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Originally Posted by horn
and those with brain damage/birth defects* who cannot outwit chimpy...are they then excluded from your love?
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People who are severely brain damaged (to the point where they can't think) are already denied "rights" in the fullest sense of the word anyway. Their bodies are not randomly mistreated mostly because their families/loved ones might not appreciate that but also for religious / superstitious reasons (not to mention a desire for general decency).
If there was an entire subset (sub-species, whatever) of "humans" who were cognitively impaired to the point where they were basically at a chimp level of intelligence than I would suggest they would not actually be human beings, at least as we usually use the term.
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are you seriously suggesting a 2 week year old child has the same cognitive abilities as a fully grown chimp?
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A chimp and a child probably never have the "same" cognitive abilities but if you mean might they score the same sort of level on some sort of test then I'm not sure about this. But it doesn't really matter because we're factoring in some level of "potentiality" here - see the familiar arguments (already raised) about people who are asleep and so forth. This is obviously not clear cut (we could argue as to whether a foetus is really a "potential" human being) but the basic gist is fairly simple.
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i'm not sure language is the only identifier of cognitive development.
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No, but it's superior to anything you've suggested.