It'll be 'really fantastic animal rights news' when the Spanish government do the same thing for bulls.

But I'm forgetting, they don't look as much like us, do they...

You don't think that making a start is any good if they don't do everything that's needed immediately? I think this is great because it's a step forward conceptually.

Is Spain now the most progressive country in Europe?

It really is a remarkable political transformation, isn't it?

Oo! Oo!

The problem with the Spanish seems to be not that they think chimps look like people, but that they think certain people look like chimps.

Nuno Gomes Loves Lyra wrote:

QUOTE:
You don't think that making a start is any good if they don't do everything that's needed immediately? I think this is great because it's a step forward conceptually.

A start is good, of course, but as far as I'm aware Spain has never had much of a reputation for ape torture / killing off its (no doubt enormous) native great ape population.

The treatment of bulls is highly visible of course, but still, what in particular is the rationale behind giving apes these rights but not extending them to the rest of the animal kingdom? The idea of doing it because 'they're humanoids and we're humanoids' is sentimental and everything but if the animal rights side of it is really heartfelt, why not extend it a bit further?

Mumpo, good point, well made.

But those people don't seem to have significant political power anymore. Instead we have a country that has a female (and pregnant) defence minister and passes legislation granting rights to great apes.

Great news for these guys.

If apes have the right to life and freedom, will we see Spanish lawyers lining up to prosecute one chimpanzee if it murders another one? They do, you know. Will they have to build ape prisons for the convicted?

QUOTE:
The treatment of bulls is highly visible of course, but still, what in particular is the rationale behind giving apes these rights but not extending them to the rest of the animal kingdom? The idea of doing it because 'they're humanoids and we're humanoids' is sentimental and everything but if the animal rights side of it is really heartfelt, why not extend it a bit further?

I see what you're saying, but I think that the most important thing for me is that it's making a step into something new (and I know New Zealand have done it too) which is the concept that non humans can have rights. And I think that breaking that barrier has got to be the first step. Of course I want to see all countries in the world extending this to all sentient creatures; but I think it would be naive to expect that that can happen any other way but gradually.

How does Peter Singer squre all this "rights" malarkey with his radically consequentialist ethic?

You know, I can see that this is a step forward morally, but "conceptually" it looks like a morass to me.

well, doesn't granting these rights have good consequences?

Oh also I'm a bit thick and probably used conceptually wrongly. I just meant in terms of an idea that is something that is fundamentally different. A principle. Does that make sense?

Nuno Gomes Loves Lyra wrote:

QUOTE:
well, doesn't granting these rights have good consequences?

I guess it could be squared with consequentialism like that, if the rights are interpreted in a strictly legal sense and not as moral entities. But in that case there's a different problem, in that it's not clear how apes could, in principle, claim or enforce a remedy. Any remedy would have to be claimed on their behalf; to whom does this fall? That's a question that could be answered, in principle, but already it's looking pretty messy, I reckon.

I honestly think the whole thing is better cast in terms of legal prohibitions and duties rather than rights. But then, I think that about human beings as well.

Mind you, I'm probably being very Anglo-Saxon about this; I don't know much about the conceptual basis of Roman/Napoleonic legal systems.