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  The Principle of Equality

  “Here you have human beings who basically have no autonomy, no consciousness, no sentience at all being treated as legal persons with a whole panoply of rights. And here you have, say chimpanzees or bonobos, who are pygmy chimpanzees, who are extraordinarily cognitively complex, who have autonomy, who should have dignity, and yet they’re treated as things. So as a matter of equality there is something wrong here.”  – Steve Wise There are two versions of this clip. For the longer version, please see The Principle of Equality (extended version).

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  The Principle of Equality (extended version)

  “Here you have human beings who basically have no autonomy, no consciousness, no sentience at all being treated as legal persons with a whole panoply of rights. And here you have, say chimpanzees or bonobos, who are pygmy chimpanzees, who are extraordinarily cognitively complex, who have autonomy, who should have dignity, and yet they’re treated as things. So as a matter of equality there is something wrong here.”   – Steve Wise Please note: There are two versions of this clip. For the shorter version, please see The Principle of Equality.

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  What Does “Necessary” Suffering Mean?

  “It’s very difficult to find anyone who would disagree with the proposition that it’s wrong to inflict unnecessary suffering on animals. Now, what do we mean when we say ‘necessary’?” Gary Francione

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  About The Great Ape Project

  “The mission is to get basic rights for all great apes. By basic rights I mean the rights that we grant to all human beings irrespective of their rationality or intellectual level…They should have rights to life, liberty and protection from torture, subject to reasonable constraints.” – Peter Singer

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  Why Care About Animal Rights?

  “There should really be no borders when we think in terms of ethics.” Lee Hall

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  Historical Influences

  “René Descartes, Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham really provide…a lot of the background noise about how we think about animals now.” – Gary Francione

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  One Approach to Rights: Proportionality Rights

  “The thing about Proportionality Rights is that they are real rights…You have fewer rights but you have rights that have been cut down in a way that still leaves you as a legal person, not as a legal thing. You’re not owned by anybody and you’re not a slave.” – Steve Wise

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  Why are Great Apes Property?

  “If we’d simply said great apes are being cruelly treated and we should be less cruel, we would not have got people to think about the basic question of, ‘Well, what is their moral status? Why is it that though they have all these remarkable characteristics and qualities…Why is it that they’re still property?’” – Peter Singer

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  Treatment, Use and Animal Protection Laws

  “You want to value the dog high? Fine. You want to value the dog low? Fine. As far as the law’s concerned, the only interests that you have to protect are the interests that are absolutely necessary in order to exploit the dog.” – Gary Francione

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  Aristotle’s Axiom

  “When I was trying to understand how it was that people throughout time have struggled with how do you place people in hierarchies…One thing I noticed was that every single person who devised a theory of hierarchy, always placed the group in which he was a member…at the top. “ – Steve Wise