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Should animals be granted personhood?

Which ones are people?

  • Total voters
    19
Thunder said:
yeah, but we didn't steralize people simply due to their political views.
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nor did nazi.

I mostly believe that it was due to their belief about cleaning and mantaining arian race.
 
spud_meister said:
I found a list of the top 10 smartest animals. Should you agree that some animals should be granted personhood, which of the animals would you like to see as people?
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We already grant the not so smart animal known as Homo Sapiens personhood, so I do not see how all that much harm could come from letting a few of the smart animals into the club.
 
DiAnna said:
Exactly. If Nazi's didn't like people's political views, they simply executed them!
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And yet, compare the number of people who support the death penalty with the number of people who would support sterilizing certain types of criminals. For some reason, execution is much more socially acceptable.
 
I voted for police officers being counted as people. I'm surprised they only have two votes thus far.
 
Morality Games said:
I would like to hear a concept of personhood that isn't just some vague undefined thing reserved for humans. Isn't being a person just the ability for intimacy and familiarity, that is, to be personal? Maybe a worm or a bug can't do that, but some animals seem capable.
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I think that animals should be held to the same standard as a person to see if they should be considered a person. For example, if a person eats another person, they are imprisoned - would an animal understand that? A person doesn't leave his/her excrement laying around for another person to step in - would an animal understand that? A person would strike out against another person over an ideal or in order to defend other people - would an animal understand that?

People are animals - that's why we relate to some of them. The fact that we have animal instincts does not mean some animals have personhood instincts.
 
Without a doubt some apes and dolphins are smarter than some humans that do have personhood rights.

Not saying we should apply them to those animals, though. Human rights are HUMAN rights. I don't think we should torture or abuse animals, but they are resources, like any other.
 
Should animals be granted personhood?
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Given rights? Yes. Personhood? What is personhood? Being human? That's silly.
 
Coin said:
smartest animal for me remain dolphin.

Dolphin's intelligence is consider almost same with Chimpanzee. The advantage of Chimpanzee is that they got hands and legs and express their intelligence often and widely.
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but Catatafish is the wisest

2_25_11_Catatafish.jpg
 
SouthernDemocrat said:
I am not a fan of Peta. However, PETA is a red herring in so far as this particular subject goes. Its like arguing that since radical environment groups are against pollution, it should be ok to dump oil in a creek because those groups are nuts. Even if PETA never existed, it would not change the fact that unlike the vast majority of animals, Dolphins, Orangutans, Elephants, Chimps, and Bonobos, are self aware. Your dog is not truely self aware, neither is your cat. However, those animals, just like the human animal, are. Moreover, all those animals pass learned knowledge to their peers and offspring. All of those animals have primitive cultures that change over time. All of those animals morn their dead. All of those animals are capable of empathy and have primitive notions of right and wrong in terms of injuring others.

I don't know if they should be granted person-hood or not as that is purely a human construct anyway. However, its immoral to treat any animals that have those traits as "property".
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My parent's boxer laid next to their Shar Pei when he passed away and howled for a good 5 minutes. She then moped and refused to eat real food for almost a week after he was buried. She ignored her favorite toy for months and carried the other dog's pillow around with her everywhere she went. She was damned sure in pain. I don't think we give dogs and cats enough credit. They know a lot more than we assume they do.
 
I voted for all of them. As long as corporations have human rights so should animals.
 
spud_meister said:
Going on from the PETA thread, the argument is that smart animals should be granted personhood, and/or special legal protection, so after doing a few seconds of research, I found a list of the top 10 smartest animals. Should you agree that some animals should be granted personhood, which of the animals would you like to see as people?
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What's next - marriage? Not in the US anyway.

PETA overall desire is to make everyone a vegetarian - and giving any more concession to animals than what we do know would go in that direction.
 
tessaesque said:
My parent's boxer laid next to their Shar Pei when he passed away and howled for a good 5 minutes. She then moped and refused to eat real food for almost a week after he was buried. She ignored her favorite toy for months and carried the other dog's pillow around with her everywhere she went. She was damned sure in pain. I don't think we give dogs and cats enough credit. They know a lot more than we assume they do.
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I'll give more consideration towards it once dogs figure out calculus.
 
No, they are animals not humans.

All animals should be treated with respect no matter how smart.

You can tell allot about a society by how it treats it's animals.
 
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Blackdog said:
No, they are animals not humans.

All animals should be treated with respect no matter how smart.

You can tell allot about a society by how it treats it's animals.
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You would be ok with owning animals?
 
Blackdog said:
No, they are animals not humans.

All animals should be treated with respect no matter how smart.

You can tell allot about a society by how it treats it's animals.
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imo humans have to treat humans with respect rather then animals
 
Jryan said:
I voted for all of them. As long as corporations have human rights so should animals.
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Assuming this is true, I find the concept of giving corporations human rights to be questionable. To me, neither animals nor corporations should have human rights because they are not human.
 
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Ikari said:
I'll give more consideration towards it once dogs figure out calculus.
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I wasn't suggesting that we should be giving them rights. I was challenging the conjecture that dogs and cats can't grasp the concept of loss. Of course, you can throw out ridiculous strawmen that have nothing to do with what I said all day long, if that's what gets you off.
 
apdst said:
You would be ok with owning animals?
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What kind of a stupid question is that? Of course I would be OK with it, they are animals NOT human. This does not mean they need be abused.
 
Spud, you neglected to leave an option for "None", so I chose "Rat". :lamo
 
Coin said:
imo humans have to treat humans with respect rather then animals
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I have no idea what planet this statement came from, but it was not earth. :lol:

It has nothing to do with my statement.
 
None on this list. But furbabies should maybe me? I guess you could include rats or anything you can keep as pets? If you can get some form of med. ins. for them why should you not get a tax break for them? Most people consider their pets part of the family:2razz:

OK. They should not be considered like real humans but it is something to think about:shock:
 
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