Why Secular Morality is Superior

[John V]

Yes, you need to explain the cutoff. Sentience does not necessarily imply feelings or self-awareness. Focus like a laser, man!

Really?

Yes, really.

Dictionary.com: Sentience

noun
sentient condition or character; capacity for sensation or feeling.

No need for self-awareness, and feeling in this context is sensory, as opposed to emotional feelings such as happiness.

— n
1. the state or quality of being sentient; awareness

2. sense perception not involving intelligence or mental perception; feeling

The second one specifies that thinking and self-awareness aren't necessary.

Merriam Webster: Sentient

[quote]1 : responsive to or conscious of sense impressions <sentient beings>
2: aware
3: finely sensitive in perception or feeling

Again, the first doesn't require self awareness etc.

You lose.

Hardly. Did you even read these before you posted them?

The Stanford site defines sentience in its entry on consciousness as:

Sentience. It may be conscious in the generic sense of simply being a sentient creature, one capable of sensing and responding to its world (Armstrong 1981).

Shortly thereafter it notes that self awareness is a higher standard:

Self-consciousness. A third and yet more demanding sense might define conscious creatures as those that are not only aware but also aware that they are aware, thus treating creature consciousness as a form of self-consciousness.

Here's the wiki entry on sentience
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentience

In the philosophy of consciousness, "sentience" can refer to the ability of any entity to have subjective perceptual experiences, or as some philosophers refer to them, "qualia".[1] This is distinct from other aspects of the mind and consciousness, such as creativity, intelligence, sapience, self-awareness, and intentionality (the ability to have thoughts that mean something or are "about" something). Sentience is a minimalistic way of defining "consciousness", which is otherwise commonly used to collectively describe sentience plus other characteristics of the mind.
...
In the philosophy of animal rights, sentience implies the ability to experience pleasure and pain. Animal-rights advocates typically argue that any sentient being is entitled at a minimum to the right not to be subjected to unnecessary suffering, though they may differ on what other rights (e.g., the right to life) may be entailed by simple sentience. Sentiocentrism describes the theory that sentient individuals are the center of moral concern.

If sentience is the cutoff, your morality would be sentiocentric. The basic idea is that creatures that can suffer have rights, regardless of whether they have thoughts, happiness, or self-awareness.

Lately people commonly use sentient when they should use sapient, which does necessarily imply higher intellectual functions.