Pan Sapiens?

[Idola Mentis]

The gentics of humans and chimps are extremely close. Seems the reasons to class the great apes separately are pretty flimsy. Are we the third chimp? Should apes be treated like human minors?

Genetic evidence suggests chimp and human ancestors bred hybrids for four million years after the first split. The experts can't agree if it would still be possible, but we can't be sure until it's tried. (Everyone's favourite insane dictator, Stalin, is reported to have had a go at it in the hope of breeding super soldiers. Project ran into bad luck, delays and financial troubles, and the assigned scientist died in a gulag.)

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Idola [email protected] 11, 2007 12:15 pm
The gentics of humans and chimps are extremely close. Seems the reasons to class the great apes separately are pretty flimsy. Are we the third chimp? Should apes be treated like human minors?
Genetics suggest that all life is extremely close. Of course, chimps are the closest species to ours; they are still a quite different species. And, no, there is no sence in treating apes as human minors.

Seriously, I can't understand such ideas. Chimpanzees are an uncommon species; their habitat is different from ours; we don't meet chimpanzees every other corner, and they are not a realistic concern in our lives. Why should they be an issue?


Genetic evidence suggests chimp and human ancestors bred hybrids for four million years after the first split. The experts can't agree if it would still be possible, but we can't be sure until it's tried.

Which we can only hope it's never.


(Everyone's favourite insane dictator, Stalin, is reported to have had a go at it in the hope of breeding super soldiers. Project ran into bad luck, delays and financial troubles, and the assigned scientist died in a gulag.)

This is another mystery to me. Stalin was bad enough as the historical character he was. Why the need to fabricate absurd tales around him, just to make him look even worse? Isn't the destruction of the first proletarian revolution enough?

Luís Henrique

[Idola Mentis]

Genetics suggest that all life is extremely close. Of course, chimps are the closest species to ours; they are still a quite different species. And, no, there is no sence in treating apes as human minors.

Seriously, I can't understand such ideas. Chimpanzees are an uncommon species; their habitat is different from ours; we don't meet chimpanzees every other corner, and they are not a realistic concern in our lives. Why should they be an issue?

These categories are mostly a convenient fiction. However, by most standards commonly used to classify species, the three known breeds of chimp would most likely have been classed together - if only one of the races hadn't been the ones doing the classing. And cladistics do point to issues of actual consequence for ethics and our view of how the world around us works. A lot of people are still thinking in terms of 19th century darwinism rather than modern evolutionary genetics.

I have to disagree that chimps are not a concern. They are, after all being used as test animals, kept in unnecessarily cruel conditions and subjected to treatments we would never subject a human being to. And they clearly have much the same capacity for pain and emotions as we do - much more so than other test animals. We benefit from their torture in terms of medical and biological research results, and so should care about their condition. If nothing else, a reclassificiation would highlight some of these concerns, and mess with the heads of both racists and creationists.



Genetic evidence suggests chimp and human ancestors bred hybrids for four million years after the first split. The experts can't agree if it would still be possible, but we can't be sure until it's tried.
Which we can only hope it's never.

I'm with you up to a point there - we're already growing all kinds of chimeric and hybrid cells as part of medical research, and I can't see anything wrong with that - but actually incubating an entire organism just to see what would happen would clearly be unethical.


This is another mystery to me. Stalin was bad enough as the historical character he was. Why the need to fabricate absurd tales around him, just to make him look even worse? Isn't the destruction of the first proletarian revolution enough?

A wasn't aware this was a fabrication. There was a bit of sensation in the press a while back, first moscow newspapers, then around the world, presumably stemming from this paper:
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displ...line&aid=124129 (http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=124129)

If you've got a link to a debunker, I'd love to have it.

[RevMARKSman]

However, by most standards commonly used to classify species, the three known breeds of chimp would most likely have been classed together - if only one of the races hadn't been the ones doing the classing.

Species - A group of animals that breed to produce fertile offspring.
If a human breeds with a chimp, I don't think the offspring will be fertile - even if it survives.

Re: everything else - Why aren't you throwing away "ethics" and joining the real world with the rest of us? The universe does not care what we do to chimps; chimps may care but they can't do anything about it! Humans generally do not care what happens to chimps as much as they care about what happens to humans...because chimps can't hurt us on the scale that humans can. So stop using "ethics" as a justification for antivivisection and classing two different species as one.

[Idola Mentis]

Huh? I'm not sure what definition of ethics you're operating on. Why does the percieved indifference of the universe form an imperative to our actions? Why should this indifference be emulated? And how can "the universe" take a stance of interest or disinterest? Unless you believe in some form of deism or pantheism, the universe just is what it is, no more or less. It's human beings who identify patterns, structures, cause and effect in it.

The "able to interbreed" definition has been in use for a long time, and generally holds. However, a number of significant exceptions and a deeper understanding of molecular biology has weakened it considerably. The links at this wikipedia page should give you an idea of the problems involved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem

[RevMARKSman]

Originally posted by Idola [email protected] 11, 2007 04:04 pm
Huh? I'm not sure what definition of ethics you're operating on. Why does the percieved indifference of the universe form an imperative to our actions? Why should this indifference be emulated? And how can "the universe" take a stance of interest or disinterest? Unless you believe in some form of deism or pantheism, the universe just is what it is, no more or less. It's human beings who identify patterns, structures, cause and effect in it.

The "able to interbreed" definition has been in use for a long time, and generally holds. However, a number of significant exceptions and a deeper understanding of molecular biology has weakened it considerably. The links at this wikipedia page should give you an idea of the problems involved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem
My god. I was saying that ETHICS DO NOT MATTER BECAUSE there is no god, BECAUSE the universe does not "care." There's no reason to be "ethical." Therefore ethics are bunk.

Re: species - I read the article and the generally accepted "species concept" is the scientific, rational reproductive-possibility concept. So unless the majority of biologists start using looks or "intelligence" or something else subjective to define "species" then your idea is useless. The word "species" has a specific meaning, a scientific meaning, and simply placing the humans and chimps in the same "category" and calling them the "same species" will not make them the same species (see my definition above).

[Idola Mentis]

My god. I was saying that ETHICS DO NOT MATTER BECAUSE there is no god, BECAUSE the universe does not "care." There's no reason to be "ethical." Therefore ethics are bunk.

Yes, but repeating it in capitals does not make it more coherent. You must be leaving out some key assumption which I can't deduce from what you've said so far.

I agree that the universe, "nature" has no moral authority. All human cultures struggle against the forces of nature, not with them. We do not accept starvation, disease and disaster just because they're "natural". But doesn't that exclude your conclusion? The universe does not have any capacity for caring or making judgements on our actions. Therefore it can't tell us anything about any system of ethics, wether its "bunk" or "true". The validation of ethics, like any other tool we create, is in its usefulness to the purpose it has been created for, to be a commonly agreed guide to the actions of a group of people who need to cooperate. As such, there are very good reasons to be ethical, if the system of ethics we develop is consistent and effective.

This transfers to the question of species too. Nature does not sit in judgment over what labels we attach to it. A chimp, by any other name, would still hoot and scream and fling shit at you. How we define and class various species is a matter of convenience, a tool for understanding and attributing meaning to a mute and blind world. The "scientific meaning" of the term species has changed several times in the past, and will change in the future, to accomodate new understanding. There are other ways to class organisms than morphological similarity and fertility; for example, cladistics or phylogenetic systematics gives a much clearer impression of the evolutionary relations of groups of organisms than, for example, the linnean system.

Saying that "calling them the same species will not make them the same species" appears to me as exactly the kind of antique mysticism you have been calling bunk up until now. It's just an old label that has become limiting, inaccurate and a source of problems, not an absolute, nature-given quality inherent to a group of organisms.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by Idola [email protected] 11, 2007 03:58 pm
However, by most standards commonly used to classify species, the three known breeds of chimp would most likely have been classed together - if only one of the races hadn't been the ones doing the classing.
This is obviously false; chimpanzees and human beings are quite different species.


I have to disagree that chimps are not a concern. They are, after all being used as test animals, kept in unnecessarily cruel conditions and subjected to treatments we would never subject a human being to.

Because they are not human beings. What's so difficult to understand about it?


And they clearly have much the same capacity for pain and emotions as we do - much more so than other test animals.

All animal life has roughly the same capacity to feel pain - it is a basic evolutionary requirement. The ability to feel pain in itself is meaningless, unless we talking about compassion. And yes, we should be compassive for everything that is alive; but our compassion does not, and should not, have any legal bearing.


We benefit from their torture in terms of medical and biological research results, and so should care about their condition.

Oh, yes, from that point of view we should, and we do, care. Care that they do not become extinct, so that we can always count on them to make tests we are unwilling to subject humans to.


If nothing else, a reclassificiation would highlight some of these concerns, and mess with the heads of both racists and creationists.

A reclassification like that would be the highest blessing racists could receive from science: the total loss of meaning of the term "human", and they obvious evidence that humans are not and cannot be equal, that racial differences in fact exist, and that we can, after all, threat blacks, or jews, or chinese, as apes.


If you've got a link to a debunker, I'd love to have it.

I usually go to snopes (www.snopes.com) when I need to debunk such things. I am not sure they have a page on that issue, but I suppose it is worth to try.

Luís Henrique

[RevMARKSman]

Yes, but repeating it in capitals does not make it more coherent. You must be leaving out some key assumption which I can't deduce from what you've said so far.

Look. There are no objective ethics because there is no universal moral law. There is no cosmological justification for anything we do. So it's not "unethical" to experiment on chimps, because it's in humanity's self interest and no one else cares!


Therefore it can't tell us anything about any system of ethics, wether its "bunk" or "true".

Therefore all ethical systems are made up by humans and can be discarded when they no longer serve humans. Calling animal experimentation "unethical" and halting its practice is not useful and is not in anyone's self interest. Therefore it's a superstitious, useless statement of "ethics" and I'm discarding it. We don't need to follow "ethics," "ethics" follows us.


As such, there are very good reasons to be ethical, if the system of ethics we develop is consistent and effective.

But there is absolutely no reason to stop animal experimentation.

[chimx]

I'd fuck a chimp, but not on the first date. I'm not a slut.

[socialistfuture]

anyone here who is pro vivisection worked in a lab and done animal experimentations?