Are apes people?

Spain recently passed legislation granting legal rights to apes which raises the central philosophical question of "personhood".

Spanish parliament approves 'human rights' for apes

Great apes should have the right to life and freedom, according to a resolution passed in the Spanish parliament, in what could become landmark legislation to enshrine human rights for chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans and bonobos.

The environmental committee in the Spanish parliament has approved resolutions urging the country to comply with the Great Apes Project, founded in 1993, which argues that "non-human hominids" should enjoy the right to life, freedom and not to be tortured.

The project was started by the philosophers Peter Singer and Paola Cavalieri, who argued that the ape is the closest genetic relative to humans - that it displays emotions such as love, fear, anxiety and jealousy - and should be protected by similar laws.

The resolutions have cross-party support and it is thought they will become law, meaning that potential experiments on apes in Spain will be banned within a year, according to a Reuters report.

"This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defence of our evolutionary comrades which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity," Pedro Pozas, the Spanish director of the Great Apes Project, said.

Many people oppose the idea on the grounds that it somehow diminishes humans. I think that if anything it elevates us. Opponents use the hackneyed and arrogant Biblical excuse as their argument:

"The anti-animal rights camp, however, does not come off much better. Many base their opposition on the Bible -- specifically, the verse in Genesis granting man "dominion" over "every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." It's hard to see why that should be interpreted as divine endorsement for using chimps in crash tests, or why, even if it were, it should guide secular law."

Almost 69% of The Guardian readers agree with the position that apes should be granted "human rights". I find it heartening that a majority of people seem to refuse the notions of "human exceptionalism", that humans have special status in nature. I see human exceptionalist thought as mere arrogance.

But really the whole question is still "What is a person?"

Irrespective of the legal declarations I do not consider an unconscious, non-sentient, abstract entity like a corporation to be a "person". Whereas I do consider a being suffering coma or other serious mental debilitation to be people.

Can animals be "people" ? Should a "synthetic" or intelligence created as an artifact (artifical intelligence) which cannot be through any blind objective test be perceived as non-human possibly be granted personhood? (See: Turing Test). Why not?

Convincing arguments for such grants of personhood can be found regarding HAL of 2001 or Data of Star Trek fame. In fact, an entire episode of StarTrek Next Generation was dedicated to the premise that synthetically produced Data character was indeed a person and arguments for and against were put forward by way of a trial.

My main basis for determining personhood is self-awareness and the ability to steer attention and action purposively, If an ape has the capacity to see the banana and reach for it because the ape desires it, then the ape is a person. Is it wrong then to use such "people" for crash tests and other harmful experiments? Absolutely.