The great apes--- rights of life and liberty.

[voluptuary_manque]

I think it would be ironic if apes were afforded more rights than whole groups of humans who are being wiped out by genocide.

Make that "deliberate" genocide. Of course the Spanish will tell you that the one they set off in the Western Hemisphere was purely an accident. And they would be right, but still . . .

cf. 1491 a book all of us should read though it will just make Cloudy angrier than ever. Good book, still and all.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I do think that human-like intelligence might evolve in another species in the near future (on a geological scale), assuming current trends continue. Personally, though, I expect it to be amongst crows, if it happens.

I've got my bet on rats-- social structure, nearly opposable thumbs already, relatively large brain for their body-weight--- and they are world-wide, and small enough to escape most disasters that will bring down the big guys.

I think it would be ironic if apes were afforded more rights than whole groups of humans who are being wiped out by genocide.

Apes are being wiped out, and more decisively than humans.

 

[rgraham666]

I've got my bet on rats-- social structure, nearly opposable thumbs already, relatively large brain for their body-weight--- and they are world-wide, and small enough to escape most disasters that will bring down the big guys.

Raccoons. Sneaky little bastards and they have opposable thumbs.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Raccoons. Sneaky little bastards and they have opposable thumbs.

Nah, ol' rackety coon isn't social enough. Too closely related to bears.

What? No, bears aren't social. Why do you think I hang around with you guys. I can't stand other bears.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Raccoons. Sneaky little bastards and they have opposable thumbs.

No social structure, though.

 

[Equinoxe]

I've got my bet on rats-- social structure, nearly opposable thumbs already, relatively large brain for their body-weight--- and they are world-wide, and small enough to escape most disasters that will bring down the big guys.

I've got my bet on corvids of some sort for rather similar reasons: they have an advanced social structure, worldwide distribution, are quite adaptable to changes in environment, and are one of few groups that actively thrive in places affected by humanity (much like rats). They have the added bonus of already being one of the most intelligent groups of animals on the planet—corvids in general have an encephalisation quotient rivalling great apes and dolphins, magpies at the very least pass the mirror self-recognition test, and ravens demonstrate a whole host of interesting intellectual faculties (insight and problem-solving abilities not based on trial-and-error, the ability to look at things from alternative perspectives, the ability to base current decisions on past information, etc.).

 

[Stella_Omega]

Equinoxe-- That's mighty convincing! Poetic, too-- the descendants of the dinosaurs and all.

I don't know why I forget about birds and their brains.

 

[cloudy]

Make that "deliberate" genocide. Of course the Spanish will tell you that the one they set off in the Western Hemisphere was purely an accident. And they would be right, but still . . .

cf. 1491 a book all of us should read though it will just make Cloudy angrier than ever. Good book, still and all.

Already read it. Good book, but nothing could make me angrier than Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

eta: maybe "angry" isn't the right word. "Disgusted" is a little closer.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Already read it. Good book, but nothing could make me angrier than Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

eta: maybe "angry" isn't the right word. "Disgusted" is a little closer.

"Disgusted" is perfectly appropriate.

 

[Pure]

notes:

deezire and cloudy,

at first i thought 'genocide' was sort of off topic, but now i see the link. one set of animals decidess that another set is beneath them and can be killed at will.

it could be spanish conquistadors and N and S American native people, or equally it could be humans wiping out gorillas, as is now happening.

who gets to kill/eat who?

on parrots: their talking plus intelligence at perhaps the five year old level makes them excellent candidates for "rights", i.e. NOT to be killed or imprisoned arbitrarily.

it is arguably inhuman[e] to put either a chimp or parrot in a small cage with nothing to do. just as you cannot lock a small kid in an empty room with bowls of food and water.



see, for example, alex, at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGiARReTwBw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6KvPN_Wt8I

==

on the intelligence criterion, however: as one poster mentioned, it's kinda tricky. we don't get to kill 1.5 year olds, assuming for the sake of argument that 2 years old intelligence is set as a cut off, re animals.

FURTHER: the argument that the 2 year old human is protected because of potential-- that she will get smarter and more sophisticated-- is obviously wrong. there are any number of developing humans who get 'stuck' at a certain age, so to say. 2 is certainly possible. that person would have extremely low IQ; but would not be subject to arbitrary death OR medical experiments.

if 5 years old is the cut off, there are lots of humans "stuck" there, and they have rights to live; they may not 'wander about"-- have liberty completely on their own-- of course.

why not--instead of looking just at cognition and reasoning-- say that if a being can show fear, happiness, sadness, and pain in a manner we can understand, and can foresee the future, that you can't arbitrarily kill it. in the case of rats, we kill them as disease bearers, among other things.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

deezire and cloudy,

at first i thought 'genocide' was sort of off topic, but now i see the link. one set of animals decidess that another set is beneath them and can be killed at will.

it could be spanish conquistadors and N and S American native people, or equally it could be humans wiping out gorillas, as is now happening.

who gets to kill/eat who?

on parrots: their talking plus intelligence at perhaps the five year old level makes them excellent candidates for "rights", i.e. NOT to be killed or imprisoned arbitrarily.

it is arguably inhuman[e] to put either a chimp or parrot in a small cage with nothing to do. just as you cannot lock a small kid in an empty room with bowls of food and water.



see, for example, alex, at

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGiARReTwBw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6KvPN_Wt8I

==

on the intelligence criterion, however: as one poster mentioned, it's kinda tricky. we don't get to kill 1.5 year olds, assuming for the sake of argument that 2 years old intelligence is set as a cut off, re animals.

FURTHER: the argument that the 2 year old human is protected because of potential-- that she will get smarter and more sophisticated-- is obviously wrong. there are any number of developing humans who get 'stuck' at a certain age, so to say. 2 is certainly possible. that person would have extremely low IQ; but would not be subject to arbitrary death OR medical experiments.

if 5 years old is the cut off, there are lots of humans "stuck" there, and they have rights to live; they may not 'wander about"-- have liberty completely on their own-- of course.

why not--instead of looking just at cognition and reasoning-- say that if a being can show fear, happiness, sadness, and pain in a manner we can understand, and can foresee the future, that you can't arbitrarily kill it. in the case of rats, we kill them as disease bearers, among other things.

Because we've known that plants show distress chemically, a manner we can understand, and communicate that distress to each other for nearly fifty years now. Are you going to give the forest individual rights? This sort of introspection leads to paralysis and a moral requirement to commit suicide.

What is "arbitrary" killing, by the way? The slaughter of primates in Africa is for food. Is that arbitrary?

 

[shereads]

Jerry Lewis is protected. That should cover them.

I was going to say the same about James B Johnson.

 

[Guest]

I was going to say the same about James B Johnson.

If the poo fits.

 

[shereads]

If the poo fits.

<hurling some at passers-by who might covet my banana>

 

[shereads]

I'd like to propose this: A two-year-old human is not protested by human rights for what it is right now, but for the autonomous adult it will grow up to be. The rights of a child are there to protect it so it can one day become an adult.

I disagree. We protect the rights of children who are brain-damaged, children who are mentally retarded, and children who suffer from terminal illnesses that assure they will never reach adulthood.

We protect them because it would be monstrous to do otherwise.

If an animal can be proven to have the mental capacity of a human child - and if observation tells us that the animal can also experience pain and loss at an emotional level - we ought to consider whether we are behaving inhumanly when we cage it, experiment on it, or force it to perform a function with which it is clearly not comfortable such as President of the United States.

 

[Liar]

I disagree. We protect the rights of children who are brain-damaged, children who are mentally retarded, and children who suffer from terminal illnesses that assure they will never reach adulthood.

Ah yes. I should have added "in general". And then that we also protect those kids by proxy. It's our spieces, after all.

But ler me ask you, which animals do we protect and which do we kill for bacon? Is there a Turing test?

 

[shereads]

Ah yes. I should have added "in general". And then that we also protect those kids by proxy. It's our spieces, after all.

That hasn't always been the line of demarcation. In our recent history, we have accorded rights to members of our own race that we deny to other members of the species, simply because they are 'other.'

But ler me ask you, which animals do we protect and which do we kill for bacon? Is there a Turing test?

I think conscience has to guide us in some things, and conscience is fueled by knowledge. You and I know too much about the similarities among different races to condone, as our ancestors did, the slave trade and the severing of family bonds among people once thought to be less than human. As we learn more about the great apes, it begins to seem arrogant to treat all non-humans as if they are unfeeling, unaware, incapable of grief.

 

[shereads]

deleted double post

 

[DeeZire]

In the interest of maintaining ecological balance, you would think all wild species should be protected, regardless of intelligence level. In fact, I'm sure there are examples of species much dumber than apes who are much more important to maintaining ecological balance.

Whether or not intelligence level should play a role does tie in to the law of the survival of the fittest. Since humans are winning that battle (at the moment,) would ignoring the survival of the fittest thing upset the balance? (As if the balance hasn't already been upset by overpopulation, pollution, and global warming.)

In light of the current state of the world, this whole discussion could be moot, considering that cockroaches will be the likely rulers of the world in the not-too-distant future. (I guess that would depend on whether the world succumbs to nuclear annihilation, famine and plague caused by global warming, gene mutations caused by bio-engineering, or the ever-popular space aliens!)

That being said, I would be in favor of protecting apes, mainly because I'm a bleeding heart liberal and that's what we do.

(Why has no one suggested rounding up all the apes and using them for target practice on one of Dick Cheney's hunting farms? Are all the yahoos vacationing in Caribbean beach huts with no internet service?)

 

[Pure]

note to voluptuary

pure had said //why not--instead of looking just at cognition and reasoning-- say that if a being can show fear, happiness, sadness, and pain in a manner we can understand, and can foresee the future, that you can't arbitrarily kill it. in the case of rats, we kill them as disease bearers, among other things. //

VM said Because we've known that plants show distress chemically, a manner we can understand, and communicate that distress to each other for nearly fifty years now. Are you going to give the forest individual rights? This sort of introspection leads to paralysis and a moral requirement to commit suicide.
---

i don't think 'showing distress chemically' is quite what i meant.

i understand the slippery slope for various criteria: those based on intelligence as well as those based in emotion. the extension to plants is not a very worrisome endpoint. i notice too, you said, "individual rights"; how about the 'right' of a forest to survive? further, in our city, you have to have a permit to cut down a tree, i forget the number, but let's say more than 2 feet in diameter. that individual, so to say, has a "right" to live.

neither do i see suicide as the endpoint of the 'ape' proposals in Spain; though i suppose some southern planters after the civil war committed suicide because they lost slaves.

overall, i think emotional criteria make a lot of sense, and of course emotions presuppose other processes, including conceptual ones.
you have to recognize individuals, be attached to certain ones, and realize they go away, die, etc.

an interesting anecdote i remember is from observing a tiger cub die, and watching the mother return to see her reaction. she ate it. so i'm not sure tigers make the cut *for inclusion along with great apes* for near human rights. HOWEVER: tigers in particular, and all animals, just as animals, deserve basic "rights" in some extended sense that we humans are legally obliged not to kill them without good reason and/or cruelly.

the general issue of animal protection [prohibiting cruelty to animals] is NOT exactly what this thread was intended to discuss, though it's next door. i hope to focus on the UPPER END animals, those, at least in the ballpark with humans, as shown by their equalling human children in many types of tasks. iow, animals that might 'fit' a law like that being almost passed, apparently, in Spain.

intellectual criteria have a problem of becoming INhuman. it being inconceivble, unless you are a nazi, to kill a happly functioning "retarded" (dev'lly disabled) person with, say, the IQ of a 4 year old {about 25}.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

(Why has no one suggested rounding up all the apes and using them for target practice on one of Dick Cheney's hunting farms? Are all the yahoos vacationing in Caribbean beach huts with no internet service?)

Could it possibly be that today's hunters are well aware of such things as CITES, good game management (which works a lot better than just letting "environmental balance" go it's own way), conservation based on what works rather than what feels good? Nah, that would be giving too much credit to the people who invented conservation and pay for most of it. After all, they spend their time in the real outdoors rather than the kind one finds on a website.

 

[Liar]

I think conscience has to guide us in some things, and conscience is fueled by knowledge.

Or superstition.

Holy cows.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

EQUINOXE

Spain was a socialist state before Franco. It will be fascist again. Spaniards are fascists at heart.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Discrimination Is Alive And Well.

Man in gorilla outfit on U.S. 19 lands in jail

HUDSON — A man sporting a gorilla suit interfered with traffic on U.S. 19 Friday, according to the Pasco County Sheriff's Office.

When approached, the man – David R. Ziegmann, 61, of Bayonet Pointe – said he was out campaigning for Pasco Sheriff Bob White.

When asked for identification, Ziegmann refused and said he was a federal agent. After that, an arrest report says that Ziegmann's identification was "physically removed" and stated that he, indeed, is not a law enforcement officer, local or federal.

He was arrested on a charge of obstruction by disguise and is being held at the county jail in lieu of $150 bail.

A reporter called the number Ziegmann listed as his home phone, but it turned out to be a Wendy's.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Could it possibly be that today's hunters are well aware of such things as CITES, good game management (which works a lot better than just letting "environmental balance" go it's own way), conservation based on what works rather than what feels good? Nah, that would be giving too much credit to the people who invented conservation and pay for most of it. After all, they spend their time in the real outdoors rather than the kind one finds on a website.

It's poverty that's responsible for this and most environmentally destructive behavior. When nations adopt pro-growth, capitalism-friendly policies that enable their populations to ascend from subsistence-level to very basic bourgeois, middle-class standards the incentive for the destruction (mostly desperation) disappears. Fertility and population growth tend to decline too.