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An Orangutan Has Some Human Rights, Argentine Court Rules
- pizza234 12y agoI find very interesting the court argument: "chimpanzees can't fulfill the social obligations expected of anyone with rights". Philosophically, the same could be applied to a paraplegic, or in most cases to somebody with Down syndrome, so I wonder if there was more in the ruling; I find this argument very poor.
- adamnemecek 12y agoPeople with Down syndrome legally don't have the same rights.
- politician 12y agoPlease elaborate. I would love to know whether you mean that they have (a) more rights than others, (b) less rights than others, (c) different rights than others, or (d) individually different rights among themselves.
- adamnemecek 12y agoB/C I guess. It's not what I mean, it's what's a fact.
- peteretep 12y agoIt's a little more complicated than that, and varies by jurisdiction, but generally, it comes down to whether or not you understand your actions. Someone with a learning disability - or Down Syndrome, or mental health issues of almost any kind - can often sue to void contracts that they've signed; or their guardian can sue on their behalf. Courts can rule you to be mentally incapacitated, and you lose your right to vote in many states in the US: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/10/keeping-the-mentally-incompetent-from-voting/263748/ http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/10/keeping-th... I'm sure you can continue your research by yourself at this point...
- vixen99 12y agoNo need for that kind of comment.
- scrollaway 12y agoWhat kind of comment, a thorough and thoughtful answer to a honest question?
- politician 12y agoThat explains it - thanks.
- asdfaoeu 12y agoPeople with mental illnesses and disabilies like down syndrome may not have legal capacity if illness / disability affects their judgement sufficiently. Which means they can't enter into contracts by themselves and don't have complete freedom over decisions in their life.
- hawleyal 12y agoYou are talking about legal rights, not human rights.
- Retra 12y agoI find any argument involving rights to be poor. Our goals in a social context are always to make the best possible decisions with what we know, and to enable each other to do the same. We have goals, information, communication, and laws. Rights are inarticulate and overly-understand things -- almost to the point of purposelessness. People should not be making arguments based on rights, but upon what is known about ourselves and our reality. We should use what can be rationally supported and what can be reasonably predicted based upon shared experiences and cultural knowledge. Rights are just a vague and small slice of this, easily made muddy by the fact that people can know they have rights without even knowing why they should have them, where they apply, or when to give them up.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y agoRights try to predefine 'best possible' for a culture. This is a good thing because it provides a written moral standard and a legal basis for further argument - rather like a constitution. Relying on 'rational argument' doesn't work as well because most 'rational argument' in politics, law, and economics is persuasion through sophistry, custom, tribalism, rhetoric, appeal to self-interest, and/or the application or threat of force. None of these have much to do with rationality in the scientific sense of being able to build useful models of reality from data. tl dr; Defining rights makes spurious political plays more difficult.
- ars 12y agoYou haven't done much by defining rights, because who defines those rights? ISIS will say everyone has the right to have a slave. The UN says everyone has the right to paid vacations (yes, it really does say that). Who decides which rights should be accepted? There is no one who can do so. Rights are arbitrary and reflect the culture of those who defined them. You either decide to accept them or you don't. i.e. it's pretty much identical to "rational argument".
- mbrock 12y agoThey may be ultimately arbitrary, but until you come up with a final conclusive objective ethics, proven metaphysically beyond questioning, the rest of us have to make actual decisions today. The UN, as a collective body, defines various normative concepts, e.g., by defining "human rights." If you have issues with them, you join the proverbial mailing list and state your case.
- aaron695 12y agoFrom a link in the article - "The Nonhuman Rights Project had addressed that argument in their brief, countering that young children and adults with severe mental disabilities are not expected to fulfill the social obligations of mature adults, but are still granted legal rights. While that is true, wrote the judges, “it is undeniable that, collectively, human beings possess the unique ability to bear legal responsibility.”"
- irremediable 12y agoSurely not a convincing rebuttal, though? Collectively, adults with severe mental disabilities can't bear legal responsibility.
- niklasni1 12y agoIt's basically the speciecist argument, that we have rights because we're human, not because of anything that goes along with being human.
- chton 12y agoI don't think that's what they mean. My interpretation of that statement would be that rights are conferred to species as a whole, not individuals, and it matters whether the species as a whole can bear legal responsibility. Just as you can't take rights away from individual members of a species that can do that, you can't give rights to individuals of a species that can't. How you define what species can and what can't is of course the clincher in that case. In a way, it's a pretty decent way to look at it. It means all that is required for an entire species to be given personal rights is to prove that they can fulfill the obligations that come with them. It decouples the rights from the good or bad inviduals, and reduces it to "what is this genetic grouping capable of".
- niklasni1 12y agoHm, that's a perspective I hadn't considered. I still orangutans should have rights, though.
- konstruktor 12y agoBoth points have been made by different but well regarded philosophers, and represent different ethical schools. The court's argument seems to follow contractualism (e.g. Searle, see 1), and your objection is a consequentialist one, as given by Singer in Practical Ethics. I find the latter reasoning much better, but think that the whole argument could have been avoided by asking another question: instead of "does the primate have rights?" we could ask "do humans have the right to lock up a primate". In the latter case, it would have been fairly easy to reason that the interests of the human (seeing a monkey in a zoo) are in no way vital and cannot establish a right, without getting into the question whether the monkey has rights. [1] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractualism/#ConProAni http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/contractualism/#ConProAni
- ars 12y ago> In the latter case, it would have been fairly easy to reason that the interests of the human (seeing a monkey in a zoo) are in no way vital and cannot establish a right That's a rather poor argument because it is non-specific. By that argument I can not own a potato either because there is no vital need for me to do so.
- sirclueless 12y agoThere is a vital need for you to own a potato though. Humans need to eat plant food for sustenance, so we have moral reason to accept that at least some plants are allowed to be owned. Given that, there is nothing significant to recommend an alternative plant over a potato, so there should be no moral objection to owning a potato. The point of framing the argument in the terms that konstruktor has, is to change the debate from, "Are apes sufficiently like humans to justify giving them rights?" to "Are apes sufficiently different from non-sentient entities to justify treating them differently." And I think this is a much more persuasive argument -- I think humanity is less willing accept freely that apes are equivalent to humans on some level, than they are to say that the act of viewing an ape for enjoyment does not justify locking up something that is clearly more intelligent and self-aware than your average apricot.
- mikerichards 12y agophilosophically, the same could be applied to a paraplegic, or in most cases to somebody with Down syndrome, so I wonder if there was more in the ruling; I find this argument very poor. Philosophically, the same could be applied to an ant. I find your argument very poor.
- anigbrowl 12y agoMost likely an elaboration of that argument goes 'humans in general can engage in contractual agreements, although some are physically or mentally incapable of performance or comprehension, respectively. Apes, monkeys etc. cannot do so at all.' One could refute that by observing that animals do sometimes make simple mutual arrangements, such as favorite sleeping spots or the like, and animals who are cosocial with humans can certainly be trained. I presume a contractualist would argue that such inter-animal arrangements are too informal and not abstractable, and that training simply develops reflexive behavior...although since animal training is typically predicated on the concept of earning a reward for performance, this objection seems very much like an attempt to wriggle out of one's performance obligations, and I'm not sure it's conceptually different from overbroad get-out clauses in insurance or employment contracts that basically allow one party to exploit any economic asymmetry in order to avoid payment.
- breakingcups 12y agoHuman rights are an interesting phenomenon. Us humans don't even have basic human rights, as evidenced by the recent extensive publications regarding the torture practices of the US (rectal feeding?). Such a contrast to this (otherwise completely unrelated) article.
- mct 12y agoHumans most certainly have rights. In this case, those rights were shamefully violated.
- chton 12y agoThere is a big difference between having your rights violated and not having rights at all. The fact that we know the torture practices are wrong is because they violate our rights. We treat apes badly because they have no rights to which to compare the treatment.
- jjgreen 12y ago"we have a right to not be tortured" is synonymous for "torture practices are wrong", rights do not exist in any other sense (ask yourself, where are they located?) unless you are a 18th century religious philosopher.
- Igglyboo 12y agoA few bad actors does not invalidate all of humanity's rights.
- swombat 12y agoI applaud this decision. At least some people are recognising the direction of the arrow of history here. My thoughts on this last time this concept emerged on HN: http://swombat.com/2012/11/6/dolphin-history http://swombat.com/2012/11/6/dolphin-history
- ars 12y agoI hope you realize that by giving rights in abundance you have diminished the very meaning of the concept. You have this assumption that in the future everything will have rights. All that will happen if that occurs is that the concept of "rights" will be laughed at and ignored. The more rare something is, the more powerful and special, and meaningful.
- learnstats2 12y agoWhat absolute nonsense. Diminishing the meaning of 'rights' is great: if everyone and everything had appropriate rights, there would be no further need for the concept to be discussed. That's a good thing.
- repsilat 12y agoGiving puppies a legal right to have silly hats and birthday parties obviously diminishes the real rights that we all care about. Rights-proliferation leads to governments taking a pick-and-choose approach to enforcement, and many people would argue that having selectively enforced rights is tantamount to not having any rights at all. See also: http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/dec/04/-sp-case-against-human-rights http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/dec/04/-sp-case-against...
- learnstats2 12y agoOK, I agree that you don't really have "rights" if they are unenforced. Giving the rights to puppies as you mention doesn't chanage that either way; this is a red herring. And I suspect it was not the parent commenter's point.
- Link- 12y agoTo get this straight: we pulled animals from their 'righteous' sanctuaries, where they were free, put them in captivity, and now we're asking them to be human to set them free, again?
- VMG 12y agoYou phrased it as if recognizing an injustice is weird
- Link- 12y agoThat was not the intention at all. In fact, the comment is quite sarcastic and if I'm to rephrase it, it will be: We're asking animals to be humans to grant them their freedom which is quite absurd.
- eidyia 12y agoand by free they mean a less-captive environment, because of the damage caused by the initial captivity they can't handle "actual" freedom.
- eidyia 12y agoWell done. At least its a step forward. So if its smart enough to be compared as a human you can call it a non-human person, otherwise, a dumb chicken for example can not only be kept captive but can also be eaten. So I guess the case here is if its stupid you can eat it/kill it but if its close to your intelligence you cannot. My point, and I know I am not the only one, is that I have met several human-persons much dumber than chickens. Which makes me wonder why I cant kill them or even eat them, simply because they have the same body structure as I do.
- Shivetya 12y agoNext up, you cannot have pets. edit, namely I have found the long term of many similar groups who support animal "rights" do not want people to keep pets. Having family members who breed and show dogs it is not uncommon to find these groups trying to get laws passed limiting pet ownership or worse. Animals have rights, not human rights.
- swombat 12y agoYou already cannot have pets if you treat them cruelly. At least in theory.
- drzaiusapelord 12y agoI dont have a problem with this. I keep hearing about how people can't train dogs, how dogs "misbehave," etc. Oh course they have issues, pets aren't designed to live domestic suburban human lives. I just don't believe humanity automatically and morally should have dominion of all animals. I think giving up on non-working pet ownership is a step in the right direction. And when sci-fi style robotics gets here, give up on working animals altogether. I say this as someone who loves and has owned several dogs. They're just not cut out for our lives. I think there was a study that showed most pets have severe mental illness. Not to mention, the ones that can't play the human domestic game and heaven forbid show their natural aggression or dominance traits, well they get killed. How the hell is this moral? Why is the loss of pet ownership this horrific thing? It seems like thats the way a compassionate society should be leaning towards.
- logfromblammo 12y agoAnimals don't have rights. The property-owning rights of humans are restricted when the property in question is an animal. For the most part, these additional restrictions are to prevent animal owners from practicing monstrous acts on the animal. Failure to abide by those restrictions is a social signal that the human may not be able to behave in a civilized fashion with other humans. The restrictions have the outward appearance of protecting animals from cruelty, but the actual intent is for civilization to identify and protect itself against cruel humans. Animal rights advocates have lost the plot. Certain interactions, like the exchange of rights, can only appear between equals. With the possible exception of animals like the great apes, corvids, pachyderms, and cetaceans, the vast majority of species are strictly inferior to Homo sapiens with its awesome powers of language, social coordination, and tool use.
- neverminder 12y agoRise of the Planet of the Apes?
- higherpurpose 12y agoWaiting for the day a robot has the same trial.
- MarkPNeyer 12y agohttp://markpneyer.me/2014/03/05/the-rule-of-threes/ http://markpneyer.me/2014/03/05/the-rule-of-threes/
- sethbannon 12y agoIf anyone is interested in the sate of legal thinking around "animal rights", I recommend this excellent book by Cass Sunstein and Martha Nussbaum, which offers a nice overview of the field: http://smile.amazon.com/Animal-Rights-Current-Debates-Directions/dp/0195305108 http://smile.amazon.com/Animal-Rights-Current-Debates-Direct... It includes leading proponents and opponents of legal protections for non-human animals.
- alimoeeny 12y ago- I personally find this idea of "the closer your `intelligence` is to man the more rights you get" hard to understand. If a chimp has "some human rights" then why not a dog, or a cow can get "some" too. - Also, I find this whole thing distracting, if you have any energy to put into "rights", there are billions of humans in need of help for very basic things (including rights). Am I overlooking something?
- skj 12y agoDogs do have more rights than other animals. If you take a dog to the zoo and feed it to a lion, you're going to have a problem. If you take a mouse to the zoo, and feed it to a snake, no problem. Cows have no rights because they're tasty and boring.
- longlivegnu 12y agoI don't understand this either. What objectively makes an animal any less animal. I mean a mouse feels the pain of being eaten and so does a dog.
- skj 12y agoGiven that at the end of the process they're both dead, the amount of pain felt ends up being irrelevant. What matters is the amount of empathy we feel with the creature. With dogs, we often think of them as our friends and companions. With mice, we often think of them as vermin and a problem. Though, I'm sure if you took George's mouse Milo and fed it to a snake George would be extremely upset.
- repsilat 12y ago> Given that at the end of the process they're both dead, the amount of pain felt ends up being irrelevant. That's pretty far outside the mainstream -- lots of jurisdictions have laws about the humane slaughter of animals. For obvious reasons, people tend not to restrict their moral consideration of pain to those beings that will never die.
- hawleyal 12y agoCompared to corporations, animals, and especially our great ape cousins should have as much or more rights.
- krylon 12y agoAfter school, I first attempted to study philosophy, before I got into computers and networks and such. I got disillusioned very quickly, but one very interesting course I took was on the definition of personhood, and I had to give short talk on the "grey areas" of personhood. Biology alone is not going to cut it, and once we begin to extend personhood status to beings other than homo sapiens, it is going to get very fuzzy.
- waps 12y agoI once heard this from my philosophy professor. Philosophy is trying to answer questions you can't answer with current knowledge, or better put : science is what you get when you answer questions with the right answer, philosophy is all other answers. Given that no important scientific advance has ever originated from philosophy ... (ie. the ones by accomplished mathematicians that were -usually posthumously- declared philosophers don't count) It's like the "we have to redesign the methodology, find the lessons for the company" discussion at the end of every software project. It takes time and effort, makes management and project managers and even customers very happy, it involves programmers listening to the "good" advice of everybody who can't program and is about as productive as suicide, without the satisfaction at the end.
- lotharbot 12y agoScience is when you try to answer questions about evidence, with evidence. Philosophy is when you try to answer questions about definitions/language, with definitions/language. That doesn't make philosophy useless. It just makes philosophy one part of the system -- a lot of times philosophy generates questions and ideas which are later addressed in a scientific way. It's a useful tool; be careful not to either overvalue or undervalue it. (Likewise, AFAIK no important scientific advance has ever originated from a grammar instructor, but coherent language is an important tool for allowing science to be performed and communicated.)
- waps 12y ago> That doesn't make philosophy useless. It just makes philosophy one part of the system -- a lot of times philosophy generates questions and ideas which are later addressed in a scientific way. There is some truth to this. It is what I mentioned before : "Given that no important scientific advance has ever originated from philosophy ... (ie. the ones by accomplished mathematicians that were -usually posthumously- declared philosophers don't count)", specifically by the don't count part. So two points : 1) this definition actually excludes most parts of philosophy [1] 2) This part of philosophy can only be exercised productively by people who also have extensive credentials in at least one other field (otherwise the "later addressed" part doesn't work). Which brings the question, is this philosophy ? Or is this logic ? (taking one example field that's well represented in philosophy's claims). And to be honest, this is the same argument Religious studies makes. With one huge difference. Most important researchers were actually learned in Religion (vast majority were very learned in Christian religion, and they did credit or at least reference their religious knowledge with part of important discoveries, with Newton and Einstein as 2 very well known examples. Even though nearly universally learned in Christianity, I should probably mention some of them were Jews (including Einstein, of course). But there's examples of people of other religions further back. Weird part is that there seem to be very large differences between religions on this point. From the large majority of islamic scientists, for instance, it is well known that they weren't muslims, but rather non-muslim slaves at some court [2]. For Hinduism the reverse seems to be true. Like Christians, many Indian scientists credit their faith with pushing them to research nature (and like with Christians, the general population did not always agree with that assessment and killed a number of them for it)) I have actually seen this at university. There were several (about to retire, or even emeriti) professors that were monks. Given how they lived, I can understand how that would help with scientific research. One should take a look at, say the Jesuit atlasses of the sky, and you'll be impressed with the quality and quantity of their work. They are not just credited with lots of discoveries, but also with absolutely incredible amounts of grunt work, and with keeping knowledge of science spread throughout western culture. For philosophers you can say the exact opposite. There are many "pure" philosophers. None, to my knowledge, have been credited with large amounts of grunt work. And sadly, like Christianity before it, philosophy can be credited with inhibiting science as well. The big current example is research into human races, but there are other examples. From the closely related "bon sauvage" incidents, the "green" morality (believe it or not, nature is what might be termed chaotic neutral, it is decidedly NOT "lawful good", but we're repressing knowledge about this). The same thing is true for research about humans themselves, where lots of things are repressed (e.g. the reason that Freud is so fixated on sexual experiences during early age is understood to be that a significant portion of his patients were victims of paedophilia, but again I'm told you can't say this directly in papers). Humans must be good, especially scientists themselves (e.g. Galileo Galilei was deservedly a famous scientist ... who then decided to become a politician and a horrible, horrible human being. Which of those 2 things got him in trouble with the church (and with the state) ? Let's be honest here : the second (otherwise the timing becomes very hard to explain). General lesson to be drawn here : no matter how you are, if you start sending letters to every politician and priest how "their kind" will all get tortured and hanged as soon as he can make it happen, you'll be in serious trouble if it appears you are getting a following). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy [2] For instance Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwārizmī al-Majousi al-Katarbali, who was instrumental in helping Greek and Roman algebra survive the Dark Ages was very likely a Zoroaster
- jjgreen 12y agoPhilosophy, rest quiet for a moment -- http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/dec/22/monkey-saves-dying-friend-train-station-india-video http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/dec/22/monkey-sa...
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