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Kansas State Students to Stop Throwing Chickens During Basketball Games (Seriously)
Kansas State to fans -- please stop bringing the live chickens to games. Full Article
Steven Wise apparently has a new book out, Though the Heavens May Fall. The book is ostensibly about an 18th century British court case that helped turn the tide against slavery in that country, and of course you can probably imagine the sort of lesson that Wise wants us to take from that (if you can't, its that such a similar case could turn the tide toward animal rights).
As animal rights activists go, Wise is relatively harmless. He has a complex model -- widely criticized by other activists -- that would grant certain species legal rights based upon how likely they are to have the sort of sense of self that human beings have. Its overly complex and unworkable in this writer's opinion, but at least Wise doesn't run around naked or make statements that killing those he disagrees with is not such a bad idea.
But he also used an argument that is simply stupid, unconvincing, and a bit out-of-character given Wise's legalists arguments. He gave a speech at the University of Michigan in February in which he said,
Those of us who have had the opportunity to look a chimpanzee in the eye know that we are looking at a creature who is almost like us.
Both this -- and its negation -- are simply non-sequiturs that might reveal something about the personal preferences of the person making the statement, but add absolutely nothing to the debate about whether a chimpanzee or other animal is similar enough to human beings to warrant granting it rights.
And just to make clear, the following sentence is also irrelevant,
Those of us who have had the opportunity to look a chimpanzee in the eye know that we are not looking at a creature who is almost like us.
Wise should be smarter than this given the criticism he's taken from other activists. If Joan Dunayer says something like,
Those of us how have had the opportunity to study a beehive closely know that we are looking at creatures who are almost like us.
Dunayer thinks bees should have rights. Wise does not. Presumably Wise does not believe intuitions based upon gazing at a beehive are enough to make a difference, so why does he pull out this canard in trying to convince us that his intuitions upon gazing into a chimpanzee's eyes should do the trick?
Source:
Speaker: society should move toward granting animals rights. Pauline Lewis, The Michigan Daily, February 17, 2005.