Should Chimpanzees Be Considered ‘Persons’?

In all seriousness--because this is a fundamental question about how we respect ourselves and other social animals (...hmmm...lines have to be drawn somewhere, but that's why we also make erasers...), I could only hope that somehow we could communicate with some small society of bonobos, be sure of their willingness to participate, and then help them to visit the Israeli-Palestinian borders as emissaries of an ancient society that works. THAT would, indeed, be some dynamic and highly positive social evolution. Somewhere, there must be a "third factor" to assist us in escaping our literal or analogous pre-biblical, Abrahamic endless replays all across our Earth. We need to get some commitments, at least about beginning to work towards--not even solutions, yet--some real flourishing of hope, the gift that keeps on giving: "Only Signs of Willingness Need Apply."

I agree with the with the goals of the Non-Human Rights Project and would advocate for consideration of the rights of any big brained mammal, until and unless such a creature is proved to somehow be undeserving of any rights. In the case of the two chimps kept in solitary confinement. I suspect that there may be another legal problem: a violation of the Federal Animal Welfare Act which should prohibit the cruelty of keeping these social animals in isolation without some compelling reason for it. The suffering of animals matters and sometimes it is illegal. This is within the jurisdiction of APHIS of the Department of Agriculture (or the USDA). I hope that a party has previously complained about to condition of these two chimpanzees and that there is a case with APHIS that will explain their position on them.

The difference between humans and chimpanzees is not morally arbitrary. We judge other humans according to moral standards. We do not judge non-humans, including apes, according to moral standards. One could not trust an ape around children, or even adults. That's why they are kept in cages. Chimps may have 97% of the same DNA as humans, but we do not expect them to follow moral rules. Morality is what really differentiates humans from all other animals. We lock up people who refuse to be moral, we call them psychopaths. Whether or not chimps can use sign language to communicate, they have no sense of moral obligation. Adult chimps are far stronger than adult humans and fully capable of dismembering a human with their bare hands. The difference between moral and amoral is not arbitrary, it is a fundamental distinction that characterizes humans. Evolutionary biology may suggest that the evolution of species is gradual and not discrete, but there is no logical reason for there not to be this fundamental distinction.

As Barry McKenna touched on, corporate personhood exists even though, in truth, corporations, per se, are not living biological organisms. Indeed, there is concern that AI systems will also achieve the level of personhood. Given the many similarities between human and other primate behaviors and psychologies, it does make sense to extend personhood to these biological organisms. The slippery slope of the argument renders such a decision difficult. As noted, what is to prevent elevating other animals such as whales and elephants, which display complex behavior betraying a level of intelligence and psychological conditions, to some level of nonhuman personhood. The fear is the notion of equality between human and nonhuman persons. We already have a difficulty of this notion with humans of different races and nationalities (historically and presently). African Americans, Hispanics and Latinos, Jews, Irish, Catholics, the destitute (and on and on) have all struggled to become persons, if not humans. So complicated.

Yes

Watch the documentary "Jane." Its subject is Jane Goodall who studied chimps for decades. Chimps are more like us than some of us care to admit. I believe they should be protected from the cruelty and destruction human beings bring to them.

I suggest that what is most fundamental to our need to clarify and explore in terms of human rights and person rights, and where "lines" are drawn or values are invested in, appreciated, enjoyed, or rejected, is that "human rights" begs the question of "human needs" and "person needs." It is as if the question of humans' and persons' needs for breathing, drinking water, and having safe personal environments and the ability to maintain our social connections--or entanglements, or both---only begin with our being born into or somehow living in the midst of a formalized social and legal system. It seems to me that the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights is a--roundabout--way of arguing the fundamental value of "universal human needs," needs that become universal "rights" because a social organization was formed that made a declaration. Somehow, however, our most important societal "declarations" seemed to be left out, in either the society's written or unwritten-but-acknowledged actual legal structure or constitutions. So, we're back to waiting for people and media to start talking about fundamental "universal human and person needs," then recognizing those commitments. Once that new day dawns, then we'll be standing in a whole clearer picture with which to better see and potentially participate in what is or can happen. Then...there is the "personhood" of corporations. I'll leave that for now.

This article is premised on a false dichotomy - that chimps are either human or things. Now it may be that because of quirks in the law this is what lawyers are facing, but it is still false. There clearly are humans, animals and inanimate objects i.e. "things". The borders between can get fuzzy (e.g. are bacteria and viruses animals or things?), but surely this is a more reasonable approach when it comes to thinking about rights and who (or what) should have them.

There have been at least two series of court cases on this subject in the past few years and the pro-personhood side has consistently lost. The courts have found that, although chimps share many characteristics with humans, they cannot be expected to bear moral or legal responsibility for their actions, a point that Dr. Sebo carefully avoids. Philosophers (and lawyers) love to argue, of course, and they must find it frustrating that a bright line exists between humans and all other animals when it comes to moral responsibility, but for the rest of us, it is a kind of Occam's Razor, slashing through all of the complexities that trouble Dr. Sebo so sorely. Bertrand Russell once quipped that a "resolute egalitarian" would be unable to "resist an argument in favour of Votes for Oysters," something that most of us find rather easy to dismiss.

Should chimpanzees be considered persons? It's a good question. Opens the door to what would occur if we extend personhood to most anything. The question sort of reminds me of the book Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper. Extending rights, personhood to chimpanzees would obviously mean them becoming a people, with not just own habitat but own land. How that would play out in today's political/economic world is difficult to predict. Probably considering chimpanzees people will be resisted. Just look how in the writing of that last sentence it looks constructed improperly, that I made a syntax error and/or hash of construction. It's difficult enough for people to take people as people. A lot of people though already treat many aspects of nature as having personhood, so it should not be difficult to establish chimpanzees some place they can survive. The big problem though seems to be humans are enlightened enough about nature to consider many aspects of it worthy of personhood yet we continue to multiply our numbers and destroy any number of species. Makes for a strangely schizophrenic emotional state, where the more we destroy the life around us, flora and fauna, the more we strive to declare it human, exactly as ourselves. It almost seems humans hate the gravity of planet earth, the more powerful people striving to be lighter on their feet by weighing others down, and the entire human race being an incredible burden on all flora and fauna and the planet itself.

Is there a good argument for having this decided by a court rather than passing new laws? Given the current state of public opinion, this strategy seems deeply antidemocratic to me.

In “YOU SHALL KNOW THEM” by Vercors, a group of creatures was discovered. The name “tropis” was applied to them. The tropis possessed many abilities, and were able to perform simple repetitive tasks useful in industry. Those tropis were affectionate with humans, and sought approval. Some of the tropis, however, refused to work, and remained aloof from humans The conundrum was whether or not they were a form of human. If they were not, then they could be classified as animals, and be made to work, such as an ox pulling a plow. If they were humans, then making them work would be slavery. A reporter decided that the court had to decide. He used his own semen to artificially impregnate a female tropi. When she gave birth, the reporter killed the baby. The legal system had to decide whether or not he was guilty of murdering his child, or of nothing more egregious than killing a pet The court decided that the tropis were on two levels of development of the human species. The tropis who refused to work, and were thought to be lower, were actually more advanced, as shown by their refusal to perform work for masters, and by the fact that they buried their dead, and passed their food through fire before eating Read this wonderful book if you want to find out the ending

Yes, albeit dependent persons. Great apes can learn simple sign language and demonstrate awareness. I don’t know what rights they should have or what responsibilities we have towards them or even what the religious or moral implications might be. As a vegetarian, I am repulsed by the thought of eating meat. It is probably a reaction akin to what others feel at the thought of cannibalism. I’ve always thought of myself as the friend and guardian of my cats (certainly not the mommy, which is ridiculous and condescending, or the owner.) Any cat or dog guardian would probably tell you that intelligent animals communicate their needs, seem to understand human language, have differing temperaments. But, of course, they are not as intelligent as humans or as apes.

When corporations and fetuses are conferred “personhood” why not give it to Chimpanzees? When a legal fantasm can be awarded the judicial designation of person despite the “immortality” of corporations and despite the dependence of a corporation’s existence on the will of a state, when a fetus can be considered a person with more rights than it’s mother what would it mean if we gave Chimps personhood? Would it reduce the meaning of person? Does addressing fetuses as persons diminish female persons? Do corporate persons reduce all flesh and blood persons? Are illegal immigrants persons? Are prisoners in our prisons persons? Are the poor persons? Are the demented, the cognitively impaired persons? We need to guarantee all of the rights and privileges of persons who are human beings don’t we? Or we will further deplete what person means. Respect, kindness, and protection are needed toward our immediate antecedents. But they are denied human beings by cruel interests whose history is to exploit “rights” for their greed and power.

We have allowed ourselves to ignore any sentience beyond our own. There is a lot more thinking and feeling going on in this world than we are willing to recognize.

I wanted to make the same point about corporations being legally considered persons. I would be curious to hear from someone with a legal mind about how these two propositions intersect!

As long as we treat animals like things, we are going to be treating each other like things. Humans are lousy, destructive animals. Seen the news lately?

Spain's parliament has proposed a change to the civil code to designate animals -- pets, at least -- as "living beings" rather than "things". Several other European countries have already adopted this policy. I'm not sure whether chimps, or animals used in research, or zoo animals come under this protection. Under this code, pets are protected after the death or divorce of their owners. Any decisions about a pet's future in these cases must by law be based on the pet's best interests, not merely the convenience of the humans involved. (Almost like deciding custody of children.) It would be worth studying these European regulations as models.

Professor Sebo does right to bring up the debates (among whites) over black American slaves in the Anti-Bellum period. Today the overwhelming majority of Americans look upon our deplorable past practices and see themselves as more enlightened -- they assume a kind of moral progress has been made. We make similar judgments about the prejudices of previous generations in regard to the rights of women, gay people, and the disabled. What, I wonder, will our descendants think, decades or centuries from now, when they look back upon us? What cultural, political, and moral practices of ours will they recoil from in horror? We already know that the widespread destruction of the natural environment will be on the agenda, as will our treatment of animals, our war mongering, our disregard for the poor. But what are the things we can't really conceive of? The attitudes and practices which we accept without thinking and never debate?

Great article, and as we ponder the 6th Great Extinction, we could expand Sebo's argument to include the fact that denial of animal life and rights also diminishes humanity, and its own prospects for a future.

Corporations have more rights than animals. The movement for corporate rights has been going on for decades. The AR movement should take some lessons from "We the Corporations" by Adam Winkler which shows how corporations systematically obtained the same civil rights as humans. If a legal fiction like a corporation can have civil rights, then why can't a living, sentient being have the same?

Why do humans think we are superior to our fellow animals? We say they don’t think or have self awareness. How do we know that? There was a time when people from southern Italy were considered stupid when they were shown a picture of a tennis game without a net and asked what is missing. My Saami ancestors were considered subhuman because we didn’t have a written language. I say humans are an arrogant and ignorant superfluous species

Well, I'll be a monkeys uncle!

An allergy to exploitation would change the world for us all.

Corporations are treated as persons under the First Amendment which resulted in the democracy killing Citizens United case. If an inanimate legal construct can be a person, one must consider the case for a living, breathing, intelligent, social, quasi human cousin like the chimpanzee.

The debate presented here is entering the same semantical quagmire that same-sex marriage did, which is to bog down in the debate about what marriage is, or in this case, what a person is, while the real issue is to confer protection to the discriminated party. The problem is several fold: (1) religious people are going to object to any elevation of a non-human to have human status, (2) the slope is very slippery - where do you draw the line about which species have sufficient human qualities? Why does it have to stop at self-awareness, or what degree of self-awareness fits the test? Do we include bonobos and gorillas? How about octupuses, which many people feel are quite intelligent? Crows? They are very smart. Personally, I would confer greater protections to all of the above, and more. But I am not sure I would give any of them equal rights.

This debate bears an eerie resemblance to one in the early 19th- century South over whether black people were fully human. The central premise behind slavery held that slaves possessed no independent spirit of their own, that they served as a mere extension of their master's will. Some theorists argued that the people of sub-Saharan Africa were the product of a separate creation, unrelated to humanity. Such nonsense, of course, served the interests of the slaveowners, who faced growing hostility throughout the Western world to their "peculiar institution." These ideas flowed directly from a determination to preserve their power over 4 million fellow humans. In like manner, the legal classification of chimps (and other animals) as things enables humans to exercise wide discretion in their treatment of these creatures, restrained only by the weak protection of animal cruelty laws. Chimps may not qualify as humans, but they richly deserve protection from animal researchers who regard them as nothing more than objects to further the interests of mankind. Our current treatment of these animals reflects a broader attitude that we have the capacity to dominate and manipulate nature, a notion for which we are already beginning to pay a price. In any case, if judges can swallow the nonsense that corporations are persons with rights, why should it prove difficult for them to extend their definition to include chimps, a far more deserving group.

I suspect this idea will gain limited traction so long as significant elements from top to bottom in the pecking order of U.S. culture continue to disregard the rights of person hood of so many groups within our own species.

I never developed philosophical skills but there don't seem to be principles, of any kind, unless the principals allow them to exist and be enforced.

This is a wonderful, enlightening article. Thank you for your concern, learning and insights. I personally believe that at a minimum non-human animals deserve protection from gratuitous cruelty inflicted by humans. This principle might be hard to apply in practice, but it is the right principle. There are some easy cases (e.g., banning sadistic practices such as bullfighting) and much harder questions. It is past time that we start asking these questions and striving to find the answers.

Right. Simply dividing the world into people and things does not solve the problem of how to treat Kiko and Tommy. But Sebo's reluctance to recommend an approach makes me resistant to his argument. We currently have laws about animal cruelty. (At least I think we do. And if we don't, we could.) So what would Sebo propose? Presumably it would not be to release Kiko and Tommy into the world to enjoy their liberty. Giving them a place in a sanctuary does not need to be justified by arguing people vs. things. I wish Sebo's column had been more fully fleshed out.

I once held in my arms Nim Chimsky, tiny Chimp, With warm and furry charms Tightly embraced not limp. One of God's creatures, he Learning sign language then, A real signer to be Wish I held him again.

By all means, but why stop at conferring a distinction that has no real value other than protecting them from cosmetics experimentation? If they’re “persons”, why not expand the franchise for the first time since 1971, when Richard Nixon supported ratification the XXVI Amendment that granted the vote to 18-year-olds? Let’s make chimps eligible to vote. If nothing else, it should improve the quality of our political discourse.

I agree with Sebo that "Kiko and Tommy are not mere things". I have never had a pet dog or cat that was a "mere" thing. The birds at our feeders, whether starlings or hawks, are not "mere" things. But if Sebo wants to not reject the dichotomy of people vs thing that he bases his essay on, chimpanzees are not people but are things.

Do chimps recognize a moral law which humans adhere to world wide, even taking in cultural differences, that it is wrong to kill another person unless that person is attacking you in a deadly manner?

I 100% agree with you. These (other) animals should have rights. Just keep the Peter Singer deplorable position - that they are of more value than a disabled human - out of the mix! Please!

These issues are already covered via the ideas of animal welfare. Chimpanzees being treated as humanely as possible is part of they ideal when someone makes a decision to own them in the first place. To my mind no one should keep wildlife as pets anyway, the chimps should be put down. So called Sanctuaries are only ways for other people to enjoy owning wildlife, a bigger cage. For scientific research or chimpanzee research by wildlife biologists, I can see it, for the gratification of wealthy eccentrics to keep them in a cage or so called sanctuary, no thanks.