Our intuitions about the matter seem to depend on whether we think of it as creating an uplifted chimp or a retarded human.
You don't know whether the result will even be a uplifted chimp. I think there a fairly good chance that gene's won't be expressed in a way to make the result more intelligent than a chimp if you just randomly combine gene from two different specis.
You could learn a lot through the experiment but I doubt, that expecially at the beginning the resulting creature would be very intelligent.
Recreating neaderthalers as is seems to be a much more interesting ethical question.
Does anyone have recommendations of good things to read on the ethics of animal cognitive enhancement? By this I mean applying various methods of human cognitive enhancement (pharmacological, technological, etc) to animals such as the Great Apes. I've also heard this referred to as 'up-lifting' an animal.
I'm looking for articles, books, lectures - anything really. Obviously one can just google this but I find getting recommendations from others a better bet. I think this may be a useful resource for other people interested in the same topic. Interesting issues might include:
- Possible obligations to enhance
- Possible negative consequences
- Possible side-effects (such as radically different perspective)