On Nonhumans and High Culture

I didn't closely follow the case of Hiasl the 26-year old chimpanzee, for whom a lawsuit was brought to have him declared a "person" and assigned a legal guardian. I'm not one who thinks chimps should be granted personhood unless the rest of the sentient nonhuman world qualifies as well.

On page 18 of the April 2008 issue of Harper's, there's a translation of a brief (from German) from the lawsuit that was apparently in response to the notion that Hiasl shouldn't be granted personhood because he is a chimp and does not have culture. Here's the gist:

Admittedly, they have no high culture. The produce no computers, build no skyscrapers, write no books. Homo sapiens has done these things, however, for only a short time span--about 1 percent of the existence of the species. In spite of the influence of industrial societies, there are still indigenous peoples who live as if now is the Stone Age. To deny these peoples their humanity because they have no high culture would be absurd. . . . Homo sapiens needed roughly 190,000 years to develop anything like high culture. Chimpanzees already have a culture, a language, tools, and awareness; they can produce pictures, and, under the right conditions, they could take on a Western way of life. Perhaps chimpanzees will develop a high culture later. . . . If one does not wish to deny the human rights of Homo sapiens as it lived 150,000 years ago, one must give chimpanzees today at least as much consideration.

The court ruled against the suit.

Of course those petitioning for Hiasl had his best interests in mind; I have no doubt about that. However, they were using speciesism as a weapon against speciesism, and I'm not sure why they thought that would work.

Comments

[Angus]

There is no prospect that chimpanzees will start writing symphonies or discover the inverse-square law of gravity. To base a claim to personhood on this idea is ludicrous. I too believe that, ideally, all sentient beings should qualify as persons. (A person is, fundamentally, someone who counts, who is recognized as a member of the moral community.) But I don't agree with your everyone-or-no-one approach, Mary. It is inconceivable to me that society will overnight go from denying that any animals are persons to accepting that all sentient creatures are. Legal recognition of the non-human great apes as persons (even on the basis of their sophisticated mental faculties) would be a huge blow against speciesism. It would be the wedge in the door. If widely accepted, it would destroy the doctrine of human exceptionalism. Once we admit that we humans are not the only creatures who count, there is real hope for widespread change.

[Mary Martin]

Angus,
I can't say that legal recognition of great apes wouldn't be a wedge in the door. My concern is that the concept in itself is speciesist as it sets them atop a hierarchy that I think is dangerous because it's based on some human-defined concept of worth rather than on sentience.

[Dan]

I agree, Mary. As a species and society, we are amazingly stubborn when it comes to making grossly arbitrary (read: utterly irrational) moral distinctions and blindly and selfishly insisting on them.

It is already the case that there’s a huge arbitrary distinction between what’s acceptable to do to chimps or dogs versus what’s acceptable to do to cows, pigs, or chickens. Giving personhood status to chimps may help chimps, but it would do no more for, e.g. pigs, cows, or chickens than our current recognition of the personhood of mentally disabled humans does for pigs, cows and chickens.

What we need is a society where a politically-significant critical mass of the population has gone vegan for moral reasons. Only then does it make sense to enter politics and legislation and change laws. Until that time, the only effort that is worth anything is vegan education and outreach (of course, this implies that the advocate is vegan; if the advocate is not vegan, the effort is hypocritical nonsense).

[Kenneth Cassar]

Legal recognition of great apes as persons will not be a huge blow to speciesism, particularly if the recognition rests on similarity to humans, just as recognition of some black people as legal persons due to being "sufficiently white" in the slavery era was not a huge blow to racism.

As long as we keep insisting that humans are "above" all other animals, and that our interests matter more, speciesism will prevail. Simply granting priviledged status to some animals found to be "nearly or sufficiently human" will not end speciesism. On the contrary, it will entrench it further.

Similarity to humans matters only with respect to interests that are similar to ours. Other animals have other interests. Sentience should be sufficient for regognizing basic rights such as the right to life and liberty. Any other requirements would be arbitrary, self-centred and speciesist.