Legal Niches

Evolution and human/animal rights

By joel

The ideology of human rights is based on the exceptionality of humans. As stated in the Declaration of Independence, it is something intrinsic in humans that justifies these special “universal” standards of decency.

Enter evolution and the concept that our animal neighbors are also relatives. “Human-ness” becomes a spectrum (at least in time) and the difference in kind between humans and all other animals becomes suspect. Consider bonobos, our close relatives who exhibit remarkable social characteristics and intelligence. (about the researcher)

Continuing human evolution raises even thornier questions. If the qualities that justify human rights were formed through an evolutionary process that seperated humans from other animals, perhaps some humans have more of these qualities than other? There is evidence that human evolution is not only continuing, but is accellerating. Not only that, but the human race may be in the process of speciation, that is, evolving apart from each other, perhaps ultimately into multiple species. 1, 2. (This makes sense given the frontier effects on genetic drift and the long, dramatic frontier history of humans since prehistory in Africa.) If this is the case, perhaps my rights are deservedly less than other humans.

“Human rights” becomes a very unstable concept when the assumed premise of human exceptionality comes into doubt. When we look at the scope of evolution over the epochs, human speciation occurred only a few moments ago, and the differences between us and bonobos are thus very slight.

This instability in the human rights concept can be resolved in one of two ways, either (1) humans aren’t all that special and we shouldn’t pretend we deserve such rights because of some innate qualities, or (2) recognize the innate qualities of our very near relatives deserve consideration similar in some substantial ways to the consideration we give each other as “human rights.”

Full post as published by Animal Blawg on January 21, 2008 (boomark / email).