Also known as "Friends of Little Fuzzy v. The Chartered Zarathustra
Company"
(There's preliminary background info before the Traveller point of this
posting; please bear with me.)
As those of you who have read the H. Beam Piper "Fuzzy" stories will
recall, this court case hinged on the question of whether the Fuzzies were
sapient (what Traveller calls 'sophont'). (Those of you who _haven't_ read
the stories, go and do so. They're excellent reads.)
The standard rule in the Terran Federation at the time was 'talk and build
a fire' - that is, if the species in question did so, they were unarguably
sapient. It wasn't codified into law, however, hence the question of
sapience in the book. It was, however, established that _lack_ of speech
and fire-creation was _not_ disproof of sapience; in discussing the case,
Holloway's lawyer said
>Whos going to define sapience? And how? Rainsford asked. Why, between
>them, Coombes and OBrien can even agree to accept the
>talk-and-build-a-fire rule.
>
>Huh-uh! Brannhard was positive. Court ruling on that, about forty years
>ago, on Vishnu. Infanticide case, woman charged with murder in the death of
>her infant child. Her lawyer moved for dismissal on the grounds that murder
>is defined as the killing of a sapient being, a sapient being is defined as
>one that can talk and build a fire, and a newborn infant can do neither.
>Motion denied; the court ruled that while ability to speak and produce fire
>is positive proof of sapience, inability to do either or both does not
>constitute legal proof of nonsapience. If OBrien doesnt know that, and I
>doubt if he does, Coombes will.
It turned out that during the trial, it was proven that the Fuzzies were in
fact sapient; they were proven to have speech (and there were other
attributes that were called out, which effectively implied the ability to
reason and imagine).
That's preamble to the real point of this posting.
It's stated in canonical material (can't pull the specific reference at the
moment) that the Scouts occasionally request an interdiction (red-zoning)
for worlds to allow a native culture to develop without interference.
Presumably, that means that the Scouts have concluded that the natives are
in fact sophonts.
How do they reach that conclusion? In some ways, the Scout service's job in
defining sophont is harder than the Chartered Zarathustra Company's job in
defining sapience, because the Terran Federation wasn't known to have any
sapients like Traveller's Schalli or Llellewyloly.
So, we have a situation where His Imperial Majesty's Office of Resource
Management, currently headed by the Marquis of Dateeta, is hearing a
petition from the Scouts to grant an interdict on the world of Tamara to
protect the natives from interference and exploitation. His Excellency is
sympathetic, but the Scouts _do_ need to make a reasonable case. What are
the guidelines for evaluating a species as sophont, and how do they explain
it to the Marquis?
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