{"id":759983,"date":"2020-03-20T08:21:17","date_gmt":"2020-03-20T12:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=759983"},"modified":"2020-03-20T08:25:41","modified_gmt":"2020-03-20T12:25:41","slug":"gregory-tague-an-ape-ethic-and-the-question-of-personhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=759983","title":{"rendered":"Gregory Tague: An Ape Ethic and the Question of Personhood"},"content":{"rendered":"\t<blockquote  class=\"bs-quote bs-quote-1 bsq-t1 bsq-s1 bsq-left\">\n\t\t<div class=\"quote-content\">\n\t\t\t<p>Great apes are moral individuals by virtue of their land ethic as eco-system engineers. With their social values, great apes are the 'good' eco-engineers, not humans.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>MARC BEKOFF:<\/strong> <em>Gregory Tague&#8217;s book &#8216;An Ape Ethic and the Question of Personhood&#8217;&#8230; argues that great apes are moral individuals because they engage in a land ethic as ecosystem engineers to generate ecologically sustainable biomes for themselves and other species. Tague shows that we need to recognize apes as eco-engineers in order to save them and their habitats, and that in so doing, we will ultimately save earth\u2019s biosphere&#8230; Dr. Tague is professor of English\/interdisciplinary studies and founder and senior developer of The Evolutionary Studies Collaborative at St. Francis College&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>In his book, Dr. Tague states: Some philosophers are still a bit reluctant to grant moral agency to non-human species, in spite of the evidence. This comes from a variety of misinformation: animals are not rational; they don\u2019t really have full self- or other-awareness; they don\u2019t have a \u201cbelief\u201d system, etc. As opposed to looking at \u201canimals\u201d from the outside in, I try to look from the inside out. In this way, I view apes as \u201cmoral individuals.\u201d I address the question of moral concerns and whether they reside only in a \u201crational\u201d human sphere. In light of what we know, moral query is evident in children and animals.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>So now I am suggesting that great apes are moral individuals by virtue of their land ethic as ecosystem engineers. With their social values, great apes are the \u201cgood\u201d eco-engineers, not humans. A virtue ethicist might wonder how successful any human\/top-down tactic has been in the battle for animal rights, e.g., either a neo-Kantian or consequentialist method. My tactic is different. Isn\u2019t it time to look at \u201cmoral\u201d behavior in the animal world from the inside out in line with thinking from eco-psychology and embodied cognition, from angles such as gestalt and Umwelt? Are apes fully aware of this? They don\u2019t have to be. Look at the net effect of their social behavior, plant-based food resourcing, evolved birth intervals, and tool use.<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.psychologytoday.com\/intl\/blog\/animal-emotions\/202003\/ape-ethic-and-the-question-personhood\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>SOURCE&#8230;<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>RELATED VIDEO:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8MVxWKtqLZw\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MARC BEKOFF: Gregory Tague&#8217;s book &#8216;An Ape Ethic and the Question of Personhood&#8217;&#8230; argues that great apes are moral individuals because they engage in a land ethic as ecosystem engineers to generate ecologically sustainable biomes for themselves and other species. Tague shows that we need to recognize apes as eco-engineers in order to save them [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":759986,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[17,21,22,23,24,25],"tags":[32,33,34,35,36,37],"class_list":["post-759983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-kisnship","category-morality","category-rights","category-science","category-welfare","tag-free-living","tag-intelligence","tag-personhood","tag-protection","tag-sentience","tag-speciesism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=759983"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":759985,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759983\/revisions\/759985"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/759986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=759983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=759983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=759983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}