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The Great Ape Project: Should Apes Get Human Rights?

EGarrett

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Ape_Project

The Great Ape Project (GAP), founded in 1993, is an international organization of primatologists, psychologists, ethicists, and other experts who advocate a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes that would confer basic legal rights on non-human great apes: chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. The rights suggested are the right to life, the protection of individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture. (See Declaration on Great Apes.)
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It seems like a relatively decent idea, although the tricky bit is the "protection of individual liberty" bit, which (as they phrase it in the Declaration on Great Apes) says that an ape cannot be "imprisoned" without due cause. There may be cases where an ape prefers imprisonment. With most human beings, you can simply ask them what they prefer, but with other species of apes, it's hard to say. (Although a brief googling says that they do not intend the Declaration on Great Apes to mean all apes have to be kicked out of zoos, so that might not be that big a deal.)
 
Why draw the line at the Great Apes? Why not go as far down the evolutionary scale as say, Bush Babies? Of course, then the Chimpanzees would have to alter their dietary habits...
 
I believe the idea is not that apes are morally meaningful because they show signs of intelligence and stuff; the family relationship merely makes for a nice PR spin.
 
That would be NO! PETA bites-but I support People Eating Tasty Animals!
Nuke the Whales! (thinks rapidly for other fun stuff on topic - nothing comes - brain tends to fry after 10:30 or so...........)
 
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Jonathan Marks has an interesting chapter on this in his book What it means to be 98% Chimpanzee. Myself, I'm a bit torn. I'd like to see some sort of standard for treatment of our fellow great apes, but "human" rights are, inherently, for humans, not other beings.
 
I'd like to read the essays, at the least, and see the arguments they're presenting. I find it an interesting concept. I don't like the idea of going as extreme as human rights, but I'd also like to hear what the downfalls would be, besides a slippery slope argument, such as what rtalman stated...
 
Lonewulf said:
I'd like to read the essays, at the least, and see the arguments they're presenting. I find it an interesting concept. I don't like the idea of going as extreme as human rights, but I'd also like to hear what the downfalls would be, besides a slippery slope argument, such as what rtalman stated...
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My point was not so much a slippery slope argument, but the absurdity of granting human rights to what are in essence wild animals.

Should we send the UN Peacekeepers in to stop chimpanzees from making war on other chimpanzees? Shall we put a gang of gorillas on trial for murder when they kill a chimpanzee?

You want to make laws governing the human treatment of animals, you bet! I'm all for it.

But what amounts to an Ape Bill of Rights? Pshaw!
 
ImaginalDisc said:
The Great Ape project is not attempting to extend to great apes all the rights of human beings. You can read what they actually say here: http://www.greatapeproject.org/declaration.php
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Thanks for the link.

2. The Protection of Individual Liberty
Members of the community of equals are not to be arbitrarily deprived of their liberty; if they should be imprisoned without due legal process, they have the right to immediate release.
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I infer from the language that the Great Ape Project wishes to remove all Great Apes from any and all zoos. I understand the empathy involved, but one might consider the benefit in recruiting the future stewards of the planet's wildlife.

The exposure that the young get to the entire animal world, via zoos, are a far more cost effective way to indoctrinate the young into the beautiful and diverse nature of the global ecosystem, fauna in particular, than having to go on safari. Besides the lower carbon footprint, the bulk of people can't affort to go to Africa to see the great apes.

Wild animal parks are a good idea. Zoos like the San Diego Zoo go to some lengths to make the "cell" reasonably comfortable.

Without zoos, it seems to me that access to fauna would be restricted by locale to zoologists. That does not seem to be a good idea, to me, in the larger sense of educating the public on the animals we share this planet with.

DR
 
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ImaginalDisc said:
The Great Ape project is not attempting to extend to great apes all the rights of human beings. You can read what they actually say here: http://www.greatapeproject.org/declaration.php
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We demand the extension of the community of equals to include all great apes: human beings, chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans.

The community of equals is the moral community within which we accept certain basic moral principles or rights as governing our relations with each other and enforceable at law.
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:yikes:
'nuff said.
 
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