Yakoob on 14/12/2013 at 03:48
Yes lets turn another interesting thread into a semantics debate. God dammit TTLG
demagogue on 14/12/2013 at 05:02
Well, in this case the OP topic was posing a question of semantics -- what do we think about animals being classed as legal "persons", which turns on what we think personhood should mean as far as laws are concerned -- so it's not like it's "turning into" that debate. That's what the debate is.
One thing about legal personhood is that a legal person is a holder of rights and duties. AFAIK that's what a debate about legal personhood is really talking about; can the entity hold certain rights & duties towards the state. And it can vary; I mean some entities can hold certain rights/duties, and other entities other rights/duties. But anyway legal "personhood" is the term they use for what an entity has that lets them hold them.
So a corporation can have both (and should be "persons" BTW; the oblivious-Left that criticizes corporations as persons don't seem to realize that that's how you hold them legally responsible for violations) because they have clear decision-makers that can decide on behalf of the corporation and be accountable to those decisions. So legally assigning them rights & duties isn't that hard to accomplish. Minors are sometimes not given full personhood status for certain things, e.g., in the ability to enter into a contract/work or have consensual sex (rights) or be fully accountable to some crimes or pay taxes (duties), because the law assumes they can't really consent or decide since they don't have enough agency to understand what their decision really means. But of course they still have basic human rights like the right to life. Animals of course have even less capability to recognize the "social meaning" of their decisions than minors, so naturally wouldn't get those kinds of rights & duties.
But as for something like a basic right to life, or say a right to at least a dignified death (you can't torture an animal in its execution), I think this is where there's some grey area where we can have some debate. You obviously don't need to be fully rational to have a basic right to life, since even infants get it (but not fetuses under current US law, and coma patients varies by state). But a problem is that the law isn't really clear what it is about a biological organism that triggers a right to life. I'll try to think out my or an answer to this to post later -- I don't want to throw half-baked ideas out just now-- but I think for now, this is the debate on the table we should be talking about.
Phatose on 14/12/2013 at 08:03
The law isn't clear about what in a biological organism triggers a right to life because humanity isn't clear on that. Hell, we aren't actually all that clear on what exactly a biological organism is. Sure, humans, plants, bacteria are. Viruses? Not quite so clear whether they're biological organisms or not, and our take their right to life is generally characterized as "Fuck viruses." And when you get right down to it, good luck getting a definition of biological that isn't circular as hell.
The whole thing is a philosophical quagmire that humanity has been stuck in pretty much forever, and in all probability will remain stuck in. But that doesn't actually matter here, because this isn't about philosophy, it's about semantics. And it's about semantics because chimpanzee loving activists are using semantics as a way to avoid having to convince the rest of us that chimpanzees shouldn't be subject to lab tests.
"Don't torture chimps if you can avoid it" actually sounds like a pretty damn good idea to me. But, the whole "if you can avoid it" part is kind of in question, and I'm really sketchy on the whole "Lawyers determine who's a person" thing.
Muzman on 14/12/2013 at 15:38
From a moral philosophy standpoint this stuff is all quite interesting and has few easy answers.
From a practical everyday standpoint they ain't getting in the fold until Caesar says "No!"
faetal on 15/12/2013 at 17:25
Surely isn't the problem more to do with anything which is exclusive to personhood which we deem to be applicable to other animals? I don't think for example that anyone needs to campaign for chimps to be able to vote, but it might be good if they could be treated less like material property for example. I'd say that a proper analysis of animal rights legislation could be made with regards to transferring some rights of personhood over without making the (IMO) excessive move of declaring certain species of animals as persons as and when research is concluded which puts them past a threshold which may or may not change in the future.
Nicker on 15/12/2013 at 22:00
There is a line in our hominid ancestry where we started burying our dead, indicating that we had a theory of mind and could abstract our personal mortality. This was millions of years after we developed tools and the use of fire. Which of those criteria define us as human? Surely sentient creatures suffer more exquisitely than most others.
Even if none of this results in a clear consensus on personhood, at least it gives us pause to consider that we owe more creatures more respect than we are used to giving them.
Given what you say, faetal, this could be a strategic bargaining position. Demand the moon and the stars but settle for the moon. Demand full personhood but settle for better animal rights.
Better animal rights may be the pragmatic answer, at least until we perfect meat trees and egg bushes. Maybe when we don't need to eat animals anymore we will have the luxury to expand the boundaries of personhood.
faetal on 16/12/2013 at 01:58
I think animal rights should be practical. I mean, we eat animals, that's just a fact of nature. Animal rights should try to limit all suffering where practicable. Let's eat cows, but how about the killing is painless and the living conditions are not going to cause them any distress. It's all well to suggest e.g. hunting them wild, but too many humans = not enough land to sustain that.
So yeah, I'm about what can be done and give the best results rather than getting too philosophical with what personhood means. The legal term personhood was kind of custom built for humans, so by design it isn't meant to fit other species. Rather than have a -hood for each species, best just to have stratified animal rights which protect as much as possible without creating something ridiculously artificial.
SubJeff on 16/12/2013 at 07:25
I'm all for animal rights and whatever but I think we should concentrate on making things right for people first.
faetal on 16/12/2013 at 10:52
That'll happen the moment it becomes profitable.
DDL on 16/12/2013 at 11:03
Also, of course, animals used in research are treated spectacularly well, because they need to be healthy and happy or you'll never know whether treatment X didn't work "because the animals were stressed and grumpy" or not.
And of course to even GET to the point of testing on non-human primates you have to test on a vast range of other things, from purified enzymes in tubes, to cell culture, to fly/worm/mouse models, to more extensive mouse tests, and then (often) they jump straight to humans anyway, because we're (obviously) a better model for humans, and quite frankly are usually cheaper and easier. Chimps need very good, very well designed housing and come with moral issues and the threat of animal rights peeps doing something fuckstupid (for a change, natch). People? They just need to be contactable by phone, and be willing to take novel drugs for money.
Anyway, aside from the giggles I got from reading the wonderfully self-referential "They are not capable of rational or moral reasoning. End of." as a definition of non-personhood, I'd say honestly it doesn't matter where you draw the line, since it won't really change anything. You'll just have people saying "What, fuck, no: I don't eat PEOPLE. Jesus. Oh, persons? Yeah, I eat persons. Mmmmm...delicious persons."
The fact that we're learning a lot more about the level of self-awareness and cognition of non-humans is great, and awesome (elephant cooperativity and capuchin prostitution are my current favourite stories), but it won't stop people being great big bags of dicks to everything that isn't human. Or in fact, is not directly related to them. Or even that, in all honesty.
