[mrgold]

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The fact you wish to scale on intelligence is common and interesting. How do you feel about mentaly retarded humans? Or people in long term (and probably permanent) commas? How about children? I'm guessing you will say that it is actually scaled for species and not individual orginisms. What is the basis for this, if you choose to make this argument? If you do not, there are certain non-human primated who are more intelligent in most regards then severely handicapped humans. Would you advocate giving these primates more "human rights" then the handicapped?


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I would not choose to make the argument whereby value is scaled for a species. Just like you I see no basis for such an argument. I assign value to individual creatures on the degree to which I can confidently say that those creatures experience pain and suffering in a meaningful way. This may well lead me to the conclusion that a particular ape is of more value than a particular mentally retarded or comatose person (although I do not know nearly enough physiology or neurology [nor prehpas does mankind] to make a reasonable guess). Finally, I would like to say that the value of life and that life's rights are entirely different questions. I think medical testing may be the best way to address this. There are very good public policy reasons not to strip anyone deemed mentally retarded of all their rights and preform medical tests on them. In addition to slippery slope arguments it is important to preserve the integrity of the psychiatric profession. However, medical testing on a more sentient ape could still be justified as the same public policy conerns don't apply and the utillity gained from the testing could easily outweigh the costs to the ape (not stating an opinion one way or another on this as I don't know enough about ape sentience/the importance of medical testing on apes).

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There is also the issue of your assumtion that life is valuable, which you half-heartedly try to pass off as a provable point in the last 2 sentances of your first paragraph. I'm not gonna go in-depth here but I really would like you to reconsider your logic here and consider that this might actually be an assumption you are making. For starters, look at the jumps from yourself to humanity and all living things as a whole.


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To begin with I am assuming life is valuable. I do this because I know that my life is valuable and that I have a certain set of preferences that matter to me in a more real way than anything else ("I want therefore I matter"). Considering that all other human beeings seem very similar to me and continuously act as though they to have a set of preferences that is core to them, it is very parsiminous for me to assume that they are entities of equal value whose needs/wants also "matter". The extrapoloation to animals is indeed quite a bit shakier than that to humans (I am not a vegetarian but I could never eat dolphin/ape) but is unarguably valid to the extent that animals feel pain/pleasure in the same way (or prehaps a more profound one I don't understand) I do.

Finally I would like to make the clarification that my valuation of life is entirely different from a right to life. Just like a good utilitarian I will always sacrifice for the greater good. Rights are merely public policy tools to promote that good and as such are much less relevant to animals.