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Couldn't a robot be programmed to respond to stimuli, and to communicate with other robots? Would that then be a form of sentience?
by jkepler 5y ago
Couldn't a robot be programmed to respond to stimuli, and to communicate with other robots? Would that then be a form of sentience?
- simiones 5y agoYes, they could be, though the question usually arises about whether a living thing is sentient, and it's fairly natural and easy to define life such that robots are not living beings. Overall the point here is that sentience isn't a very useful measure of anything. If there were an explicit law recognizing the rights of all living things to a decent death, we would essentially be forced to become exclusive carnivores, as its almost impossible to euthanize a plant or fungus.
- ninjanomnom 5y agoFruits (as in from fruiting plants, not fruits in the culinary sense) I assume would still be fair game as they are designed to separate from the parent plant, often falling off without any intervention even.
- simiones 5y agoWell, given that seeds inside the fruit sense their environment and start germinating only in specific conditions, even this would be debatable. Hopefully, if the cells of the fruit body itself are not sentient (if they do not react to their environment in some meaningful way), then eating the fruiting body is probably ok, provided you euthanize the seeds or let them live on.
- fsflover 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruitarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruitarianism