[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by horn

to hurry up the time it would take to get near it, it would probably be a good idea to discuss whether what we're aiming for is morally sound or not though.

Even if this is true (and I'm not sure about that) I still see no reason to (continuously) bring up the issue in a discussion of animal rights the potential value of (non-existent) clone armies.

the real point though is to push you towards defining exactly what you consider a "human", and exactly why you think it is that they are of exclusive moral worth.

Well, that's been covered. Several times. Re-read this thread if you think it's just at random. It obviously has nothing to do with looks (although that would introduce other issues I guess) but is to do with cognitive capacity.

In particular beyond a certain point in intellectual development it becomes meaningful to talk about "suffering". Below that I don't think it does. Computers (an example I've used several times) are certainly capable of processing information, "remembering" things and so on, in the same way most animals are. If you set up a computer so if you pressed the space bar a voice screamed in agony it would be ludicrous to assume that the computer is "suffering" even if it is responding in a way which could be confused with the way humans respond to things (your gut feeling).

Animals can experience "pain" but they cannot reflect on this pain - to use the terminology I used earlier they cannot "think about thoughts" which to me seems the core of the issue. Again, this is all tied up with cognitive development of language, capacity for abstract thoughts and things like this. I would reject a simplistic idea that you could devise some sort of simplistic test which would indicate things (because unless it's something like a Turing Test, it'd be easy to "cheat".)

Now, this does not mean my mind is closed on the issue - if someone can show me that chimps can "think" in the way I think important then I'll change my view. But contrary to your previous comments, in Britian we do not generally chop up chimps to test lipstick or whatever. And thus many of your concerns are at the very least exaggerated. There is more than enough human suffering to worry about in the world than silliness about chimps.

i.e. my moral worth badges would come in a variety of colours, not a single gold badge for a single (seemingly undefined) category.

I'm not sure how you can say "undefined" when it's been defined (albeit perhaps not to your satisfaction) several times. That seems fairly intellectually dishonest.

As for your badges point, Jakiri has made this point, but : there is still a line for each individual issue. So you might think an AIDS vaccine is allowable to test on a dog but not a chimp, or whatever. It's still the same sort of principle. What's your criteria here for moral worth for an entity? Why do you care (if you do care) about chimps more than pigs or rats? If pigs were shown to be "smarter" than chimps, would they be more important? Or is this about who shares most of our DNA? Who looks most like us? Language, cognition, capacity for abstract thought are all things that have been put forward here.

What are you putting forward as your distinction(s)? You've mentioned this is based on gut feelings (I'm more sympathetic to this line of argument than others*) - but is that it? You care about chimps because basically they kind of look like us? Or do you even know? Or do you not care?

* = I think "gut feelings" are probably the ultimate basis for many of our moral positions, but the problem is alone it creates false positives.