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This is the same question as animal rights. Of course neither robots or animals are human or sentient. But doesn't killing them have a scarring effect on us? An
by sdurkin 18y ago
This is the same question as animal rights. Of course neither robots or animals are human or sentient. But doesn't killing them have a scarring effect on us? And is that enough to outweigh the efficiency benefits of treating them as objects?
- DaniFong 18y agoThe word you're likely looking for is 'sapient.' According to the wikipedia, 'Sentience is the ability to feel or perceive subjectively.' I think there's a pretty clear case for the ability of animals to feel emotions, and feel pain. Whether they're a human like intelligence is another matter.
- sdurkin 18y agoI don't mean to get bogged down in a grammatical argument, but I really did intend to set a lower standard than sapience. What I mean is the second definition given by the OED for sentience, "self-awareness." For example, I could make a robot that made all the expressions of pain when injured. Would such a robot be sentient? I doubt it. Perhaps I'm blinded by speciesist prejudices, but I still draw a bright clear line between humans, which are both sentient and sapient, and everything else. There's definitely no cause for sapience in animals, but I doubt if there's even a case for sentience outside of some higher primates.
- DaniFong 18y agoDo other humans even pass your test? How can you be sure that they are not producing behavior simply consistent with sentience, rather than actually being indicative. Animals too have behavior consistent with subjective emotional experience. What separates theirs from ours, except our prejudice?
- sdurkin 18y agoI can tell humans are sapient through high level communication of complex thoughts that could only come from a sentient being. I know humans are sentient because sentience is a precondition to sapience.