When do we cross the line from 'animal' to 'person?'

[Violet]

Like humans.

Exactly like humans. You'll eventually find one whose spirit cannot be broken, no matter how many times you try, no matter how many ways you attempt it

Infact, humans were largely my basis for my previous post's statement.

[Angrboda]

We did interbreed with neanderthals, humans outside of Africa have up to 4% neanderthal DNA. But I don't think they were really that much different from us.

I think my Aunt Aika is responsible for the lion's share of that 4%. Maybe 3% of it.

The reason we care about animals is, among other things, because they have eyes and faces, and we as a social species are built to project the perception of a mental subject upon things with eyes and faces. (There have been some interesting developmental studies in this regard, involving both humans and monkeys.) There's a reason there aren't many petting zoos with stocks of tarantulas, cuddle fish, octopus and the like. It's interesting to note that when people think of artificial intelligence, they imagine it inhabiting a metal box like your desktop PC and lacking any ability to display affect; such imaginings usually result in people denying sentience to such machine minds. However, if you give a machine social behaviors, such as the typed interaction with Weizenbaum's ELIZA program, or the cuddly behaviors of a robot equipped with the ability to express emotion via manipulating its facial expressions in a human-like way, you find people falling all over themselves to attribute some sort of personhood to the machine.

There appear to be some mixed themes being debated here, likely due to some ambiguity in the posing of the thread. It's not clear which is being asked, whether we should be considered animals no different from others in the animal kingdom, whether animals should be accorded rights similar to us because of certain commonalities, whether we have an ethical obligation to other non-human animals and what the basis and substance of that obligation is, or even whether we have special obligations to animals directly related to us aside from any general animal rights duties. I have addressed it from the question of what our ethical duties and obligations to those outside our species is, and refrained where this wasn't clear to be a poster's focus. However, on that end, I would say that regardless of whether we are animals, whether we have common foundations and modus operandii as other animals, and whether we are related to other animals does not, in my view, obligate us to take their interests on board as our own, any more than my being related to someone obligates me to pay their rent, fix their social problems, or even care. Similarity of type does not mandate similarity of care and commitment to their interests, and it's clear that for many of our interests, there's going to be inevitable conflict between furthering the ends of our species and behaviors which further the interests of other species, which almost inevitably reduce the survivability and quality of life for our species, no matter how modestly. (Feel free to talk to the cows, chickens and fish about where mankind's priorities lie.) I'm not going to get off into the question of plant rights or eco-system rights, but needless to say, those fields aren't purely idle, and some of their concerns aren't far removed from the ones in this discussion.

/rant

[My imaginary friend is GOD]

Neanderthals are early humans and should be treated as such. Trust me, I'm an anthropologist. You know what else is an early human? Homo floresiensis - the "hobbits." Tiny humans. OMG, biological anthropology rocks.

[Anomalocaris]

RE: When do we cross the line from 'animal' to 'person?'

when we looked back on the last 20 centuries and became atheists.

[Zone]

Neanderthals are early humans and should be treated as such. Trust me, I'm an anthropologist. You know what else is an early human? Homo floresiensis - the "hobbits." Tiny humans. OMG, biological anthropology rocks.

Neanderthals were pretty late in the evolutionary line of hominids. They would have been near enough the same kind of thing, put one in modern clothes, give him a shave and stick him on the tube and no-one would particularly notice. Homo floresiensis would have been from a more ancient homo erectus lineage probably part of the first wave migration out of Africa. They wouldn't pass as a normal human midget as they would look and behave like a sort of goblin creature I imagine. They made sophisticated stone tools considering their tiny nugget of a brain so they may have been more advanced than is supposed. I'm not sure if there is a clear cut line it just seems like a matter of gradual degrees. It's like asking where the line was between when you were a child and an adult, there wasn't one.

[Gooders1002]

Well Neanderthal are not completely extinct as we are 1/10 Neanderthal, or something close to that, I can't remember where I read it.

[Question Mark]

Humans are animals. There is no distinction but the one that each individual person will place upon it. And we will, if it ever happens, put out own perspective on it. It's mostly dependent upon how much we can relate to this baby, and if we consider it to be like us enough to develop an emotional attachment of familiarity to it.
Some people find this hard to do with other human beings.

[Severan]

I posted this article here a while back. Yeah, I'm kinda reposting it because I'm coming at it from a more philosophical perspective.

http://www.completegenomics.net/adventur...thal-baby/

The idea is that they're planning on creating a neanderthal baby. The question I want to ask, is this going to be a person? Surely he wouldn't have a normal life, regardless of how psychologically developed he is. The thing is, though, if it were just some ancient species of monkey, we wouldn't hesitate to put him in a cage, check his blood on a damn near daily basis, scan and test him for pretty much everything under the sun and, eventually, disect him and his brain.

But, in a very real sense, all of us are just a mutated breed of monkey. So, let's suppose we could go back and get samples from different time periods and clone babies from all along the evolutionary tree from apes to modern humans; where would we draw the line between beast and man?

This is a very interesting topic. We may be animals ourselves, but the line is intelligence. It's very hard to tell what that line is. Some say that is was when we first harnessed fire, others say that it's when we first made clothing. It's difficult to look at that line. I would say that it was when we first became rebellious of nature. You see, there was a species nicknamed "Lucy" that was when we "Rebelled". In the African savanna, there used to be TONS of trees. There was a whole bunch of forests, but that treeline was slowly fading away. The apes from where we came from lived in those trees that were left. There simply wasn't enought time to adapt. Instead, this species had to use that head of theirs. Most animals would just stay in the tree, but they needed food. So, "Lucy" jumped down from the tree to get food for itself, but it quickly became frightened and went back up. This "line" of yours may be wider than you think. My personal opinion is that the line starts with Lucy and ends with harnessing the power of fire. You see, any animal can become naturally curious, and jump off a tree to get food, but it takes a really brave creature to pick up a branch that's just been struck by lightning. In the middle of this line is what scientists call "The missing link". We have no idea when we entered the intelligence inevitability zone. All that I'm certain of is that when that first human decided to touch something hot, we were on our way to being more powerful than nature itself.

[PyroManiac]

Because animals have no thumbs and can't speak.

[Violet]

Because animals have no thumbs and can't speak.

Fascinating, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thumb#Other...ble_digits

Or, to an extent... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_language