Is it time to think things over? Chimps are people too.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Azazel
(...) and I have classes tomorrow.

Same to me, have to leave this place now....

But I basically agree with Big Crunch´s post.

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Azazel

If humans are given rights, then surely so too they should be given them. I would not go as far as to say they have human rights, but they should have something equivalent.

How come? if they're human, they should be given full rights. If they're not, they're are not a part of our species, and society, and ethics do not apply to them outside the context of interaction with humans.

What are we calling human rights.

http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

Looking at those I would apply many of those rights, but some just wouldn't make sense when applied to a chimp:

Everyone has the right to a nationality.

or

Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

or

Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

We can certainly grant them such rights, but it would make sense (to me) to give rights to chimps that are appropriate to their 'society' and needs.

[Az]

why so? If they're not human, why should they have rights, at all? ( Not that humans have them, but we agree that we do have them )

[Dauphin]

Why make the assertion that only humans may have rights. Why do you think we give people rights in the first place?

[Wernazuma III]

Our ethics apply on all humans, no matter if they can understand that ethics or not. Generally we base this on the "human dignity" argument. But what tells us that only humans have that dignity?

[Kuciwalker]

I'd say that an interstellar civilization that came along would kinda notice that we qualify as an intelligent species right off the bat... you know, the whole technology thing

Chimps are a) not so obvious and b) probably don't have nearly the level of intelligence of humans. I'll explain b.

If chimps were as intelligent as humans, it is likely that they would have developed some sort of technology, even if very primitive (like houses and such). They don't even have fire.

[Firelad]

As far as I understand, everyone is (or should be) given rights relative to their ability to use them (wish I could explain it better...) - for example, us humans have all these rights that chimps can't have like voting and organising. But animals different from humans also have rights - rights for life, dignity, freedom (or different degrees thereof... Who's to judge anyway?).
I hope you can understand me... I'm not in my top form right now.

[Firelad]

Skywalker: Note European treatment of obviously intelligent (not to speak of human...) blacks etc right up to, well, now.
Seems to me that as long as you judge someone by how superior you are to him you are bound to do nasty things. Whether doing nasty things is bad or not is a different story. But methinks that basic rights for everybody (human, animal, whatever) goes in the same category as what we now call "Human Rights" (and what used to be, at least unofficially, called White Male rights...)
I remember some White Supermacist guy on TV saying, "We're here to defend White Anglo-Saxon Democracy!"...

[Kuciwalker]

That's a point, but it is all moot anyway... how we treat chimps won't affect the behavior of some potential interstellar civilization. Unless they're all animal-rights activists

[Ramo]

Unless chimps are truly sentient - i.e. can produce abstract thoughts, I don't think that they should have rights of a person. However, they should have significant rights given their mental capabilities; one shouldn't be able to kill them without provacation, etc.

[Lincoln]

Chimps are like dogs. They should be treated with consideration in the same way. There are many organisms that share human genes, we cannot treat them all as humans. If a monkey starts posting on Apolyton though then that would be a good indication that he has (lacks?) intelligence.

[Zero]

caveman were pretty stupid and I'd probably treat them the same way as chimps cause they are so "inferior". But look how much communication and our ability to use tools got us. I think its would be difficult to argue that we developed into a sentient beings over 6000 years because thats such a short time for such evolutionary process to take place. In fact, we were always capable of it, it just took some time for us to stack our knowledge with each passing generations.

Maybe chimps have the same capability, just that they werent able to end up to a point where we are, but the fact is we started of at a point just as low as where chimps were. Just because our knowledge stacked thru generations and generations cause we were able to preserve what we learned doesnt seem to make sense why we should be considered superior over another being if they have the same capbility.

[Zero]

Originally posted by skywalker

If chimps were as intelligent as humans, it is likely that they would have developed some sort of technology, even if very primitive (like houses and such). They don't even have fire.

Given that Chimps do not have thumbs, I doubt that they really have any chance of utilizing tools. Which handicaps them from developing in the same way we did.

Also, the ability to pass on knowledge. If such ability isnt with the chimps, no matter how smart they are, they wouldnt be able to develop. Maybe they can teach a few simple tricks and pas those among generations, but unless you have some sort of complex communication system that can be preserved, you will not achieve this. Once again, in order to write something, you need an ability to utilize tools, something chimps dont have.

[HolyWarrior]

Those guys should work for the Onion

What a ridiculous story

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by skywalker
I'd say that an interstellar civilization that came along would kinda notice that we qualify as an intelligent species right off the bat... you know, the whole technology thing

I'll type slowly so you can understand, what if, relatively speaking they were as far ahead of us as we are to the chimps? As someone else has pointed out 10k years ago were had no technology, therefore by your reasoning not intelligent and fair game for experimenting on, guess weve just been lucky no one has spotted us?