Leeds and Manchester Salon Talks

I've just got back from two back-to-back talks to the Salon movement in Leeds and Manchester. In both cases I'm arguing from NOT A CHIMP that the extension of some form of human rights to chimps is not justified in terms of the way it is perennially framed these days - their genetic and cognitive proximity to humans. I argue that it is at best a diversion in the race to save chimps and their habitats, and at worst a mis-representation of science.

Interestingly, the Salon audiences, which included a number of heavyweight university types, including some neuroscientists and political scientists, seemed out of touch with the fact that organisations like The Great Ape Project framed the debate, and the political action, in biological terms, and therefore found much of NOT A CHIMP nerdy in the detail it mustered. They preferred to see the argument over granting human rights to animals framed purely in political terms, making any biological facts irrelevant.

There was, however, interesting input on the distinction between rights and protection, a wide acknowledgement of the idea that rights assume some conscious understanding of the concept of morality, and that they are a form of social contract that has to be fought for and defended by the owners or seekers of rights, and come with some form of responsibilities. All this would make the granting of some form of a charter of rights to chimps farcical.