• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

The Great Ape Project: Should Apes Get Human Rights?

I applaud the sentiments but boo the initiative. Yes, the Great Apes should be protected, but no, they are not pseudo-humans.
 
I haven't looked but this sounds like a few lawyers that have set up a get rich scam. Well meaning people send them money which they pay to themselves as salaries and legal fees.

A lot of the fringe groups are headed by layers.

-R
 
mumblethrax said:
That's the problem with inference: you're often wrong.

From the link UserGoogol posted:


The Great Ape Project is not interested in shutting down zoos, except I suppose where apes are treated inhumanely.
Click to expand...
The link ID provided from GAP hardly made that clear, but thanks to you for clarifying that. :)

DR
 
Has anybody asked the gorillas what they think of the "community of equals" idea? I was under the impression that the Boss Silverback in any gorilla group was an absolute monarch. If he wants to torture or refuse to guarantee individual liberty to one of his subjects, who exactly is going to argue with him?

"Dont move Kong! This is the Gorilla Police. We know you've been perpetuating gender stereotypes!"
 
burnvictim77 said:
But it does beg the question: what is the purpose of rights and how do we justify them?
Click to expand...

I've read a decent amount of Peter Singer's stuff, and his stance on the issue is that ethics are ultimately derived from a utilitarian basis of satisfying preferences. Rights, in so far as they are a coherent concept at all, are merely constructs which exist to serve the goal of maximizing everyone's preferences. Although their minds are not capable of holding preferences on the same level that humans do, the preferences of animals still "count," and thus extending the concept of rights to them is a good idea.

My own personal stance is similar although more vague.
 
Last edited:
Carnivore said:
Has anybody asked the gorillas what they think of the "community of equals" idea? I was under the impression that the Boss Silverback in any gorilla group was an absolute monarch. If he wants to torture or refuse to guarantee individual liberty to one of his subjects, who exactly is going to argue with him?

"Dont move Kong! This is the Gorilla Police. We know you've been perpetuating gender stereotypes!"
Click to expand...

You actually bring in a good point in terms of gender politics. Do we protect female gorillas from male gorillas, for example do we protect them against rape? Including in the wild?

Do we start enforcing ages of consent?

Do we remove gorilla babies from gorilla mothers that seem to be engaging in deficient parenting?

I think these are complex questions, and may deserve more nuanced answers than laughter or throwing our hands up in the air in futility.
 
UserGoogol said:
I've read a decent amount of Peter Singer's stuff, and his stance on the issue is that ethics are ultimately derived from a utilitarian basis of satisfying preferences. Rights, in so far as they are a coherent concept at all, are merely constructs which exist to serve the goal of maximizing everyone's preferences. Although their minds are not capable of holding preferences on the same level that humans do, the preferences of animals still "count," and thus extending the concept of rights to them is a good idea.

My own personal stance is similar although more vague.
Click to expand...


It's still an arbitrary cut off. Dogs have preferences, as do many types of fish.

I'm telling ya - social contract. Without it, the concept of rights is meaningless.
 
Last edited:
Dave1001 said:
You actually bring in a good point in terms of gender politics. Do we protect female gorillas from male gorillas, for example do we protect them against rape? Including in the wild?

Do we start enforcing ages of consent?

Do we remove gorilla babies from gorilla mothers that seem to be engaging in deficient parenting?

I think these are complex questions, and may deserve more nuanced answers than laughter or throwing our hands up in the air in futility.
Click to expand...

Yes, and this is why animal 'rights' are non-sensical if we attempt to apply human rights to them only in some areas. Totally incoherent, totally based on tradition, tempered by what we feel at the moment.

This is why we'll toss a lobster in a boiling pot of water, and then put a guy in jail who sucks a dogs personal parts. Nonsense.
 
burnvictim77 said:
Yes, and this is why animal 'rights' are non-sensical if we attempt to apply human rights to them only in some areas. Totally incoherent, totally based on tradition, tempered by what we feel at the moment.

This is why we'll toss a lobster in a boiling pot of water, and then put a guy in jail who sucks a dogs personal parts. Nonsense.
Click to expand...

I disagree. Conception of and protection of rights aren't necessarily non-sensical just because there may be areas of inconsistency. We can find similar inconsistencies and absurdities in even the best formulated systems of rights reserved only for humans. I think the idea of rights for primates is one that deserves further analysis and study.
 
Dave1001 said:
We can find similar inconsistencies and absurdities in even the best formulated systems of rights reserved only for humans.
Click to expand...

If you can find inconsistencies in the best system, there is clearly a misunderstanding.

What areas do you see inconsistencies in human rights? Perhaps there is an explanation for them, such as equivocation of several different ideas (eg. authority, entitlement, protection, freedom) as rights.
 
burnvictim77 said:
It's still an arbitrary cut off. Dogs have preferences, as do many types of fish.

I'm telling ya - social contract. Without it, the concept of rights is meaningless.
Click to expand...

Well yes, ultimately the concept of rights are arbitrary and utterly meaningless. However, there is usefulness in constructing "rules of thumb" for interacting with other organisms, and rights are one of these rules of thumb. Ultimately, the act of constructing rights is always an act of drawing arbitrary lines, because you are taking the continuously-valued world of goodness and declaring rules in simple boolean terms. But to draw the line using species is not only arbitrary, it is stupid. An adult chimpanzee possesses far more cognitive ability than a three month old infant, and yet we allot more "rights" to infants than we do to chimpanzees! Why? Admittingly, three month olds have "potential," but I suspect there are also severely retarded humans whose intelligence is probably quite comparable to non-human great apes.

Of course, any practical system of allotting rights to some entities but not others will inevitably miss some entities who "deserve" the rights. But that does not seem like a great argument for not extending things to great apes. If rights can be made to define a more logical group of entities without all that much work, (tossing a few extra species in is fairly straightforward) then why not?

ETA: For the record, I'm not a vegetarian.
 
Last edited:
Oh, and by the way.

I'm opening bidding on this, tomorrow at 00:00 UT 3/3/07 (even yanks can't stuff that date up!):

ahb.jpg
 
The Atheist said:
Been there, done that.
Click to expand...

Indeed.

http://www.csicop.org/articles/koko/

Time magazine dubbed Koko's internet chat session a "Dada exercise" noting that Penny Patterson as interpreter used "some pretty impressive logic to expand her simian friend's limited communication skills." A partial transcript from the session is revealing: Question: Koko are you going to have a baby in the future?
Koko signs: Pink
Patterson explains: We had earlier discussion about colors today.
Question: Do you like to chat with people?
Koko signs: Fine nipple.
Patterson explains: Nipple rhymes with people, she doesn't sign people per se, she was trying to do a "sounds like..."
Question: Does she have hair? Or is it like fur?
Koko signs: Fine.
Patterson explains: She has fine hair.
Question: Koko, do you feel love from the humans who have raised you?
Koko signs: Lips, apple give me.
Patterson explains: People give her her favorite foods
Click to expand...

Quoth Ric Flair: "WOOOOO"
 
UserGoogol said:
ETA: For the record, I'm not a vegetarian.
Click to expand...

I'm like you. I'm a "Future Vegetarian", also... I think that as time progresses, the need for actually using animals for meat will be bogged down by much much cheaper vegetable methods, as we harness our gengineering and food tech capabilities. Of course, I'm also an optomist and probably a bit crazy. :)
 
UserGoogol said:
Well yes, ultimately the concept of rights are arbitrary and utterly meaningless. However, there is usefulness in constructing "rules of thumb" for interacting with other organisms, and rights are one of these rules of thumb. Ultimately, the act of constructing rights is always an act of drawing arbitrary lines, because you are taking the continuously-valued world of goodness and declaring rules in simple boolean terms. But to draw the line using species is not only arbitrary, it is stupid. An adult chimpanzee possesses far more cognitive ability than a three month old infant, and yet we allot more "rights" to infants than we do to chimpanzees! Why? Admittingly, three month olds have "potential," but I suspect there are also severely retarded humans whose intelligence is probably quite comparable to non-human great apes.

Of course, any practical system of allotting rights to some entities but not others will inevitably miss some entities who "deserve" the rights. But that does not seem like a great argument for not extending things to great apes. If rights can be made to define a more logical group of entities without all that much work, (tossing a few extra species in is fairly straightforward) then why not?

ETA: For the record, I'm not a vegetarian.
Click to expand...


It is no doubt true that the concept of human morality is based most fundamentally on the capacity for empathy. Interspecies empathy is a crapshoot, and if you look at human understanding of animals throughout history, we've been pretty bad at the game, attempting to anthropomorphize the ones we like and distance ourselves from the ones we don't.

If we could rationally extend rights to animals, we'd need a clear definition of what earns an entity rights. You seem to be taking it as given that smarts have something to do with it. If that were true, that would lend to a gradient scale of progressively giving more rights to the more intelligent (ie. Steven Hawking may be entitled to sex with a prostitute several times a week) and less for the less intelligent. However, we extend the concept of human equality to all members of our species, regardless of IQ scores.

If we could rationally included animals in rights, then we should. But we cannot. The species relative model is supported by biology, psychology, sociology, history, anthropology and zoology. The problem is that it would be entirely arbitrary to define certain rights for certain animals. Why would a great ape have the 'right to life' but not the 'right to liberty,' being held in a cage and studied by human slaveowners? Furthermore, why would this right NOT be extended to a gibbon?

Since one of my rights is the right to eat, what I eat cannot have rights. That would be logically contradictory at its very core. And before someone coyly brings in the redherring that I don't personally eat apes, a lot of starving people do. And as a humanist, I'm not willing to say that the life of a bonobo is by any means exchangeable for that of a human.
 
Carnivore said:
Has anybody asked the gorillas what they think of the "community of equals" idea? I was under the impression that the Boss Silverback in any gorilla group was an absolute monarch. If he wants to torture or refuse to guarantee individual liberty to one of his subjects, who exactly is going to argue with him?

"Dont move Kong! This is the Gorilla Police. We know you've been perpetuating gender stereotypes!"
Click to expand...

Actually, Gorillas aren't terribly libidinous. Chimps make a much better example, but I get your point. Chimpanzees are embarrassingly brutish.

I found this article written by The founder of The Great Ape PRoject where he says:
Some of the opposition stems from misunderstandings. Recognising the rights of great apes does not mean that they all must be set free, even those born and bred in zoos, who would be unable to survive in the wild. Nor does it rule out euthanasia if that is in the interest of individual apes whose suffering cannot be relieved. Just as some humans are unable to fend for themselves and need others to act as their guardians, so too will great apes living in the midst of human communities. What extending basic rights to great apes does mean is that they will cease to be mere things that can be owned and used for our amusement or entertainment.
Click to expand...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1784201,00.html

And that argument seems valid. I think the specific argument they tried to make on their declaration page, likening captive apes to humans imprisoned without trial is fairly weak.
 
I vote no on rights and yes on protection. I'm not even sure what right to life would mean for non-humans. If there were a predator some where killing humans (lion, hyena, coyote, wolf) we would take steps to protect further death of humans because we feel that humans have a right to life. Would we or should we intercede on behalf of apes who are in danger in the wild? Chimpanzees, at times, kill other chimpanzees. Should the offenders be separated from the rest of the group? Should we attempt to modify behavior?

I think such rights should be extended to any and all species where the bulk of the members of that species are moral agents. Individuals who can recognize what a right is for themselves and others and can also extend rights and can speak out on behalf of rights for the community.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom