 2014 01:28
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Rorac posted:Elephants in particular are capable of creating art This claim is unfalsifiable because we don't know what art is. For all we know the elephant was just flailing paint at random because it made the "flail around in a particular way = get rewarded" calculation in its brain, rather than any sort of attempt at self expression.
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Dec 11, 2014 01:38
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Why would you hold elephants to a higher standard than human artists?
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Dec 11, 2014 09:19
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Fojar38 posted:This claim is unfalsifiable because we don't know what art is. For all we know the elephant was just flailing paint at random because it made the "flail around in a particular way = get rewarded" calculation in its brain, rather than any sort of attempt at self expression. Well, more the "follow directions as given by the trainer = don't get beaten" calculation in its brain.
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Dec 11, 2014 14:23
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mobby_6kl posted:Why would you hold elephants to a higher standard than human artists? Who What Now posted:Well, more the "follow directions as given by the trainer = don't get beaten" calculation in its brain. Whether or not elephant art is "true art", or if animal pain is "real pain" don't seem like important questions here. Exaggerating the differences between humans and non-humans is a way of rationalizing how little we value non-human life. What's relevant is to what degree animals desire freedom from pain, freedom of movement, and community with its peers. Does anyone really think apes do not desire these things?
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Dec 11, 2014 15:08
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Mata posted:Whether or not elephant art is "true art", or if animal pain is "real pain" don't seem like important questions here. Whether or not something is art is pretty drat important to determining if an animal is capable of producing art. Beyond that I'm not sure what you're getting at because my only point was that elephant painting is an abhorrent practice that involves abusing an animal.
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Dec 11, 2014 15:26
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Well, here's an interesting development: http://www.wired.com/2014/12/orangutan-personhood/ quote:An orangutan named Sandra has become the first non-human animal recognized as a person in a court of law. There's a link to a Google Translate of a local news site. It looks like they may be offering a bit more detail on the rationale behind the ruling, but the machine translation makes it kind of challenging to understand. And is there actually any possibility of this ruling affecting US court cases on the matter?
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Dec 24, 2014 03:50
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Cockmaster posted:Well, here's an interesting development: Huh, that's fascinating! Although I'm pretty doubtful that the outcomes of this ruling will affect US court cases, as Argentina's laws have nothing to do with the US's, it still could be used as another example by like-minded campaigners to get the word out about the cause.
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Dec 24, 2014 04:06
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Campaigners for that stuff in the US are going to have a hard time getting support when this country still has a lot of people that believe abortion is murder and will flip out at the idea of "So we're willing to give ANIMALS the same rights as people but not a human fetus?"
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Dec 24, 2014 04:30
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For me the contradictions inherent in giving human rights to the mentally incompetent are irrelevant. We give rights to such people because of irrational human sentiments that cannot be ignored and the potential for people with a different kind of irrational sentiment (prejudice) to take away the rights of healthy individuals (see the history of lobotomy or  ). Trying to be all beep boop logical about it leads you into Peter Singer territory.And we give personhood to babies because babies become adults.
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Dec 24, 2014 17:51
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If irrational sentiment is a good reason for doing things, then what's the argument against giving apes rights if our irrational sentiments are in favor?
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Dec 24, 2014 18:35
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Humans giving preferential treatment to other humans seems pretty much universal. A blanket personhood is applied to humans because we can't accept the logical consequences as a society and we shouldn't accept what unethical people will use the revocation of human rights of mentally incompetent humans as an excuse for (again, look up lobotomy. Rebellious teenagers got declared insane so their brains could be carved up). Legal insanity is necessarily but on dangerous ethical ground already, making the mentally incompetent into unpersons would is unacceptable. These cases are exceptions to the rule that a person is an agent capable of consenting to and abiding by the social contract. Animals cannot follow the social contract and the dividing line between H. sapiens and the rest is absolutely clear, unlike trying to compare the sanity or intelligence of different humans, which is murky and ethically treacherous. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Dec 24, 2014 |
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Dec 24, 2014 21:01
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