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Originally Posted by yaaarrrgg  Using genotype to determine rights is a little counterintuitive when actually put into practice. For example, IIRC most animals share at least 90% of the same genes as humans.
Do we conclude that all animals have 90% of the same rights as humans? Or do we reject genes as a basis of rights?
Hmmm.. this article is relevant: CNN.com - Mice, men share 99 percent of genes - Dec. 4, 2002 |
There is a flaw in your logic. The original argument was that similarity (genetic or behavioral) is correlated to caring, and rights. Never was the argument made that 1% similarity implies 1% rights, and 42% similarity implies 42% rights. But it's true that 1% similarity implies less rights than 2% similarity. The function itself probably isn't even linear!
Moreover, if the method for judging similarity is more behavioral then genetic, genes don't even have anything to do with it. If a creature
acts more like a human, we care about it more, regardless of how far away from us it is on the genetic tree. For example, we probably have more in common with rats than cats, because our common ancestor with both was a small rodent, nothing like a feline. Regardless, both humans and cats have evolved from that stage to the point that we find ourselves behaviorally more similar to each other than our ancestor.