Talk:Great ape personhood

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents

[edit] Orang-utan

" plus the non-hominid Orang-utan" ... but Hominid seems to include orang-utans in the gorup -- Tarquin 19:19 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Individuals

The fact of calling them "individuals" has no relevance here, as an individual animal or even plant of any species is an "individual." --Daniel C. Boyer 19:27, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Technically, plants aren’t necessarily individuals - they can be divided into multiple viable plants.
Besides, this is a reference to Jane Goodall's beliefs, not an attempt at academic encyclopaedia-writing. She clearly uses "individual" in the sense of possessing unique personality and character traits. JF Mephisto 02:42, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
...In other words, she considers each of them a "person". Technical semantics. --205.201.141.146 19:27, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POV

This strikes me as rather POV - for instance, it doesn’t mention the problems of assigning personhood to apes, such as the concept of accountability going along with rights. --Ahruman 16:24, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

That's a philosophical position. It's a matter of personal opinion whether rights necessarily entail duties. After all, small children and the mentally incapacitated have no concept of responsibilities and they are still granted equal rights to the rest of us. Individuals from non-Western societies have different concepts of rights and responsibilities, yet they are not treated like second-class citizens when in our countries. It might be worthwhile mentioning these philosophical objections in a 'controversy' or 'criticism' section perhaps. JF Mephisto 02:42, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

If we do give other great apes a degree of personhood, perhaps they should have the rights of people under 5 (since most chimps have the intelligence of a 4 year old). Some parents even in modern Western countries keep small children under 5 in playpens so I don't see why it should be illegal for a private caretaker being able to keep them in cages (any captive non-human great ape needs to be caged as they are very dangerous). But yea, I guess we can make it a crime to kill an ape unless it is in self-defence. And obviously killing an ape for food would be illegal as it would be similar to killing and eating a human. I'm not sure whether it would work right now as most people already find it hard to believe that humans are great apes to begin with. I think until then we can't really convince people to make such laws. Zachorious 10:35, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

We dont need to give them any right or add them to our society. All we have to do is leave them to live their lives in peace Warfwar3 16:18, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

I think the scientific arguments related to this issue here … Homo Sapiens have this amazing ability of gross over population, environmental unbalance, and expanding their civilization to grandually cover all natural wild spaces. Since we are bringing our society and economic pressures to them (deforestation and habitat destruction, hunting, global climate changes, etc.), the idea of giving them personhood would better allow humans to better take in account the real costs of their destruction (such as the possible destruction of our own species).  :-) C'est la vie. Nonprof. Frinkus 22:30, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Expantion of Personhood in the Future

I have read research proposing personhood not only covering Great Apes, but Whales (including Dolphins), Elephants and possibly even Giant Octopi. Should that be covered in a linked article here, or if one already exists, should it be linked? Nonprof. Frinkus 22:23, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd support linking to equivalent articles. --205.201.141.146 19:28, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Biographies of living persons

I have removed the claimed supporters as all three are living people and there were no sources: "Unsourced or poorly sourced controversial (negative, positive, or just highly questionable) material about living persons should be removed immediately from Wikipedia articles, talk pages, and user pages.[2] These principles also apply to biographical material about living persons in other articles. The responsibility for justifying controversial claims in Wikipedia, of all kinds, but especially for living people's bios, rests firmly on the shoulders of the person making the claim." Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons Mdbrownmsw 18:34, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Original research

I have just removed some material that seems to be related to the topic, but fails under WP:OR: "That is, any facts, opinions, interpretations, definitions, and arguments published by Wikipedia must already have been published by a reliable publication in relation to the topic of the article." The material I removed and the two sources cited do NOT specifically discuss "Great Ape personhood". Mdbrownmsw 18:37, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Richard Dawkins

It is clear that Richard Dawkins has weighed in to the debate on Great Ape personhood, but I'm not sure it's fair to cite him as one of the three best known advocates. A search for "Richard Dawkins" Great-Ape personhood results almost entirely in Wikipedia mirrors. The support he expresses in [1] is hardly unqualified, being as follows:

Nevertheless, it must be conceded that this book's proposal to admit great apes to the charmed circle of human privilege stands square in the discontinuous tradition. Albeit the gap has moved, the fundamental question is still 'Which side of the gap?' Regrettable as this is, as long as our social mores are governed by discontinuously minded lawyers and theologians, it is premature to advocate a quantitative, continuously distributed morality. Accordingly, I support the proposal for which this book stands.

-81.79.242.103 12:50, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Odd one out

Jane Goodall, Richard Dawkins, Noel Edmonds, Peter Singer. Is it really necessary to have Noel Edmonds in this list? Totnesmartin 18:09, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Picture

Shouldn't the box on the right have a picture of a great ape, rather than a baboon?Petter Bøckman 06:16, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes! Either a bonobo or common chimpanzee. Eperotao (talk) 17:23, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Links

One of the links is now owned by a cyber-squatter. Should be removed? 70.252.90.57 21:47, 1 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Apehood

Perhaps people could elect to become apes (since we share 98% DNS with apes, use language as well - nay better! - as apes, have similar social behaviour use tools like some species of great ape etc etc...), and thereby earn the right/privilege (I'm not sure which - you tell me) of not having to work, but instead could be left alone to themselves in the ape environment of their choice doing whatever comes natural to them as apes. E.g gathering ad perhaps hunting food, grooming, copulatating and generally having a good time. And if anyone fucks with them they can claim to be apes or humans as is convenient... And of course if it turns out that their environment has any economic value they can of course as persons cede it to commercial concerns for a fee... Jason Tan (I'm putting my name here because I thought of it first!! :-)) ) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.200.251.55 (talk) 15:32, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Biologically, we already are great apes. We are part of the same lineage, which you will see if you look at our family tree, painstakingly worked out by molecular biologists and others and described at Ape. As to claiming to be one or the other as convenient, you are both already and have been for some time. I'm not sure what idea you are laying claim to.
As for having to work hard, we have to work harder than most other apes because we consume so many resources compared to most other animals. If you were content to live on fruits and sleep in the rain, you wouldn't need a job.There being so many of us and our living so far from our natural habitat, the tropics, plays into this resource consumption problem as well. Eperotao (talk) 17:32, 8 January 2008 (UTC)