Do you agree with Richard Dawkins?

[mediamogul]

Yes social skills and intelligence are part of why I think I don't have an ethical right to treat other animals as lower forms of "life". There is also the fact that even if a person has lost mental capabilities they are still part of a species which is intelligent and social and still have the potential.

Really it all comes down to the potential to be intelligent, social, and self aware(this being the key phrase) of their own suffering.


No. Some humans with chronic mental incapacity or senility do not have any potential. Likewise, they will not be as capable as say a pig or a dog of forming social groups and certainly not any more self aware. So on this basis, these unfortunate humans deserve no consideration of their interests even though their central nervous systems operate and they give reactions to pain?


Even if an animal "feels" pain how can it really feel anything without being self aware. Without self awareness it is only a simple reaction to stimuli. That is all and therefore there is no pain, at least not the kind you are talking about. Sentience. I have to say sentience is probably the most important factor in everything, although breaking this down into simple rules is a very complicated thing to do, not to mention the fact it is very difficult to tell if an animal is self aware. It could still be disputed whether a cat has sentience, but I am sure they do.

The most basic way of experiencing the world is through feeling or sensation. 'Sentience' is defined as the ability to have perceptions and sensations. A 'sentient animal' is an animal that is aware of his/her surroundings and of what happens to him/her and is capable of feeling pain and pleasure, at the least. The current scientific consensus is that all vertebrate animals, at least, are capable of feeling pain and experiencing distress. Why would you think otherwise. We have evolved central nervous systems together, we react to pain in a similar way and we all benefited from the pain response in the evoltionary process. I agree that sentience is important, so we agree here. Perhaps you are disputing the evidence, if so I'd like to see some reputable cources.


And yes I do like bacon. Thanks for repeating. This was not part of my argument. It was just a simple statement since well, I really like bacon...

Again, perhaps it is becuse you really like bacon that you are not willing to look at the facts up until now?

In terms of the argument that some humans are no longer sentient and therefore are not within the realm of ethical consideration, I think that one needs to understand that this is few and far between. Diminished senses or mental capacity do not mean that they lack sentience. Lacking sentience would be something to the effect of being in a coma with no chance of recovery. At that point many families do choose to pull the plug if they are on life support but if not people are essentially allowed to remain in a persistive vegetative state indefinitely. Many times the families will try to act upon what they know or perceive to have been the will of the person regarding being in such a state. The treatment of the body is not strictly governed by ethics at this point but instead more directed by social custom, the feelings that the people who were close to the person had and pragmatic considerations of costs/resources/etc... This is where a bit of relativism comes in. Certain societies demonstrate respect for the dead or comatose in certain ways but it is no longer a moral issue. Also, the idea that abortion is an acceptable practice is due to the fact that the fetus has not yet developed into a sentient being and therefore no moral harm is done by aborting it.