system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If chimps held slaves would we be morally obligated to intervene?

Let's say there were chimp castes and those at the bottom were treated horrendously.
gpt
Look up the moral status of animals. A defender of the integral moral status of animals would claim they have the exact same rights as us. And if we are entitled to not being enslaved, and obliged to stop human slavery, it follows that we'd have to stop it.

Others believe animals have no rights, or at least not the same as humans. In the first case there'd be no moral obligation at all to stop chimp slavery, and in the first, a possibility of so.

It's interesting how the act itself suggests animal moral worth, especially for those that deny it. Many defend this moral anthropocentrism, the thesis that only humans have moral worth, by grounding moral status in rationality. And since humans are the only animal with an obvious rationality, it follows that they are the only ones with moral worth.

Still, some (like Descartes, famously) denied any kind of sentience to animals, usually for theological reasons (though whether or not that is his case is debatable). He famously insisted animals do not have souls and therefore do not perceive anything. A wounded dog only seems in pain, but it is a mere organic automaton.