Great Ape Project

From Freepedia

Founded in 1993, the Great Ape Project (GAP), calls for an extension of moral equality to encompass all great apes (both species of chimpanzee, gorillas, and orangutans), not just human beings. This international collection of primatologists, psychologists, ethicists, and other experts argues that we should expand our moral community to include these animals because of their similarities with humans. GAP is advocating a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes that would confer certain moral equalities to great apes, these include the right to life, the protection of individual liberty and the prohibition of torture (see Declaration on Great Apes). The organization also monitors individual great ape activity in the United States through a census program. Once rights are established GAP would demand the release of great apes from captivity; currently 3,100 are held by humans, including 1,280 are in biomedical research.


The book published in 1993 (also of the same name), edited by philosopher Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri, features contributions from thirty-four recognized authors, who have submitted articles voicing their support and reasoning for the inclusion of great apes into the sphere of moral equality. The authors urge a non-exclusivist focus upon the fact that we are human beings and instead a recognition that we are intelligent beings with a varied social and emotional life that may be analguous to other animals. If great apes display these attributes they deserve the same consideration we extend to members of our own species.

The book highlights findings that support the capacity of great apes to possess rationality and self-consciousness, and the ability to be aware of themselves as distinct entities with a past and future. Documented conversations (via sign-language) with individual great apes are the basis for these findings. Other subjects addressed within the book include the division placed between humans and great apes, the species as persons, progress in gaining rights for the severely intellectually disabled (once an overlooked minority) and the situation of apes in the world today.

Contents

Support

  • If we can extend the same sphere of moral equality to infants and the severly intellectually handicapped it only seems reasonable to include great apes who in many ways may actually display more attributes than the before mentioned, that dictate rights in the first place. Peter Singer argues this in "Practical Ethics"(p. 74-75). If we choose not to recognize great apes then by comparison we can no longer acknowledge infants or the severely intellectually disabled as recipients of similarly extended human rights. To claim otherwise is speciest.
  • If you are persuaded by Peter Singer's arguments in "Animal Liberation" or "Practical Ethics" for the equal consideration of animals, this may be the first step towards moral equality, a flagship species for future candidates.

Criticism

  • Great apes would be unable to effectively defend their claims within the moral community due to their limited ability to communicate with humans. Only those who have been trained (and that's not many) possess that ability. Instead a selected representative would be appointed to speak on their behalf. John Stuart Mill, a noted utilitarian philosopher, wrote in Chapter I of "The Subjection of Women," that "things in which the individual is the person directly interested, never go right but as they are left to his own discretion". If a person enables another to make a decision for them, they expose themselves to the vested interests of another. Even if the motive of the appointed speaker is one of benevolence how can they be sure of the great apes' interests?

References

  • The Great Ape Project. Accessed October 5, 2005.
  • The Great Ape Project: Equality beyond humanity. 1993. Editors, Peter Singer and P. Cavalieri., Fourth Estate publishing, London, England. Pp. 312.
  • Peter Singer. 1993. Practical Ethics. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, New York, U.S.A. Pp.395.
  • Peter Singer. 2002. Animal Liberation. HarperCollins, New York, U.S.A. Pp.324.
  • John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women. Accessed October 5, 2005.

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