13 thoughts on “Orangutans”

  1. People have a moral obligation in the treatment of all animals. All animals have intelligence, even if they were smarter than people they wouldn’t be people.

    What rights?

    Life, unless we eat them.

    Liberty, unless they chew on the furniture.

    Happiness, if they can can find it anymore than we can.

  2. You got it backwards. There are a lot of people out there who shouldn’t have any more rights than an orangutan, and that’s before you start to consider the leadership of SEIU and the NEA.

  3. Animals have no ability to respect the rights of others, so they can never be afforded full equal status. Can they suffer? Absolutely, so they should be treated as humanely as possible. Sub-sentients require good stewardship.

  4. Titus, the real point is whether some animals are actually sub-sentient at all. Quite a few types have shown the ability to recognise themselves in a mirror; also quite a few types of animals have shown the ability to use and sometimes create tools. Some have even shown the ability to communicate grammatically; the inability of chimpanzees to speak, for example, is a matter of physiology.

    The list of possibly sapient animals (sapience implies self-knowledge hence the slightly different term) includes all the great apes except possibly gibbons, and also delphinoids and possibly other whales.

    Most of these are less intelligent than the average human. So what? Best guess for the brightest of orangutans is about IQ 65; people with lower IQs than that have the vote although they cannot possibly understand any of the issues properly. (I do realise that people deemed mentally incompetent don’t have a vote in most countries, but that declaration is a step not often taken.)

  5. Titus, I think the word you’re looking for is sapient, not sentient. There’s no question that apes and quite a few other animals are able to perceive pleasure and pain.

    (I suspect we’ve all “learned” too much from reading science fiction, where “sapience,” “sentience,” “self-awareness,” and consciousness” are used pretty much interchangeably. Similarly, in Needle Hal Clement coined the word “symbiote” and it caught on in SF; he later acknowledged that he should have used “symbiont.”)

    Clyde was a trained ape, of course. So was Chantek, who showed the ability to master sign language, invent new words, lie successfully, and absorb human cultural notions at the level of a young child.

    I know several adult humans who couldn’t clear any of these hurdles. (I’m not being facetious.)

  6. The list of possibly sapient animals (sapience implies self-knowledge hence the slightly different term) includes all the great apes except possibly gibbons, and also delphinoids and possibly other whales.

    Add elephants to that list, too.

  7. Forget ‘as capable as humans.’ Chimps have already shown superior memory capabilities and humans come in various flavors of capability.

    We are stewards of the animals. The question is rights. They do not have human rights. Though perhaps humane rights; the right to be treated humanely. That includes out dolphin overlords.

  8. Titus, the real point is whether some animals are actually sub-sentient at all.

    If you say so. It’s an interesting point, but I was answering Rand’s practical question: “what rights do/should they have?” Theory of Personhood is left to the interested reader; I’ve only time to give bottom-line answers, even if folks are more likely to skim over them.

    Titus, I think the word you’re looking for is sapient, not sentient.

    I prefer “hypohuman“; it’s a shibboleth of sorts, but a good broad term nevertheless…

  9. Ken – That’s the question, isn’t it? Should sapient creatures of any type be given the same rights as humans, assuming they have roughly the same capabilities as an average adult human?

    We don’t have to wait to be visited by extrasolar aliens, either (they are overwhelmingly likely to be the ones doing the visiting, and their attitude to us will be a lot more important than vice versa). Two possiblities that spring to mind are uplifted animals (e.g. chimps geneered to have a working speech-capable larynx and human-level intelligence) and advanced AIs. Of the two, my opinion is that the latter will be the earlier to arrive.

    Should either of these have equal rights to humans? The transapient AIs would probably insist, anyway.

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