I was sorry Salyavin didn't read the article I linked to but simply dismissed
the idea of according personhood to chimps without knowing what was actually
involved. I thought there might be an interesting discussion about the
potential legal rights of chimps.
Trying again...here are a couple of quotes that frame the issue in more detail:
With testimonials from experts like Jane Goodall, Wise makes the case that
chimpanzees have qualities that allow them to have the very basic legal right
not to be imprisoned. It’s not that chimpanzees are the legal equivalent of
human beings. Rather, the court filing...argues that chimpanzees are enslaved,
and that the courts already recognize that slavery is wrong:
'This petition asks this court to issue a writ recognizing that Tommy is not
a legal thing to be possessed by respondents, but rather is a cognitively
complex autonomous legal person with the fundamental legal right not to be
imprisoned.'
http://science.time.com/2013/12/02/chimps-human-rights-lawsuit/#ixzz2mWfW8tZD
http://science.time.com/2013/12/02/chimps-human-rights-lawsuit/#ixzz2mWfW8tZD
Wise isn’t arguing that chimpanzees should be given the full rights of
humans, and that’s where this lawsuit begins to make sense. Whatever you think
of the cognitive abilities and emotions of chimps, I think we can all agree
that they are different from, say, chairs. They’re different from cars.
Treating these animals as mere property is simply wrong.
We do, of course, have a class of persons in this country who don’t have
maximum rights but are more than mere property. They’re called 'children,' and
most of them have considerably less intelligence than a chimpanzee. So there is
precedent for extending legal protection to 'human-like' creatures who throw
poop and change the channel during the last two minutes of a football game.
http://abovethelaw.com/2013/12/lawsuit-of-the-apes/
http://abovethelaw.com/2013/12/lawsuit-of-the-apes/
I wrote:
Tell ya what, Salyavin, read the article and get back to us, OK?
Salyavin wrote:
Before you give rights to chimps you should work out if they are capable of
understanding what is being offered. Anthropomorphism isn't any way to go
about helping wildlife.
Chimps aren't people, they are chimps and they can't fit into our world in the
same way we couldn't fit into theirs. They aren't as like us as a lot of
people think. We should only extend personhood to people as they are capable of
learning a language and communicating their needs themselves, with obvious
exceptions.
---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, authfriend@... wrote:
We're getting there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/science/rights-group-sues-to-have-chimp-recognized-as-legal-person.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/science/rights-group-sues-to-have-chimp-recognized-as-legal-person.html?hp
