I attended the Personhood Beyond the Human conference over G+ and it was a fantastic experience. Some really great presentations and I'm happy to see that animal behavioural sciences are making a push for this. I think there is more than enough evidence to make significant progress in pushing for nonhuman persons. And having these discussions is important the closer we get to discussing artificial persons (that was actually the last presentation of the conference - and the one I was most anticipating).

In regards to your comment b_b about "corporations and chimpanzees"; those are my thoughts exactly. I actually tweeted that out during one of the presentations:

And without going into too much detail about all of the presentations, I think this is the point that I took away from the whole conference:

Throughout history we have decided collectively what is a person and what is not. Women have not even been legal persons for 100 years in the developed world. Let that sink in. Cupp needs to do a quick revision of history to realize that he is probably on the losing end of it. Extending the sphere of personhood beyond human this century is highly probable (if not inevitable).

This is really interesting in that it approaches the subject of non-human autonomy from a different angle. Currently this idea is discussed with utter seriousness and respect around advances and inevitable improvements in machine learning and AI. Sure, it's hotly debated, but I suspect that proponents of this legislation might have some passionate and potent "public mindshare" allies in the machine learning camp, -something they'll need if, as suggested in the article, a large movement in the body of common law is needed.

I am exceedingly leery of giving pre-emptive rights to animals not asking for them. This is anthropomorphic projection, which could easily be hijacked as a way to take rights away from humans in unrelated situations.

No one is asking these animals for their input. In the recent law case in New York, the people handling the chimpanzees were not even aware they were being sued. You may say, "of course not! Their exploiters will not side with them!"

Now imagine that the case had succeeded. The handler has therefore been sued in absentia and found liable, without a chance for legal representation. The NhRC is thus using habeas corpus for their clients and against their opponents.

This legal rally for non-humans in the face of actual citizens is a very privileged way to look at the world. It starts with the passive-aggressive way to handle one set of problems: raise one animal's status then hand the punishment to a person, thereby lowering the person's status.

The implications can be horrifying. If certain animals get a raised status, would this not also give anti-abortion advocates a legal precedent to protect a not-yet-human above its female host? What would separate these situations from the "body liberty" that the NhRC proposes?

Let's face it: there are still a hell of a lot of people that want to take power away from women. They may not run your state, but they seem to run Texas at the moment. Turning this legal "exercise" into real laws gives misogynists a large set of tools.

The chimps aren't asking for body liberty: humans are asking on their behalf. They may as well be representing Silly Putty.

Yes, this crap really makes me angry. These people don't sound like they're interested in helping the guy in the trailer park in Gloversville to get his chimp some improvement, let alone issuing him papers in person.

Joe Rogan talks about this kind of thing a lot on his podcast, Specifically I'm referencing his recent interview with (Phil DeMers)[http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/philip-demers/marineland_b_1858...] where they talk about animal abuse at Marineland in Canada. Rogan uses the analogy of aliens to explain how these animals who have been demonstrated to be self-aware must view us. I'm giving the short version here but his argument basically states "Why would we expect to be treated well by Aliens, because if they observed us for just a little while and saw how we treat other obviously intelligent creatures, they would either lock us all up, or exterminate us"