Do you agree with Richard Dawkins?

[mediamogul]

"Sentience" is not determined by species? News to me. Are there sentient carrots and non sentient carrots then? Sentient cattle and non-sentient cattle? "Sentience" is a description of an effect that seems to be the product of a specific type of biological machinery which is doled out in certain species. Hell, only one species was involved in forming the definition of the word to begin with......Perhaps that's the trouble right there, we started with a shitty definition?

Under the "either you have it or you don't" argument, couldn't I just anesthetize any animal before slaughter? Or perhaps I could stun them so that they were not aware of what was about to happen, thereby eliminating any suffering? Like, IDK, a captive bolt or penetrating stunner to the head?

Sentience is, again, determined by consciousness and the ability to suffer. Not inclusion in a particular species. It might be that sentience is passed as a phenotype amongst specific species and is inherent to those species but that is not the consideration in itself.

Second point is again a good point. The link is depriving them of life when they have a right to live due to their sentience. This is the argument of the desires of one thing impinging upon the rights of another. A carrot does not care one way or another whether or not it lives but a cow does. You are not depriving a carrot of life, liberty and the reasonable pursuit of it's own needs. A carrot could never experience any of those things due to, once again, lack of a nervous system. This is a factual statement and not drawn on the lines of species. If some carrots were found to be sentient then they would be worthy of consideration. To my knowledge there are no plants that appear to exhibit consciousness or the ability to experience pain. It would be interesting to find one that did, though.

It's been a while since I've had someone stick with the argument long enough to get to this point. Usually people say "but it tastes so good" and are out.