Brother Chimpanzee

Five years ago the regional legislature of the Balearic Islands in Malaga, adopted a resolution granting personhood to great apes. The issue was subsequently taken up at national level, though I haven't found any indication that this ever progressed to the level of legislation. Perhaps the world financial crisis which erupted around this time and still threatens Spain with insolvency, distracted the parliamentarians from the (arguably, less pressing) matter of ape rights. Nevertheless the issue of personhood for upper primates has attracted the support of such august figures as primatologist Jane Goodall and evolutionary biologist and faith-baiter Richard Dawkins.

Whilst a number of animal species, some of them very far removed from humanity (octopuses (1), crows) show surprising abilities, issues regarding animal cognition and rights tend to cluster around our closest relatives, the great apes - chimpanzees and bonobos, orangutans, gorillas. These, along with some ceteceans, are the creatures which pass the mirror self-recognition test which researchers use as a baseline test of self-awareness (2).

The ape in the mirror.

I don't have a problem with the idea that we should apply more stringent standards of care to creatures whose level of self-awareness approaches our own, but I do have some problems with the extension of the concept of rights beyond the human species. In fact, I have some problems with the concept of rights that seems to be current.

 Thomas Jefferson, slave owner and upper primate.

Pace the United States Declaration of Independence, there must be some difficulty in accepting any concept of unalienable rights. Let's examine the famous statement more closely:

"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The unalienable rights referred to are conceived as endowed by the creator. I don't believe there to be any evidence of (or need for, if we want to get all Occam on God's mediæval ass) divine creation, so the statement falls over right there. If there is no creator to endow the rights, what is their source? I'm not expecting any convincing arguments that human rights fall into the category of natural laws - we're not talking about gravity here - so we are left, I think, to recognise that rights are a social construct. That is, they are negotiated - indeed, continuously negotiated - between society and the individual. We have rights, essentially, because we have given them to ourselves. The process of endowment of rights often involves disobedience against existing social structures, sometimes violent, and their maintenance requires, if not actual conflict, an implied willingness to defend them. The lazy assumption that rights simply appear out of the ether, fully formed and inviolable, is actually an invitation to take them away, as it undermines the expectation that they will be defended.

And this is where my problems with ape rights really lie. The apes do not fight for their rights and do not defend them. They do not endow themselves. Any ape rights are given on sufferance, at one remove, by activist humans. In this they resemble the contentious "rights" of the foetus - although at least we were all foetuses once...

Notes
(1) this is a normally formed English plural, and anyone who wants to tell me that the "correct" version is octopodes can go split an infinitive. If you think it should be octopi, go back to school!
(2) Along with orcas and bottlenose dolphins, it is also said that elephants and magpies are capable of this. I can forsee however that giving personhood to magpies might cause a few problems, including a sudden rise in convictions for theft. 

NOTE: Music link removed 2/1/2013