The personality of chimpanzees is once again in the news and in the courts. A novel case caught the attention of the media this last week.
New York courts are probably too black and white to have dealt with this question in any other way than a reference to rights, responsibilities and legal accountability.
The protagonists did the usual thing of trundling out the scientific research and cataloging the marvelous human capabilities that chimpanzees are known to have, when they brought their petition for writ of habeas corpus
Adam Smiths "On the Wealth of Nations" -- on which the Post-Reagan-Thatcher ethos of globalization is based -- explicitly accounts slaves as property. The "correctness" of Smith's economic tenets, so beloved of conservative economists, is therefore implicitly founded on a model of society in which a large number of persons live without human rights under the law. Perhaps this explains why the global equation still refuses to balance into any kind of utopian state of well-being among all men and women-- half of us still need to be treated as property for the model to work.
Of course the economist attitude towards the rest of nature of Smith's time was equally without regard to personality and its implications for the role of intelligence in the proper functioning of our planet. It is long overdue that we took the next step. It would also have been better if we had done it before globalization.
The decision quotes the legal definition of a person thus:
The Court's ruling on Tommy's personhood turn on the inability of chimpanzees to comply with human law. Presiding Justice Karen Peters is reported to have written that:
Judging the personhood of chimpanzees according to their ability to comply with our proxy ecosystems is disingenous at best, and at worse, replete with with the cruelty of a circus Ringmaster. Thus when a New York law professor is quoted by the Boston Globe as saying:
it ignores the foundation of moral obligations in the right of living things to participate in the very act of living-- of eating, drinking and sleeping.
If we observe that animals have personality, it is precisely because they manifest obligations to their fellow creatures (including humans) in their acts of living. A human being, locked in a cage would no more be able to "bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions" than Tommy the chimp. There is some double jeopardy in denying a chimp his rights to life and liberty because he cannot comply with the proxy ecosystem of New York's concrete jungle.
In due synchronicitistic justice, the name of the "owner" of Tommy-the-Chimp is Lavery, a mere slip of the tongue away from 'slavery':
So, if Tarzan were caged in the middle of the forest, unable to understand and comply with the norms of chimpanzee society, would he cease to be a person?
New York courts are probably too black and white to have dealt with this question in any other way than a reference to rights, responsibilities and legal accountability.
The protagonists did the usual thing of trundling out the scientific research and cataloging the marvelous human capabilities that chimpanzees are known to have, when they brought their petition for writ of habeas corpus
When the complaint was filed, in early December 2013, Steven Wise, the president of the Nonhuman Rights Project, said: “Not long ago, people generally agreed that human slaves could not be legal persons, but were simply the property of their owners. . . We will assert, based on clear scientific evidence, that it’s time to take the next step and recognize that these nonhuman animals cannot continue to be exploited as the property of their human ‘owners.’”
Adam Smiths "On the Wealth of Nations" -- on which the Post-Reagan-Thatcher ethos of globalization is based -- explicitly accounts slaves as property. The "correctness" of Smith's economic tenets, so beloved of conservative economists, is therefore implicitly founded on a model of society in which a large number of persons live without human rights under the law. Perhaps this explains why the global equation still refuses to balance into any kind of utopian state of well-being among all men and women-- half of us still need to be treated as property for the model to work.
Of course the economist attitude towards the rest of nature of Smith's time was equally without regard to personality and its implications for the role of intelligence in the proper functioning of our planet. It is long overdue that we took the next step. It would also have been better if we had done it before globalization.
The decision quotes the legal definition of a person thus:
"So far as legal theory is concerned, a person is any being whom the law regards as capable of rights and duties.. . .Centuries of dutifully recorded observation confirm that non-human species enjoy rights and perform reciprocal duties in the context of their own social contracts, and in the wider community of species in their native ecosystems. We even borrow terms like "alpha male" and "maternal instinct" from the language of such observations. In deed, such reciprocal balance is almost always a required attribute for individual survival in any species.
Persons are the substances of which rights and duties are the attributes. It is only in this respect that persons possess juridical significance, and this is the exclusive point of view from which personality receives legal recognition"
The Court's ruling on Tommy's personhood turn on the inability of chimpanzees to comply with human law. Presiding Justice Karen Peters is reported to have written that:
"Needless to say, unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions. In our view, it is this incapability to bear any legal responsibilities and societal duties that renders it inappropriate to confer upon chimpanzees the legal rights – such as the fundamental right to liberty protected by the writ of habeas corpus – that have been afforded to human beings."The question is, what is the origin of the rightness or wrongness of human actions? Why does society need responsibilities and duties in the first place if not the maintenance of our relationship to the natural world? Economy is a proxy for ecology. Money is only as good as the food, shelter and water it can provide -- no matter how high the sky-scraper, the Bodegas or Starbucks' on the groundfloor are still proxies for fruit trees.
Judging the personhood of chimpanzees according to their ability to comply with our proxy ecosystems is disingenous at best, and at worse, replete with with the cruelty of a circus Ringmaster. Thus when a New York law professor is quoted by the Boston Globe as saying:
“The blunt point is that we have had and will continue to have different moral obligations to members of our own species than we do to chimps or members of any other species.”
it ignores the foundation of moral obligations in the right of living things to participate in the very act of living-- of eating, drinking and sleeping.
If we observe that animals have personality, it is precisely because they manifest obligations to their fellow creatures (including humans) in their acts of living. A human being, locked in a cage would no more be able to "bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally accountable for their actions" than Tommy the chimp. There is some double jeopardy in denying a chimp his rights to life and liberty because he cannot comply with the proxy ecosystem of New York's concrete jungle.
In due synchronicitistic justice, the name of the "owner" of Tommy-the-Chimp is Lavery, a mere slip of the tongue away from 'slavery':
"Lavery said that he agreed with the judges, adding that T[o]mmy received state-of-the-art care and was on a waiting list to be taken in by a sanctuary.The right question is whether Tommy would be personable if he lived in a sanctuary -- or better still, in the ecosystems of West and Central Africa in which his ancestors defined their own moral obligations, societal obligations and accountability, and in which chimp intelligence continues to support the pitifully few forest remnants still free of human disruption.
"It will be my decision where he goes and not someone else's," he said."
So, if Tarzan were caged in the middle of the forest, unable to understand and comply with the norms of chimpanzee society, would he cease to be a person?
