3 ms·
It was easy when sentience was considered binary. There were just 2 groups, man and animals. If not man then not sentient. Once sentience is considered a conti
by noonespecial 10y ago
It was easy when sentience was considered binary. There were just 2 groups, man and animals. If not man then not sentient.
Once sentience is considered a continuum, you can say things that we kind of felt all along like "its less morally bad to eat a chicken than a dolphin".
The reason that this meets resistance is because it forces the question "is it morally bad to eat the chicken at all?" and then we have to pick a spot on the continuum as a dividing point. There may be some small disagreement as to where to draw this line...
- derefr 10y agoSentience being a continuum also suggests that there might be points where man overlaps animals. For example, an adult crow might have more ethical value than a newborn human baby. Taking such a notion seriously would require restructuring a lot of society.
- noonespecial 10y agoWorse still, some people are more sentient than others. Its a deep rabbit hole that will lead you straight into conflict with many prevailing orthodoxies. Also very easy to abuse to create some very dangerous ideologies. Put some in the chamber of your Godwin accelerator and its damn near hypergolic. Almost enough to make you shudder and try not to think so much.
- M_Grey 10y agoIt really does, but if we don't do the thinking, someone else will do it for us and come to conclusions we may not like.