Said Well we're rested for a good night said the bitter end. And they all moved away from me on the plane and their carry on phone all kinds of mean nasty things don't I said and creating the news then sent me home came back just turned in a week and a great time on the man's home amount per month spam bottom rate no kind of primitive things that we were talking about on the band and everything was fine with smoke and cigarettes and all kinds of things until the sergeant came over. Had some bakery in his hand held it up and said get. This big Suburbans got bored of them were there in some sense a. Dumb thing down slipped and done a bad rap loves a man after playing down a sign about. Minutes and nobody understood a person and should those animals be allowed to sue in court to protect their legal rights this is philosophy to the program that questions everything except your intelligence I'm John Perry and I'm Ken Taylor we're coming to you from cynics out of Tory I'm on the Stanford campus our thinking originates just don't throw away from here at philosophers corner on a main cause that's where can I get philosophy welcome everyone to boss it be. Now most philosophers believe that we humans have rights because well we're persons. Now if it turns out that some nonhuman animals are persons too then it just follows as night does day that they should have rights none human rights oh wait a minute wait a minute what do you mean by person here for most people person means human beings so if like contradictory Well Descartes for example thought that to be a person meant to have an immaterial so he thought that the soul is the seat of all thought in consciousness so a person is an insult human being he had a car thought a lot of things in particular he thought that non-human animals lacked these souls and thus were just fleshy automaton with no thought or consciousness Well if you ask me I think Descartes overestimated humans and underestimated animals frankly because I don't think there is a soul I think you're better off with John Locke John Locke said that any creature with a conception of itself counts as a person. But Arthur parrot or whatever According to him a person is a thinking intelligent being that has reason and reflection so it consider itself as itself Well I think that the locks got a much better you know one thing is you don't need a soul to do that any creature would have had decent sized brain can consider itself as itself as law put it Ok decent sized brains but big deal I mean size of either any other reason to believe that some animals consider themselves as themselves Yeah well just take a simple thing of pain obviously animals feel pain obviously they hurt Well that's not enough I mean if that's all it takes to be a person I mean I would think worms would be people yes take a look at them they're right around I sure look like they're feeling pain you've got to give them rights well maybe you can but I'm actually thinking about more than just driving around I'm thinking about animals that are capable of much more then you know simple adverse if we actions I'm thinking about the capacity to understand and then to represent the infliction of pain for example as an infliction of harm upon the self as me you're hurting Ok but why why is that so important because think about it think about the way humans respond to pain we complain I mean we may threaten not just to hurt the perpetrator of the pain or hurt him back but like to take them to court and now why do we do that what's behind that that's because we understand and represents the willful infliction of pain by the other you're inflicting pain on me as a violation of the self and that's what makes was hers is have you got any evidence that animals can do that sort of thing has any animal ever lodged a complaint with you against another animal for violation of its own will take Koko the gorilla maybe she could lodge a complaint. Using American Sign Language I mean she was taught something like a 1000 different sign John and then her African Gray Parrots they were amazing they can speak in a whole sentences so you think that what makes gorillas say African Grey parrots persons and I say worms is the capacity for language now I think lark might agree with you here he thought very highly of talking parrot I know he did and I think that's part of it I don't think that's all the thing I think there's there's more than that going on I mean think about elephants they have these really strong social bonds complex relationships with one another the grief actually grieve when their family members die and they even seem to have mourning rituals so look they can clearly do this thing that distinguishes persons from non-persons they can distinguish self from other and they can experience the loss of the other as the loss of something valuable to the self things mattered to them so yeah there are persons All right suppose I grant you that at least some nonhuman animals have some of the hallmarks of genuine person good. What followed then the floodgates open John then it follows that we ought to start treating these animals like the persons they are and that this is things we ought to recognize that they also have the right to life liberty security of person I mean the right to be free from fear president and slavery the right not to suffer cruel or degrading treatment I mean the floodgates open well. It took us civil war to get started on recognizing the rights of African-Americans and the process is incomplete What do you think it's going to take to get the rights of Jim's an orc is in Paris record. And Mitt is going to be a long slow but as Confucius says even the longest journey begins with a single step you're so learned it's. A good place to begin our journey towards deeper understanding is with our roving philosophical report her life of deal who takes a scientific look at the personhood of non-human animals she files this report. Primatologist Frans de Walt tells a lot of adorable stories about the chimps he studies behaving altruistically at feel safer for example we have a very old female Her name is Penny who can barely walk who has arthritis when the other young female Cyr get up to go to the water spigot they run ahead and take a drink for her and they have returned to her and spit in her mouse so that she doesn't need to walk that whole distance why does this kind of altruism seem more heroic than for example the way sacrifice is itself for the colony is it because I can't seem to be nearly had a grief like this but the monkey seems to be making a choice I could teach this monkey to difference between right and do also just that actually social animals can't help but be empathetic it's a primal instinct and it doesn't involve a lot of choice it turns out to all found that even having a sense of fairness. You can watch video. And then. But monkeys don't. Do things because. They may just be reflexive because emotions by definition. Describe as a non-conscious that play out in an organism. Let's take the emotion. In a single instant. Automatically . This is your prepackaged biology. None of it is chosen we have this program and we have it not just for fear but we have it for sadness anger joy we have it also for a variety of emotions that we call social emotions for example embarrassment Shane contempt compassion have no racial pride guilt all of these exist as prepackaged arrangements in the biology of your brain scientists keep finding more and more species whose behavior like ours is motivated and regulated I am motions even ones that can't physically emote like snails but we can't read sounds there are plenty of animals that have the capacity to feel emotions that we don't feel for vermin and rodents and birds and crayfish we humans mostly only intervene to protect the species that we empathize with and that late our behavior sounds kind of like the chimp in France to all slab and his solidarity protest over the great great injustice. Or Philosophy Talk I'm like that the. Plane flies or that fascinating and some odd way inspiring I'm Dr Perry along with my fellow philosopher at Stanford Ken Taylor we're coming to you from some x. Auditorium on the Stanford campus and I just today is a legal scholar he's the founder and president of the non human rights project is author of a book called rattling the cage toward legal rights for animals please welcome to the philosophy talk stage Steven Wise. Thank you it will. See you're working as a lawyer fighting for the legal rights of animals so How'd that come about how did you 1st get interested in this issue. Well believe it or not it was a philosopher. Peter Singer wrote a book about how we treat nonhuman animals and I read that when I was a young lawyer and I realize that we treated them terribly and we treated them terribly in vast numbers and for me most importantly there didn't seem to be anyone who was standing up for their interests and so the reason I have become a lawyer is I've come out of the antiwar movement maybe 3 or 4 wars back in the nom and the reason I've become a lawyer was because I was interested in issues of social justice and and I thought that nowhere could I make a larger impact than trying to represent the interests of the nonhuman animals of the world so that's what I decided your your organization is called the non human rights project why not just animal rights sense a familiar term Why not just use that well where animals and so we didn't want to confuse the rights of non humans with humans that's the 1st reason the 2nd reason is that the idea of animal rights has been around for 203040 years now and people now tend to think of it as involving anyone who is really doing anything to advance the interests of nonhuman animals and we as lawyers look at it in a technical way we're we're actually not looking to protect them or not looking out for the welfare we're trying to establish and then protect their rights so we talk about the rights of non-human animals the main rights that in animal rights is to be treated kindly and humanely and those are rights are just things that humane humans do but you've got something else in mind we do where we are not interested in asking other human beings to treat nonhuman animals humanely or nicely or non cruelly we're saying that the nonhuman animals themselves have the rights to be treated in certain ways it's a good distinction I mean if I were convinced that corporations are persons and for acts I still wouldn't treat them. Mainly I think it is important distinction. So that when it so there are some animals you think that you can amount to an argument in courts of law under. The Constitution common law you can to mount an argument in courts of law that certain things that applied to human beings ought to apply to them too there's a certain class of animals that you think you could do that way we look to see why the courts value nonhuman animals what kind of qualities do they value so we we actually don't sue under statutes or sue under the Constitution we sue under the common law a lot of judges make and so when we when we're going into into a state we try to understand what are the values and principles that the judges in those states say that they hold and then we fashion arguments around those so that we essentially come to them and say you believe certain things we agree that these certain things are true and we're telling you that our nonhuman animals ought to have rights for the same we're going to dig into what those certain things are in our next segment this is philosophy talk coming to you from some x. Auditorium on the Stafford gap as our guest is founder and president of the non human rights project Steven Wise coming up next I should some nonhuman animals be considered persons under the law that's our basic question but what criteria would we use to determine nonhuman personhood non-human animals non-human persons and non human rights along with questions from our human all too human audience when philosophy continues. How good. Some. Of them. Seem. With. The. Thanks to our musical guests Tiffany Austin trio this is philosophy talk I'm John Perry and I'm Ken Taylor guesses legals dollars Stephen Wise and we're thinking about non human rights do you think of your dog or cat as a person or your parrot if you do how does that affect the way you treat them how would you treat nonhuman animals that aren't persons different ones that are persons. You can join the discussion and if you're a gorilla that uses sign language or a parroted tweets we will try to accommodate you so as I understand it you think that certain animals. Deserve to be considered not as non-human animals but non human persons and they should be so considered in the eyes of the law. There is the legal motion of person there is the philosophical notion of prison I want to start with What do you mean by person what are you getting at when you say the nonhuman animals a person well I'm not really getting at anything what are what I'm trying to get at is what the judges are getting at when they think about what a person is and what a person is is really a right container so in order to have a right you have to be able to have the capacity to have a right to the passenger Holder right and that's what a person is a person has the capacity to have a right so that's why I write it down a little that's a little empty I mean how do I know how do I know Ok look out there I see there's a chair that's not a rights container it's a bug container but on a right container I see a lot of human beings I think they're all right container. My dog would come in here I mean I really love my dog whether she's a rights container I don't know what distinguishes a rights container from a known rights contain what judges say distinguishes the rights container from a non rights container we don't come up with our own philosophical or jurisprudential ideas we try to understand is what do the judges Ok 1st thing I'm the judge I'm the judge convince me that animal is a right and then Ok So I'd say. So what do you think a person is a judge. No worse than. That he said I was just going to ask you. I said well now I'm. You asked so before we go in and have the conversation like that with a judge we will study the law intensively for months or years so we are the understand what that is so for example in the state of New York we understand that an entity who was autonomous is supremely valued by the common law by the judge to the state of New York and so we go to the court and say We understand that you supreme leave value out autonomy and so we now we're prepared to bring our client in front of your chimpanzee and prove to you that she is also autonomous and so you already tell us that you value supremely autonomy she's autonomous she her upon a me should also be valued and she should be a person Ok so you can take the lawyer out of law school and over the business school at best far we get around Stanford. But we don't want to take the loyally perspective out of the lawyer but suspended a little we got the philosophical perspective the judge decided this way or that why would they be right what is a person now let me suggest something in psychology there's been I think actually Darwin was the 1st to come up with the idea of a mere test but gallop not the poster but another gallop had this idea that could animals look into mere. And with a little time to figure it out realize that they're looking at themselves that would mean that they would get information about the objects in the mirror so so you have a chimp or in particular they look in the mirror and you smeared some stuff on their head without them knowing it and they did see the stuff on the chimp said and they rub it off and that shows what is a show well it's showing that there is some sense in which they realize they're one of a group of which that's another one and there's commonalities and so the limiting case of identity makes sense I mean now it's very controversial in psychology as everything is because how else would you get grants but still it's a kind of a common sense test and some birds pass it some birds don't most of your apes do primates we do mostly children don't necessarily at the beginning but there's a clear state is that the kind of thing that would cut any ice in court as it cut any ice with you because a lot of ice with me but as I tell my students judges don't care what I what cuts ice with me what they want to know is what kind of legal arguments can we present to them that will persuade them and so when we use the argument about Tommy that we argue that autonomy is a sufficient condition for personhood we begin by bringing in expert evidence from Jane Goodall and many other ape cognition experts from around the world and we prove that they are self conscious they pass the test you're talking about and even when we go further that they they have a theory of mind that they understand that not only did they have a mind but that others have a mind so it so there it turn putting and predicting what they're there constituted stewing in terms of what must be some fear radical understanding of what goes on inside and in a sense in which I have a theory of your mind I think you have beliefs and desires there's lots of scientific experiments and data to support at least the sizes that primates and other animals have very they're very much on. Away to something like a human like conception of the self they can say Deval who was on a roving philosophical report has all this stuff about strategic intelligence and 8 how they how they can deceive each other and all that but I'm a little bit confused about something you say well it's not really what I think it's not so much even what the science things it's the law things what the judge thinks and I look at these opinions and you say Judge you seem to value autonomy I'm going to say Ok here's an example of autonomy so value this it in this chip but as your question about the common law or the constitutional law or the lead statute has it has the law really thought this through or is it just I'm going to you know I don't want to say half aid stuff right that's a kind of collection of rough intuitions I mean I think the question of what is autonomy is really all art and some of my colleagues in a float about and they spend their whole careers trying to understand autonomy it doesn't sound like the law and then I wonder if you're just exploiting the the shallowness of the law as a tactical strategy it was a good lawyer he better Yeah I know I know but whatever I'm hearing wondering if there's something deeply philosophical and scientific at stake or just have big notions of the law that aren't really thought through. Well if you want to get sued by the chimpanzees for malpractise we we we had better understand what's going on and bring the fight to the judges you know when when we argue that autonomy say in the state of New York right now it is what we do argue is that it is a sufficient but not a necessary condition for personhood I mean it gets way more complex. The country of New Zealand in the last year has designated national park as a person the Wanganui river as a person last month and Indian court held that the Ganges River was a person isn't that a reductio ad absurdum of the law and it's concept of autonomy and person that's what I'm getting at that the law is built on this thin thing and I admire you for exploiting the law but I thought there was something deeper here that is not just the thinly thought out notions of law look the law lets cooperations be persons that's the so it shows you how shallow the law it is I mean to interject here at or pile on at our time I could have. Something made you decide that you wanted to get the courts to do this thing what you're going to get him to do in whatever way it takes but what happened to you that made you decide that's what you wanted to do was that in some sense. You came to believe that animals are persons and if humans get rights they should get some rights or certain rights too you came to believe that then you've got this other job a convincing people who believe that 70 years in prison for a little dope is not cruel and unusual punishment that corporations are persons and God knows what else Ok I admire your taking on that. Sank Well I know it's a thankless task you've got a huge drought of applause but. Frustrating task but what deep inside of you did you become convinced of yes I became convinced of the fact that many non-human animals can suffer terribly they can live in social groups they have all kinds of complex emotions they can think about their lives they can understand that they've had a past they understand that it's them they're living in the present they can understand that they have a future and they can plan for the future like chimpanzees it's clear can plan for the future and and putting them in prison for something that they didn't do wrong is just as bad and maybe worse than putting a human being in for something that he or she has done because they understand why they are there chimpanzees don't know why they're there elephants don't know why they're there or because I don't know why they have to like rot in a little swimming pool in Sea World They just don't know they're just there but that doesn't mean that they don't suffer any more terribly than would a human being and so our job is to alleviate that and get them back to where this you're a person who deeply feels a 12 sound familiar philosophically very well thought out and compelling version of a person that they're person and then there's a job of convincing some guy that Bush appointed or. To rule a certain way and I hire you for that too you're listening to Philosophy Talk we're talking about non human rights with Steve I sit in front of a live audience and some x. Auditorium at Stanford University we've got questions on that live audience I'll go back and forth from one side of the room to the other Welcome to the lucky ones or a low on Mike from Santa Clara in the course of humans coming to understand some animals need be represented before the law how is it decided which attorneys will represent those animals I think that's an excellent question. Thank you for the question. They have to work without a Fios Ok. We we decided that we would one of the things that we do is we file writs of habeas corpus on behalf of chimpanzees and one of the we reasons that we chose a writ of habeas corpus is that traditionally there is no what lawyers would call a standing problem that anyone who sees a person who's being illegally detained against her will anyone can go in and make that complaint so we say we're going in and making complain about half of that chimpanzee who's being forced to spend his life in a cage but wait a minute standing problem anyone who sees a person isn't the issue of personhood at stake I mean for me the issue of prison is not at stake I'm a person I'm being detained Ok there's a chimpanzee Maybe it's owned by somebody they have some standing under the law I guess if ownership of chimpanzees and you say but that's a person you can own a person but isn't that what's at stake Oh that's right we go in and say you might think that the chimpanzee is your property we're saying oh you've been making a terrible mistake that chimpanzee is a person and so we are now going to use a writ of habeas corpus to bring the question Am I right is she a person or you're right and she's your property in front of the court Ok so we've got a dolphin I say that's being kept in captivity and some people are protesting this and maybe suing the people who run the place and so forth on the grounds that this is cruel they're not happy so forth and so on but that's not your take your take is they are a person and there's no right to imprison persons unless saved found to have done something wrong by a court now with the animals you think are persons is there this possibility of them doing something wrong so that they lose their right to freedom I don't think so we would view a chimpanzee as having the autonomy to be able to make the decision should I believe. Being in that cage or should I be living in the wild or you know on an island with I would $25.00 other chimpanzees but requiring a chimpanzee who is not one of us you know does not have our culture to to live according to our rules upon penalty of being imprisoned we we don't think they have that sort of capacity and so they would be like a human being who is not competent they aren't competent to say sue someone as I could if I have a 15 year old child in my 50 year old child is not competent to sue someone so you have to have a parent or guardian through someone and where that where the Guardians for the chimpanzee so you can you could not bring a criminal prosecution against them any more than you could say against a 6 year old child who carried a gun to school and shot someone welcome to plus a doctor I'm Bill from the farm it's encouraging them gratifying to see that the monkeys on like some people know what justice is what I have heard there is also. Animal watchers have seen troops of monkeys traveling in their native habitat and as they go past some delicious food off to the side of the trail one of them notices that and he notices that the others don't notice and so on like chickens who share he doesn't share and he comes back and gets this to himself when you have an opinion on what should be done about him. Yeah that's who they are the you know they're they're not you know Socrates Aristotle and Plato they're monkeys and they're just by the way most humans are not Socrates Aristotle and Plato either we're just humans present come except as exact and which is which is what what he was saying and Jim Pansies do the same thing if there are studies showing that if a chimpanzee knows that another chimpanzee is seeing certain foods and he's a dominant chimpanzee then the non-dominant the the submissive more try to get the food but if that chimpanzee can understand that the dominant chimpanzee cannot see that there's food out there the submissive want to go out and grab it that's that's just that's just how we all are chimpanzees monkeys and you and humans alike You're listening to Philosophy Talk we're thinking about non-human rights with Steve was author of rattling the cage toward legal rights for animals how can we change the way some non humans are treated under the law by treatment here we have whose rights are being violated where expenses should be considered person they have to pass a mere test something else dogs are going to pass a mirror test because a just sniff. And what does that mean about their rights when coming. More from our human audience when philosophy continues. Thanks to our live musical guest the Tiffany Austin trio I'm John Perry this is philosophy talk program that questions everything except your intelligence I'm Ken Taylor we're thinking about human rights with Steven Wise founder and president of the Dunn Human Rights Project and we got questions from our live audience Welcome to the talks or I'm a name it's greater from Los Altos imagine you are a dictator with absolute power which you know and humans would have rights and which rights what they have that's a good question we were going to answer your letter so you just thank you thanks very. It's really hard to know I think what I would say is that many non-human animals many many species should be legal persons and that they should have the capacity for rights so we don't have to fight about that what we fight about is which rights are. Appropriate for them or maybe none maybe one maybe 100 and so that means we bring in experts who studied them for years or decades and so that we can understand you know who they are what sort of mind things have are they the kind of entities ought to have the rights that lawyers and others are claiming for them I want to I want to pressure on something that you said so at the end of the last segment how there are creatures to whom we can do moral wrong but they can't do more wrong to us then responsible I mean one of the things are our notion of personhood was about and that's what got John Locke going about person and he wanted to find where are the centers of moral responsibility there where persons reside right but this notion of personhood that you apply to animals is completely disconnected it sounds like from moral responsibility well chimpanzees for example have a rule based society they have a sense of morality within their within their. Nobody asked them to be part of human culture and human society and so it's too much just to say we're going to enslave you unless you can figure out how to follow all of our rules so what are not Human Rights Project saying look they're a person who we ought to recognize at least for so-called negative rights munity rights that we should essentially just leave them along to live their lives like that's a consequence I want to get out leave them alone to live their lives so you know I'm a kind of a cosmopolitan internationalist to do a kind of wide ranging human cooperation all standing before all the global community in which we're all wrapped up you know it saying well chimps to as part of that global moral community you're saying they're over there left like the alien others who should not like the Star Trek Prime Directive kind of thing do I have that right I guess I think it's actually acting quite close they are as one person wrote you know they they are other nations and that would be. He alone to be chimpanzees and elephants alone to be elephants and birds alone to be birds and maybe somebody will leave her Nations alone develop. Welcome to block because India . I'm j.c. From Oakland California and I was wondering kind of along the same lines as we are talking as you guys are talking just now if I were to find myself in the same place as a non-human animal they may not recognize my rights that you're talking about so should we recognize rights for someone who's not recognizing rights for us and if so what what about that the fact that there's never going to be kind of reciprocal recognition between us and them well that's really a lot to ask of them you know we're not saying that chimpanzees have the same complexity that we do we don't know whether they can recognise our rights although we have hints of it when I was in Africa looking at chimpanzees they didn't attack me they kind of let me alone they understood that I was on their territory Jane Goodall has talked about the fact that she has been charged by chimpanzees many times even when her backs up against the cliff but no one has ever harmed her in that way nor have they ever harmed any other human being and so I I think in their own ways they are respecting us now whether it's because they think we have rights or not I just don't know so let me see if it sounds kind of fraternal list ache but it sounds almost like back to Genesis like we have dominion over this and we get to decide who has which rights and what not instead of I mean if you deny the possibility of leg moral community with them in which we deliberate as equals together how we're going to live together and who has what right it sounds very paternalistic to me I don't know if that's a bad thing a good thing a necessary thing but do you own up to this particular isn't. You know. Maybe we should extend like a veil of ignorance to so that when you're trying to set up the ideal moral world you don't know whether you're going to be human or not and begin from there. Ok that's a really interesting. Now let me ask an example Ok so in California we have bears we have mountains full of woods and bears and we go camping there and I don't know where bears are on the person I the Bears I've known struck me as pretty intelligent not up to the great apes but you know they know what they're doing they plan ahead they make choices now are we violating the rights of a bear that's coming down and destroying the garbage cans in campgrounds we don't need to worry about the bear tearing someone apart although they do do that under certain circumstance but they never agree to those rules in Iraq we did not go through garbage cans so if we put that bear in a cage just for a day to transport it away from the camp grounds is that a case you think would be a violation of rights or should be considered by the court a violation of rights or you know it's it's not only illegal but a philosophical problem it's also an environmental problem you know you know 1st we take away their habitat so they're forced to live you know cheek to jowl with us even though they probably wouldn't if they they had their choice and so then you're inevitably going to have conflicts and you know it happens here it's happening in Africa all the time what's what happens when as the African population expands in elephants begin to trample their crops or chimpanzees raid their crops these these are really serious problems that frankly you know we have created welcome to philosophy Dr Hi My name is Duncan you've talked about rights for chimpanzees and cetaceans But what about the billions of animals in our factory farms. Are cows pigs and chickens right bearing subjects should we all are vegetarians like where do you stand on that issue Well again you know where I stand on it doesn't really matter the question is what sort of legal arguments can we make and you know right now we're at the beginning of this we're only a couple 3 years into it and the arguments that you're setting forth now are the ones my opponents make of me so we're coming in and saying this chimpanzee should not be in a cage he should have a right to bodily liberty that's protected by writ of habeas corpus and the other lawyer stands up and says But Judge if you do that they're all going to have to be begin tomorrow and so they use that argument to me to try to prevent me from taking the 1st step welcomes of lucky dogs. Hi My name is Michael and I live in a little tiny village in the south of France it's pretty obvious that a dog or a snake or a tuna fish doesn't need our help there are thought of us and to deny that it seems to me is a colossal human arrogance My question is what other criteria the judges have besides autonomy to determine if something is a person. Judges use public policy you know 130 years ago and an American judge Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr wrote the common law and he said that the life of the law is not logic but is experience which you might be experiencing tonight and I know my my 2 co-hosts are experience the fact that law is not logical it comes from experience and whether or not any entity whether it's a river a glacier a chimpanzee or a pig is going to be a person will be a matter of public policy and morality and it's something that judges have to try to figure that out even though they're not particularly educated either in public policy or in morality. Welcome to fluffy dogs or. Thank you my name is Chris. I guess I'm a question for the hosts who are questioning our our guest. When you talk about you know why should animals have rights to say well what if we asked why should humans have rights in particular why should all humans have rights and if we look at like distinctions between different groups of humans versus humans and other animals I think we'll find a difference to be in amount rather than in kind this is a very complicated question I think we could spend hours talking about this company a good I mean the foundation of the theory of human rights is complicated but I think one of the things you're getting at is a Peter Singer kind of line he once argued and got a lot of trouble for this that some humans humans with severe dementia for example. Are less cognitively sophisticated than some animals right and rights are based on like the degree of cognitive sophistication in some animals have more moral standing then some humans and you kind of handing out that possibility because why do these let's call them diminished humans have full human rights and have to diminish human is equivalent to some animal one in that animal have equal rights that's a complicated question we could talk hours about but it's a very good question because we that's how you get started you say well why do you why do us why people have rights that's the 1st question you need to ask when you find you don't have an explanation that works for us and doesn't work for the African-Americans or the American Indians then. You're on the road has a very good question though that we don't have time to consider that's a that's a deeply philosophical question Can I also add that one thing that what we've been talking about so far is what kind of a characteristic is is sufficient for a person right now that isn't arguing from Liberty it's a non comparative rights argument it's not from equality it's from Liberty now from my point of view I think it's terrific that even a human being who doesn't have a brain at all is entitled to fundamental rights and then we then say well as a matter of equality there is something wrong with a human being who doesn't have a brain has certain kinds of fundamental rights but these chimpanzees are elephants who have these immensely complex minds wonderfully complex societies lived social lives emotion rich motion lives to say that they're going to be things while the human beings who don't have any brains or persons there's something wrong with the quality and we think those humans should have rights but then that means so should the other not humans Well this is fascinating stuff but you know what forget it and sometime and see if I'm going to thank you for joining us it's been a tremendous conversation thank you very much thank you. I guess has been 7 wise founder and president of the non Human Rights Project and author of rattling the cage toward legal rights for animals now this conversation continues at philosopher's corner at our online community of thinkers where our motto is coded to air go blog I think therefore I blog and you too can become a partner in that community just by visiting our website at philosophy. Now here's a guy fighting for every creature's right to talk as fast as they want it's even Scholz the 62nd philosopher in show. At the risk of incurring critter shaming or whatever passive aggressive punishment social media is doing out this week I'll confess I used to like elephants at the circus I like them lumbering around with the bunting and spangles in the shiny smiling women straddling their thick necks and waving Peta people for the Ethical Treatment of Animals told us that the use elephants were actually miserable they would pick up the circus which interfered with my enjoyment but I would still get a thrill in the elephants Knowlton a circle in the band struck a major chord last year the circus to say I had to drop elephants as part of the show and this year announced there would be a show at all the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus finally defunct after 146 years and that's all for the good I guess no more parading elephants or bull fights or bucking bronco zur lion taming That's fine when I was a kid big game hunters were heroes in movies they'd fall in love with Eva Gardner there on the veldt and wind up the so main mammy tears ago barely shoot down the rampaging Rhino with their man like are hunters or villains today or they shoot cameras or they should robots or aliens or get killed by velociraptors and drastic park wild nature as it shrinks and lessens becomes friendlier more familiar and serve our dominion it has become an ecosystem we're all in it together the difference being we still eat many of them for dinner we rescue prisoners one hand trying to pretend they are eco buddies some of them what we like to call remarkably intelligent like whales and gorillas and parrots and octopuses there's so much to come learn but on the other hand get those animals out of the way we got a wall to build a bridge and circus elephants have been sent to the Center for Elephant Conservation in Florida Peta is still not content with this because it's not a real sanctuary it has huts and chains and exposure to tuberculosis while Peter will never be happy when they heard about a remake of Dumbo they wrote a letter a Tim Burton urging him to have double when mommy end up at a sanctuary and then the movie because even imaginary animals deserve ethics and the hand is ready port by the Center for Consumer Freedom but certainly sounds legitimate c.c.f. Claims that shelters run by Peta are a bit trigger happy at least in Virginia since reporting euthanasia statistics became mandatory in 1988 according to c.c.f. Peta has killed over 85 percent or 36000 of the animals at its Norfolk shelter I don't want to make out that I know that Peta does not like the trap neuter release approach to feral cat control. Because cats are predators and would still be hell and go for snakes rats and said to say birds maybe Peta thinks that a cat is better off euthanized than being trapped in an abusive relationship with a cat lover is just going to drag the cat crazy with laser lights and then post the videos on You Tube The cruelty must stop ins here as a cat owner myself I sometimes feel bad that I don't allow my neutered cat to have sex or kill a cute little mouse in my pathetically yard but other hand here probably live to a ripe old age not succumbing to the contagious diseases in cars as stray cats down as for elephants I don't know given the choice between butchering them in the wild for their tusks or making them do tricks in a circus for peanuts I'd pick beat because the fact is no matter what we are the Dominators in this or of the Dominion if any animals are going to survive in the future it will be at our whim cruel but true not just animals but humans could use some responsible supervision in a sustainable habitat what can we do there's no animal control or Peter for humans maybe some nice alien invasion will save us some nice alien species will come here to Marc Klaas take us for walks think it's cute that we can talk nice human good human don't destroy the planet Ok here are some gluten free kibble for you I got to go. Hemp in space how about beer that's this week on planetary radio or on am welcome I'm at Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of a human adventure across our solar system and beyond Kentucky based space tango is actually conducting international space station research on far more than the catchy items in my opening line will talk with co-founder Chris Kimmel and others about the burgeoning effort to find the killer app or product for production at 0 g. Happy anniversary to us who Spatz will help me celebrate 17 years of planetary radio in this week's What's up they'll also give us a light sail to update light sail is also why we'll be joined by Planetary Society c.e.o. Bill Nye the planetary guy right after.
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