8 ms·

I find very interesting the court argument: "chimpanzees can't fulfill the social obligations expected of anyone with rights". Philosophically, the same could

I 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 ago
People with Down syndrome legally don't have the same rights.
- politician 12y ago
  Please 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 ago
    B/C I guess. It's not what I mean, it's what's a fact.
  - peteretep 12y ago
    It'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 ago
      No need for that kind of comment.
      - scrollaway 12y ago
        What kind of comment, a thorough and thoughtful answer to a honest question?
    - politician 12y ago
      That explains it - thanks.
  - asdfaoeu 12y ago
    People 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 ago
  You are talking about legal rights, not human rights.
Retra 12y ago
I 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 ago
  Rights 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 ago
    You 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 ago
      They 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 ago
From 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 ago
  Surely not a convincing rebuttal, though? Collectively, adults with severe mental disabilities can't bear legal responsibility.
  - niklasni1 12y ago
    It'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 ago
      I 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 ago
        Hm, that's a perspective I hadn't considered. I still orangutans should have rights, though.
konstruktor 12y ago
Both 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 ago
    There 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 ago
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. Philosophically, the same could be applied to an ant. I find your argument very poor.
anigbrowl 12y ago
Most 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.

adamnemecek 12y ago

People with Down syndrome legally don't have the same rights.

politician 12y ago
Please 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 ago
  B/C I guess. It's not what I mean, it's what's a fact.
- peteretep 12y ago
  It'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 ago
    No need for that kind of comment.
    - scrollaway 12y ago
      What kind of comment, a thorough and thoughtful answer to a honest question?
  - politician 12y ago
    That explains it - thanks.
- asdfaoeu 12y ago
  People 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 ago
You are talking about legal rights, not human rights.

Retra 12y ago

I 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 ago
Rights 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 ago
  You 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 ago
    They 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 ago

From 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 ago
Surely not a convincing rebuttal, though? Collectively, adults with severe mental disabilities can't bear legal responsibility.
- niklasni1 12y ago
  It'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 ago
    I 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 ago
      Hm, that's a perspective I hadn't considered. I still orangutans should have rights, though.

konstruktor 12y ago

Both 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 ago
  There 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 ago

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. Philosophically, the same could be applied to an ant. I find your argument very poor.

anigbrowl 12y ago

Most 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.