By the moral standard of a court granting personhood, elephants would rate as friendly sociopaths, who can become unfriendly and murderous with the right reward.
Maybe all we need to do is grant elephants the right to incorporate (and/or declare themselves part of a religion) and allow their "personhood" to flow through pre-existing mechanisms we already have for granting non-sapient entities rights and recognitions under the law.
On a more serious note - and since you broached the topic of UFOs a few weeks ago - humans may have a self-interested reason for distinguishing between "human-hood" (and all that entails, such as "human rights") and "person-hood" (arguably where we're at now, when a C-Corp can have freedom of speech and religion).
Using the Golden Rule as a backbone principle ("do unto others as you'd have them do unto you"), should we encounter intelligent life elsewhere, there's no guarantee that we won't be to them as elephants are to us. Just because we're the top of the food chain on one insignificant planet orbiting an unremarkable G-type main sequence star, doesn't mean that we'll be the apex predator wherever we go. So, in an aim for retaining as many "rights" as we feel we're entitled to, we may want to start thinking about how the "rights" spigot gets turned on and off, as we review the evolutionary tree. It probably doesn't make sense to grant a bacterium the freedom to choose their own path, but that argument starts to weaken as we move up in cognitive ability and self-awareness, especially given that our own cognitive abilities and self-awareness will likely be dwarfed should we encounter star-faring civilizations and/or artificially create/evolve minds here on Planet Earth.
A species that is a bit more generous on the rights and consideration front with lifeforms "lower" than it is likelier to receive the same consideration when it encounters someone who thinks of them as you think of the elephants (the Golden Rule at work) than a species who insists that the protections and rights of cognitive beings are limited is a function of a limited set of physical genes (endowed and pre-determined by evolutionary accident), as opposed to its ability to climb the ladder of civilization and take its place as a useful actor in a larger multi-cognitive society.
Of course, that assumes that the "higher beings" don't subscribe to the Dark Forest Theory[1] and are on their way to annihilate us now after catching an RF signal of "I Love Lucy".
Interesting. Here’s a thought experiment. How would you explain the concept of genocide to a race that was effectively immortal? If they can’t grasp death, the value of not being dead is going to be a difficult basis for morality.
If it's "immortal unless someone throws you into a black hole or otherwise makes your ongoing continued existence impossible", then genocide should be easy to explain and especially horrific to such a race.
If it's "if you visit great injury upon me, I just pop up fine elsewhere" / "impervious to damage" immortality, then it's going to be a bit trickier, UNLESS the immortal is surrounded by mortal beings, in which case it should be possible to convey in the same way humans typically outlive their pets.
And if you want to go *really* dark, R. Scott Bakker, in his "Aspect Emperor" series[1], introduces an immortal race of beings (Nonmen, who trade peace for immortality) who have been alive for so long that they lose touch with their past and effectively go insane. The ones that don't kill themselves in their madness end up torturing themselves by cultivating intense emotional relationships with mortals for the sole purpose of suffering the emotions of loss around the death of their mortal companions, just to feel something new that stands out from memories and emotions accrued over centuries and millennia of existence.
It's also worth noting that Bakker is a practicing philosopher who is delving into what we can expect from alien intelligences, using biology as the basis for speculating whether ET will also have their own Platos and Nietzsches:
"And yet the environmental filtration of mutations on earth has produced innumerable examples of convergent evolution, different species evolving similar morphologies and functions, the same solutions to the same problems, using entirely different DNA. As you might imagine, however, the notion of interstellar convergence is a controversial one. Supposing the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence is one thing—cognition is almost certainly integral to complex life elsewhere in the universe—but we know nothing about the kinds of possible biological intelligences nature permits. Short of actual contact with intelligent aliens, we have no way of gauging how far we can extrapolate from our case. All too often, ignorance of alternatives dupes us into making ‘only game in town assumptions,’ so confusing mere possibility with necessity. But this debate need not worry us here. Perhaps the cluster of characteristics we identify with ‘humanoid’ expresses a high-probability recipe for evolving intelligence—perhaps not. Either way, our existence proves that our particular recipe is on file, that aliens we might describe as ‘humanoid’ are entirely possible."[1]
You act like this is so crazy. But in Medieval Europe, pigs, cows, goats, horses, and dogs that allegedly broke the law were routinely subjected to the same legal proceedings as humans.
For example, look at the case from the fall of 1457, where villagers in Savigny, France witnessed a sow and six piglets attack and kill a 5-year-old boy. Today, the animals would be summarily killed. But errant 15th-century French pigs went to court. And it wasn’t for a show trial—this was the real deal, equipped with a judge, two prosecutors, eight witnesses, and a defense attorney for the accused swine.
Judges routinely considered animals’ personal circumstances before making a legal decision. Take the exonerated piglets in the opening anecdote. The judge deemed them innocent not only on technical grounds (no witnesses came forth to confirm that the piglets attacked), but also because the pigs were immature, and thus poorly positioned to make clear choices. Furthermore, they were raised by a rogue mother, he indicated, and thus unable to internalize the proper codes of conduct for village-dwelling piglets.
Maybe all we need to do is grant elephants the right to incorporate (and/or declare themselves part of a religion) and allow their "personhood" to flow through pre-existing mechanisms we already have for granting non-sapient entities rights and recognitions under the law.
Nah. Just let them unionize.
On a more serious note - and since you broached the topic of UFOs a few weeks ago - humans may have a self-interested reason for distinguishing between "human-hood" (and all that entails, such as "human rights") and "person-hood" (arguably where we're at now, when a C-Corp can have freedom of speech and religion).
Using the Golden Rule as a backbone principle ("do unto others as you'd have them do unto you"), should we encounter intelligent life elsewhere, there's no guarantee that we won't be to them as elephants are to us. Just because we're the top of the food chain on one insignificant planet orbiting an unremarkable G-type main sequence star, doesn't mean that we'll be the apex predator wherever we go. So, in an aim for retaining as many "rights" as we feel we're entitled to, we may want to start thinking about how the "rights" spigot gets turned on and off, as we review the evolutionary tree. It probably doesn't make sense to grant a bacterium the freedom to choose their own path, but that argument starts to weaken as we move up in cognitive ability and self-awareness, especially given that our own cognitive abilities and self-awareness will likely be dwarfed should we encounter star-faring civilizations and/or artificially create/evolve minds here on Planet Earth.
A species that is a bit more generous on the rights and consideration front with lifeforms "lower" than it is likelier to receive the same consideration when it encounters someone who thinks of them as you think of the elephants (the Golden Rule at work) than a species who insists that the protections and rights of cognitive beings are limited is a function of a limited set of physical genes (endowed and pre-determined by evolutionary accident), as opposed to its ability to climb the ladder of civilization and take its place as a useful actor in a larger multi-cognitive society.
Of course, that assumes that the "higher beings" don't subscribe to the Dark Forest Theory[1] and are on their way to annihilate us now after catching an RF signal of "I Love Lucy".
[1] https://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/the-dark-forest-theory-a-terrifying-explanation-of-why-we-havent-heard-from-aliens-yet
Interesting. Here’s a thought experiment. How would you explain the concept of genocide to a race that was effectively immortal? If they can’t grasp death, the value of not being dead is going to be a difficult basis for morality.
Depends on the type of immortality.
If it's "immortal unless someone throws you into a black hole or otherwise makes your ongoing continued existence impossible", then genocide should be easy to explain and especially horrific to such a race.
If it's "if you visit great injury upon me, I just pop up fine elsewhere" / "impervious to damage" immortality, then it's going to be a bit trickier, UNLESS the immortal is surrounded by mortal beings, in which case it should be possible to convey in the same way humans typically outlive their pets.
And if you want to go *really* dark, R. Scott Bakker, in his "Aspect Emperor" series[1], introduces an immortal race of beings (Nonmen, who trade peace for immortality) who have been alive for so long that they lose touch with their past and effectively go insane. The ones that don't kill themselves in their madness end up torturing themselves by cultivating intense emotional relationships with mortals for the sole purpose of suffering the emotions of loss around the death of their mortal companions, just to feel something new that stands out from memories and emotions accrued over centuries and millennia of existence.
[1] https://www.grimdarkmagazine.com/excerpt-the-unholy-consult-by-r-scott-bakker-what-has-come-before/ (Warning/spoiler warning - lengthy summary of 6 to 7 lengthy volumes)
It's also worth noting that Bakker is a practicing philosopher who is delving into what we can expect from alien intelligences, using biology as the basis for speculating whether ET will also have their own Platos and Nietzsches:
"And yet the environmental filtration of mutations on earth has produced innumerable examples of convergent evolution, different species evolving similar morphologies and functions, the same solutions to the same problems, using entirely different DNA. As you might imagine, however, the notion of interstellar convergence is a controversial one. Supposing the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence is one thing—cognition is almost certainly integral to complex life elsewhere in the universe—but we know nothing about the kinds of possible biological intelligences nature permits. Short of actual contact with intelligent aliens, we have no way of gauging how far we can extrapolate from our case. All too often, ignorance of alternatives dupes us into making ‘only game in town assumptions,’ so confusing mere possibility with necessity. But this debate need not worry us here. Perhaps the cluster of characteristics we identify with ‘humanoid’ expresses a high-probability recipe for evolving intelligence—perhaps not. Either way, our existence proves that our particular recipe is on file, that aliens we might describe as ‘humanoid’ are entirely possible."[1]
[1] https://rsbakker.wordpress.com/2015/12/06/alien-philosophy-2/
You act like this is so crazy. But in Medieval Europe, pigs, cows, goats, horses, and dogs that allegedly broke the law were routinely subjected to the same legal proceedings as humans.
For example, look at the case from the fall of 1457, where villagers in Savigny, France witnessed a sow and six piglets attack and kill a 5-year-old boy. Today, the animals would be summarily killed. But errant 15th-century French pigs went to court. And it wasn’t for a show trial—this was the real deal, equipped with a judge, two prosecutors, eight witnesses, and a defense attorney for the accused swine.
Judges routinely considered animals’ personal circumstances before making a legal decision. Take the exonerated piglets in the opening anecdote. The judge deemed them innocent not only on technical grounds (no witnesses came forth to confirm that the piglets attacked), but also because the pigs were immature, and thus poorly positioned to make clear choices. Furthermore, they were raised by a rogue mother, he indicated, and thus unable to internalize the proper codes of conduct for village-dwelling piglets.