Animal Intelligence
From The Case for a Vegan World
Intelligence is an entities ability to process sensory data, and derive useful information from it. Any living thing has some level of intelligence, some cognitive scientists would even argue that a simple device, such as a thermostat has some minimal level of intelligence.
Intelligence requires the ability to sense information, process the information, and normally derive some useful action or conclusion based on the information processed. An organism is not intelligent or not, all organisms have some level of intelligence, intelligence is a magnitude, not a boolean. A plant has intelligence when it turns its leaves towards the sun. An ant has intelligence when it follows a chemical trail to forage. A dog has intelligence when it hears its name called and comes. A human has intelligence when reads about the health, environmental, ethical, and economic benefits of veganism and decide to follow a vegan diet.
[edit] Why is intelligence important?
When deciding what it is legal or ethical to kill, or what rights an entity has, one must have some criteria to evaluate. One could choose to subscribe legal rights based on size, age, color, gender, species, longevity, intelligence, ability to suffer, or many other criteria. To base an entities legal rights on color, gender or species does not seem logical, even though each of these have historically been used to grant different legal rights among humans, and in some countries still are.
To grant legal rights based on aesthetic qualities of an entity such as its size, or color does not make logical sense. Historically humans have been granted rights based on these, but this for the most part has ended in the modern world with the ending of Apartheid in South Africa. Should an Elephant have different rights than an ant, based solely on size, logically not, but perhaps for other reasons.
Granting rights based on gender, if the gender does not account for a significant difference in intelligence (it is possible that is does in some species), does not make sense. Historically humans have been granted rights based on gender, and in many countries are still given right different rights based on gender, but this practice seems to be ending.
Granting rights based on age may make some sense, as intelligence changes with age, many rights such as voting and drinking are granted based on age. In the case of humans less than 9 months old, even the right to live is not granted, as abortion is legal in most modern countries.
Granting rights based on longevity may make some sense. To kill something that has lived for centuries and may live many more does seem less ethical than killing something that only lives one day. Although longevity may have some influence on logical rights, in would be minor at most, and would not be logical to be the main criteria. Should a tree be given more rights than a human because it lives longer, logically not.
Granting rights based on species does make sense, because different species have different levels of intelligence, however if two species had equivalent intellect, it would not make logical sense to give them different rights. This however is commonly done, in that in most modern countries dogs have different rights than pigs, but the intelligence of the two species is comparable.
If a chimpanzee were biologically modified to increase its intelligence to be equal or greater to that of a human, should it be granted human legal rights, logically it should, so it is intelligence that is important, not species. A tree is more intelligent than a rock, so should have different rights, an ant has more intelligence than a tree, so should have different rights, a mouse has more intelligence than an ant, so should have different rights, a pig has more intelligence than a mouse so should have different rights, a human has more intelligence than a pig, so should have different rights. The question is, what rights should be given to each level of intelligence?
