Asklemmy

They will probably be their own nation with their own laws on what is fair and what is not based on their values. I assume a new sentient specie will not have the same views and values as humans.

No. There are already plenty examples of this. Thinking this will happen in the near future (100 years) is a fairytale.

As long as you don't have vocal cords capable of creating effective speech and you don't have appendages with which is possible to create and use tools you're fucked.

Examples? Plenty, let's go:

Pig: As intelligent as a 6 year old. What we do to them makes Auswitz looks like summer camp.

Dolphins: pushed into a bay and murdered by the hundreds. Thousands (millions?) die each year in the nets of our floating fishing factories. Their intellect is at least that of a 6 year old and most probably way more.

Whales: hunted to virtual extinction. Way more intelligent then a 6 year old.

Elephants: show clear sociological traits. Remembers stuff over a long time. Grieve over death. Hunted for their big ass teeth.

Apes: our close relatives. Hunted for meat. Most species of them easily operate at 10-12 year old level. Can use tools but can not create them. At the current path they're on in the wild (extinction). They will never reach the stone age.

We rule. Harshly.

They should, but they wouldn’t.

We can’t even get fair treatment for humans.

Not to mention, people can’t even see past cultural veils… pigs are smarter than dogs, and people who would never eat a dog have no second thoughts eating pigs and mocking vegetarians/vegans.

Should they? Yes.

Would they? Ahhhahahaha

Rights have nothing to do with intelligence, otherwise people like Trump or Andrew Tate would have ~0 rights.

Yes, obviously.

Yes, intelligence is intelligence. There's nothing about the rest of the body that the brain is encased in that makes one more or less deserving of rights.

If they became more intelligent than us, would they pick up our poo?

Humans go out of their way to mistreat and abuse other humans. If cats and dogs became as intelligent as humans, some dickhead leader of a leading religious cults would label them satan/ abomination/ equivalent b.s. and call to have them exterminated. and/or capitalists would lobby to deny them rights and pass laws to profit off them & their labour.

If they're as smart, communicatable and capable of social responsibilities, then yes. There are some species that may be "differently" smart as humans, but lack a common lanuage and can't take on shared social responsibilities, so giving them rights is difficult to say the least.

If they were smart they'd keep their mouths shut

Yes, absolutely they should have rights.

In some countries (like France, iirc), chimps are recognized as having civil rights. They don’t have identical rights to humans of course. They don’t have the same rights as a human, but they are recognized as having rights as individuals.

Although the US hasn’t recognized that, yet, it has effectively banned chimpanzee research. You basically cannot get funded for chimpanzee research unless you a) demonstrate they are necessary for the research and b) you pass a review board similar to a human subjects review board who are charged with maintaining ethical research standards. I don’t do primate research, so I’m not sure of all of the details, but with human subjects boards you have to show that not only does your research. avoid harming humans, the subjects themselves must benefit from your work, if it is health related. When the new rules were passed, most research chimps were retired to preserves

So if there was a l other animal with fully human intelligence, there’s legal precedent to recognize that they have inherent dignity and rights.

There was a post the other day about whether anyone else has noticed a significant decline in the reading comprehension of the general population, even on sites that skew towards the nerdy like Lemmy, and here we are, with a significant number of top comments that don't know what "should" means.

And no, I am not some human’s pet that just became intelligent and took over their Lemmy account. 😺

If one of my cats took over my Lemmy account, you'd know it for sure. One of them would be always silent, lurking; the other would be spamming stupid shit about yoghurt, towels and boxes, in German.

If cats and dogs became as intelligent as humans, should they have the same rights as humans under law?

Under the moral premise that intelligent beings should get similar rights, yes. Thankfully people don't usually follow this premise - otherwise mentally disabled people would suffer even more.

Instead I think that most people follow some sort of "naive Realpolitik" - we're humans and we defend human interests, that's it. In this case cats/dogs would likely get rights above most other animals (as allied species), but still lower than our own.

I'm not sure on what I would defend in this case.

I mean, cats are pretty much little space wizards and they know damn well they'll have to start finding odd cat jobs and paying rent if we catch on to them being more intelligent than us. They got it figured out.

Why not? Some cultures such as the Greeks already did this for dolphins because of the idea dolphins have human level intelligence.

I think animals should have more rights already. It'd be nice if they could talk or something to help people realize they're actually living things worthy of empathy.

But to your point, cats and dogs are already among the better-treated animals in large parts of the world.

Compared to animals who get farmed (especially factory farmed), or get the death sentence label of a pest or invasive species.

Intelligence is a term too vague to be of use for the comparison of species. If you were tasked with finding the next waterhole in an arid landscape you might not be found very intelligent compared with a whole range of other species. Or if the proof of intelligence was to manage a planet in a sustainable way.

Rights are difficult. Basically we have, gradually, invaded a lot of spaces once occupied by other species, and keep invading more. Giving rights to dogs, cats, whales or horses is an invader giving rights to the invaded. On the other hand, as we keep turning the temperature of the planet up, we worsen the conditions for ourselves and some bug, fungus, microbe or lizard might prove to be the next big thing after mammals had their chance?