{"id":372,"date":"2015-01-06T15:50:38","date_gmt":"2015-01-06T15:50:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.uccronline.it\/eng\/?p=372"},"modified":"2018-09-05T08:47:56","modified_gmt":"2018-09-05T08:47:56","slug":"american-court-chimpanzees-are-not-considerable-as-human-beings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uccronline.it\/eng\/2015\/01\/06\/american-court-chimpanzees-are-not-considerable-as-human-beings\/","title":{"rendered":"American Court: Chimpanzees may not be considered as human beings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Scimpanz\u00e9\"Ascribing “fundamental human rights”\u00a0<\/strong>to chimpanzees, just because we are some \u201cadvanced and civilized monkeys\u201d has become one of the main arguments of the culture of human reductionism. Unfortunately, a wrong ideological approach to biological evolution and the extremisation of the fair and reasonable worries about the health of animals and about the ethical treatment of creation, has led some people to invoke \u201chuman rights\u201d for non-human species.<\/p>\n

Right from the beginning, this degeneration has been used by the antitheist propaganda<\/strong>: reducing man, denying\u00a0his uniqueness and his huge difference from the rest of creation, one evidently reduces the\u00a0importance of the human creature, so as to deny his divine origine. No wonder that these days Margherita Hack, Daniel Dennett, Peter Singer, Richard Dawkins and Umberto Veronesi (five well-known convinced atheists<\/strong>), have largely promoted the \u201canimals rights<\/strong>\u201d in modern times, an initiative started in the rationalist Enlightenment<\/strong> by David Hume, Voltaire, Jeremy Bentham, and then by Arthur Schopenhauer, Henry Stephens Salt etc.\u00a0The previous Prime Minister of Spain, Luis Zapatero, has even suggested adopting these rights in the Spanish law code.<\/p>\n

In these days, however, the New York Court of Appeals<\/strong> \u00a0ruled<\/a><\/em>\u00a0<\/span>that Tommy, a 26-year-old chimpanzee kept by an upstate New York couple, cannot be considered a “person” and therefore does not need to be freed from the cage in which he is kept. The judgment rejected the efforts made by a group of animal rights activists curating the \u201cNonhuman Rights Project\u201d <\/em><\/strong>to extend human rights to animals, too. The motivation of this case comes however from a fair and understandable\u00a0<\/strong>worry, that is the bad conditions in which the chimpanzee was kept. The request for \u201chuman rights\u201d, though, is unacceptable and the Court ruled that it would not be possible to concede rights, duties and obligations that chimpanzees will never be able <\/strong>to accomplish.<\/p>\n

The project leaders answered by supporting the idea that chimpanzees are \u00aba complex autonomous legal person and had presented testimony from experts that chimpanzees exhibit traits such as self-awareness<\/strong> and self-determination<\/strong> that should prevent their unlawful detention<\/em>\u00bb. The self-awareness argument is usually supported by the famous \u201cmirror test\u201d<\/strong>, invented by Gordon Gallup <\/strong>to verify whether chimpanzees recognize themselves when looking at the mirror. The reaction is indeed positive and that means automatically, for many people, that chimpanzees do have self-awareness. Besides having a\u00a0reductive\u00a0<\/b>concept of consciousness, as explained<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by professor Clive Wynne<\/strong>, \u00abthe problem with the mirror test for self-recognition is not the result of it, since it is certain that some non-human monkeys can recognize themselves in the mirrors, but in its interpretation<\/strong>. Why is this self-recognition equated with self-awareness?\u00bb.\u00a0<\/em>Many autistic people, he explained, do not recognise themselves in the mirror, but does that mean they are not consciuous or self-conscious beings? \u00abThese self-identification tests with the mirror are interesting and undoubtedly tell us something about how animals see their own bodies, but they tell us nothing<\/strong> about the question of the deeper self-awareness<\/em>\u00bb.<\/p>\n

In fact it\u2019s strongly\u00a0questionable <\/strong>that recognizing your own mirrored image implies being aware of yourself. One of the majour critics of Gallup’s thesis is even an ex student of his’,\u00a0Daniel Povinelli<\/strong>: today Daniel is a physical anthropologist at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where he showed<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>that a\u00a0chimpanzee does not need at all<\/strong>\u00a0self-consciousness to pass the mirror test (it probably uses a much easier brain function) and he defines those theories as \u201cpopular phsychology\u201d. Professor L. Syd M Johnson<\/strong>, teaching Philosophy, Kinesiology and Integrative Physiology at the Michigan Technological University \u00a0invited<\/a><\/em>\u00a0to \u00ababandon the MSR [mirror self-recognition] test as a valid, universal test of self-awareness\u00bb<\/em> C. M. Heyes<\/strong>, from the Psychology department of the University College of London concluded<\/a><\/em>\u00a0in his turn that \u00abno\u00a0<\/strong>convincing evidence exists<\/strong> for animal self-consciousness and self-awareness<\/em>\u00bb.<\/p>\n

As far as the alleged skills of \u201cself-determination\u201d of chimpanzees are concerned, we need to remember that it is all about recognizing their ability in taking an autonomous and independent <\/strong>choice. It is quite curious that science is looking for evidence for it in animals, while in the mean time some neuroscientists and also Peter Singer want to deny that ability to the human being, saying that the latter would lack\u00a0free will<\/strong>. The chimpanzee would be a free human being, while the human being would not be recognized as such. We find it obvious that this thesis, contrary to the self-awareness one, is supported <\/strong>by science fiction activists and not by scientists; it is also as obvious to reply that no animal can free itself from its genetic and evolutionary instincts, which influence all its behaviours.<\/p>\n

Clearly, all this does not\u00a0authorize<\/strong>\u00a0anyone\u00a0to mistreat and abuse animals. Pope Francis<\/strong> has recently shown<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>the\u00a0true ecologism<\/strong>\u00a0which, especially Christians, are called to pursue: \u00abOur earth needs constant concern and attention. Each of us has a personal responsibility to care for creation<\/strong>, this precious gift which God has entrusted to us. This means, on the one hand, that nature is at our disposal<\/strong>, to enjoy and use properly. Yet it also means that we are<\/strong> not its masters<\/strong>. Stewards, but not masters. We need to love and respect nature, but \u201cinstead we are often guided by the pride of dominating, possessing, manipulating, exploiting; we do not \u2018preserve\u2019 the earth, we do not respect it, we do not consider it as a freely-given gift to look after<\/em>\u00bb.<\/p>\n

The Editorial Staff\u00a0<\/strong>
\n(translated by Valentina Barbieri)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The science shows that Chimpanzees haven’t self-consciousness and self-determination. Right from the beginning this deterioration has been used by the antitheist propaganda: to deny the religious offspring of every human being, they needed to reduce the human importance as a creature, denying his unicity and the huge difference from all the rest of the creation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[408,409,410,411,412,176,413,414,59,415,416,283,417,418],"class_list":["post-372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-animals-rights","tag-chimpanzees","tag-chimpanzees-human","tag-daniel-povinelli","tag-ecologism","tag-free-will","tag-human-chimpanzees","tag-human-evolution","tag-human-rights","tag-mirror-test","tag-nonhuman-rights","tag-pope-francis","tag-self-awareness","tag-self-determination"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAmerican Court: Chimpanzees may not be considered as human beings - UCCR<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.uccronline.it\/eng\/2015\/01\/06\/american-court-chimpanzees-are-not-considerable-as-human-beings\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"American Court: Chimpanzees may not be considered as human beings - UCCR\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The science shows that Chimpanzees haven't self-consciousness and self-determination. 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