If we can genetically engineer monkeymen, then why can’t we just invent technology to give all monkey-men the intelligence they need to have rights? Then all of them will have a very basic rights system, like the rights of children, until they’re given the intelligence by some kind of technology? It’s that simple. If something has the potential to become intelligent, even if that potential will only become actual through the use of technology, they have rights.
The potential that a normal, healthy child will develop into an adult human with rational faculty is almost positively 100%, barring accidents. The likelihood that we will ever ‘uplift’ monkeys or apes or any other animal to that level is far slimmer. There arise questions between point A and point B, like “Why do it?”, “Is it right do to it?”, “How difficult will it be to do it?”, “What are the consequences?”. Just because the slim possibility that someone will maybe, possibly uplift an animal to the intelligence of a human being far in the future does not mean we should give rights to members of their species who will never possess it, right now. I think this is a reversal of the logic of cause and effect.
Now, to answer the bulk of your post, I’d like to first correct an error. According to Objectivism, man has rights not because he is conscious (Unless I’m misunderstanding the term), per-say, but because he has a rational faculty…
That’s pretty close. The way Miss Rand put it (and I am paraphrasing, I think): The concept of life necessitates the concept of value(s). As such, only living entities can possess values. The fact that man chooses his values - the fact that man possesses volition or free will - necessitates the concept of morality, and thus “rights”.
Is there a plausible future/scientific discovery*, that would force objectivism to be thrown out the window for something else? Or maybe cause objectivism to be morphed from what it currently is? …
*Ideas that jumped into my head were the understanding of conciousness at a neurological level, or the creation of true artificial intelligence
As I’ve studied Computer Science formally off and on across a quarter of a century or so, I can tell you that people in the field don’t really try to tackle issues of volition in a productive way. Robots become more sophisticated. Languages become more user-oriented i.e. better for programmers, but at the end of the day… none of that has much anything to do with human volition…, and I suspect that that will be the case for quite some time.
All of the gear has to be originated by one or more human minds. The tech is oriented towards human usage and understanding. Those things are human tools i.e. things used by humans; they are not things that emulate humans. First, you would have to have a whole battery of engineers who even have so much of a clue about Rand’s theory of concepts… these days… FAT CHANCE! …so future tech is relegated to a certain sphere which _does not in any way_ eschew the need for human minds (in the least!)
i.e. There ain’t gonna be a HAL-type system in our lifetimes. Believe it.
It’s that simple. If something has the potential to become intelligent, even if that potential will only become actual through the use of technology, they have rights.
What are you basing this statement on? Are you then also against abortion, and even birth control, definitely embrionic stem-cell research?
Basically, his answer is that for the higher primates, while they do show signs of reasoning, it is only temporary and not their means of survival, and we cannot discuss conflicts with them and resolve them with reason. So, even for the hypothetical of this thread, it would depend on how rational they were. If they revert back to living extremely short-range immediate moment types of living as an animal, then they are not using reason to live their lives and would not have rights.
If something has the potential to become intelligent, even if that potential will only become actual through the use of technology, they have rights.
Any being could become rational with the help of super-advanced technology, but that does not make them deserving of rights. You achieve rights not from potential, but from being. When that being becomes rational is when it gain rights. The distinction that needs to be made with this monkey-man example is the difference between a rational being and a non-rational being. This has a real-world application when you deal with people that have a mental disability. You must make the decision for each individual whether they are rational or not. If the Monkey is rational, i.e. it can use logic to discover truths and create higher concepts through abstraction, then it can deal with other rational beings without the use of force and therefore has rights and is the same as any other individual. But this also means that it can be given no special advantages, it must support itself like anyone else. If the monkey is not rational it is merely an animal and has no rights. This distinction must be made for each monkey, and likewise for each mentally damaged person; whether they are rationally responsible for themselves like everyone else, or irrational animals. There can be no in-between area, if that were allowed then people of a higher IQ could claim an oligarchy over others. You are either rational and have rights, or irrational and without them.
