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     rather than persons. For Wise, that
  same conceptual progress must now
  lead us beyond the human realm.
 5  [id:83538] is that chimps and
  bonobos are so close to us
  intellectually that it is absurd to deny
 
 them personhood. Wise is a lawyer so
 RATTLING THE CAGE: Towards it is perhaps understandable that he
 Legal Rights for Animals reads here as if he is on somewhat
 by Steven M Wise shakier ground. He is relying on the
 
 expertise of others and that expertise
 BRYAN APPLEYARD is widely disputed. Steven Pinker, for
  example, in his book The Language
1    On a simple numerical basis, humans Instinct poured scorn on the claims
 probably now treat animals worse being made for the use of language by
 than they have ever done before. chimpanzees. And, Wise notes, there
 Overwhelmingly intensive farming is fierce and irrational resistance
 and agribusiness are the main among many scientists to the idea
 culprits, rearing millions of chickens, that the numerous complex
 cattle and pigs in conditions of experiments with chimps have
 technologically refined torture. More proved their ability to employ
 ambiguously, there are the cruelties language.
 inflicted by scientific research which6    At one level, Wise is right to be
 may or may not be justified in the suspicious of this prejudice. There is
 name of human progress. You do not so much evidence of language-like
 have to be a fanatic to accept the capabilities in chimps and so little
 truth that modern man is a uniquely consensus on what language is - an
 vicious landlord of the living world. aspect of consciousness or
2    In order to change this, we have consciousness itself - that it is
 to evolve a new morality strong foolish to dismiss the idea of chimp
 enough to persuade us, first, that cutprice language. Furthermore, Pinker is all
 food is not an absolute too plainly defending a dubious
 requirement and, second, that human theory that he derived from Chomsky
 benefit cannot necessarily justify any - that humans have a specific
 level of laboratory cruelty. In "language organ" in the brain.
 practice, this morality already exists7    But, at another level, Wise's
 at the intuitive level - most people evidence can be read both ways. He
 are revolted when they hear of the writes, for example, of the
 realities of intensive farming or similarities of ape and human brains.
 animal experimentation. But, plainly, But, almost in passing, he mentions
 intuition alone isn't working. It isn't that the human brain is three times
 working in the realm of agriculture larger, commenting that this "almost
 and, most alarmingly, it isn't working certainly makes no difference when
 at the environmental level. Species such vast numbers (of neurons) are
 extinction and with it the irrevocable involved". There is no scientific basis
 damage to our protective cocoon of for this remark - indeed, it is almost
 biodiversity continue. Even our certainly wrong. Wise occasionally
 closest biological relatives - quotes from Terrence Deacon,
 chimpanzees and bonobos ("pygmy perhaps the finest of living scientific
 chimps") - are now facing writers, but he does not refer to
 destruction. The solution proposed Deacon's primary view that language
 by Steven M Wise, who teaches caused a one-off evolutionary
 animal-rights law at Harvard, is the expansion in the human brain. Such a
 extension of human-rights law to the view would plainly tend to support
 animal realm. This book argues that, the idea that humans are, indeed,
 as a start, we should accord legal fundamentally different.
 personhood to chimps and bonobos,8    Furthermore, although Wise
 safeguarding bodily integrity and undoubtedly makes a good case, on
 liberty. the basis of science, for human
3    The argument is twofold: legal beings to show special concern for
 and scientific. Both sides of the case chimpanzees and many other animals
 are based on the Darwinian insight of high intelligence, he does not
 that all life is ultimately one. We are finally prove that we should extend to
 all joined by evolution and its them the right of personhood.
 messenger, DNA. For Wise this Certainly chimps have a culture, even
 insight [id:83535] the strict division a politics, and probably have
 between humans and animals and the linguistic skills. But what is clear
 ancient conviction that man is the from all the evidence is how far short
 master of a creation that was of the human all these attributes are.
 designed for his benefit. There isn't a chimp Shakespeare,
4    On the legal side, Wise conducts a there isn't even a chimp Alastair
 fairly brutal assault on the common Campbell, and there never will be.
 law that enshrines the human-animal9    Wise also undermines his
 division. Common law, he says, position by bringing in the issue of
 "values the past for merely having proportionality. Chimps are
 been". It preserves old obviously different from earthworms
 misconceptions such as the pre- and, for him, that is exactly why they
 Darwinian, anthropocentric view of should be accorded special status.
 nature. Yet it has already been But proportionality again draws
 subject to violent change. Prior to the attention to how different humans
 Nuremberg trials in 1945, nothing are and to the fact that, by any
 protected the citizen from barbaric imaginable standards, they are
 assaults by states on what we now indeed the summit of creation.
 consider to be universal human Chimps are not currently wondering
 rights. Now we accept that there are whether they should accord us ape
 limits to the state's ability to redefine rights.
 the law for its own purposes. And the10    This paragraph has been left out.
 ending of slavery established that it (see item 17)
 was simply not possible legally to 
 define some human beings as things The Sunday Times, 2002