(January 21, 2014 at 7:22 am)Bad Wolf Wrote: Thats a rather simplistic view of consciousness. And a pretty low standard too .So by your standards, the nematode isn't conscious but the rats and mice are?Equivocation ftw? I don't think so.
None of those are conscious because none of them are self aware. They don't understand themselves as an individual or have thoughts. They don't recognise themselves in mirrors. The only animals to do this, as far as i'm aware, are chimps, dolphins and elephants. Those animals are conscious and able to experience fear and distress by other ways than just instinct and conditioning.
The moral issues don't have anything to do with an animal looking in the mirror and recognizing that it is seeing what it looks like to others. They have to do with whether they experience pain and other kinds of suffering, and whether we have a right to inflict suffering on them.
An infant can't recognize itself in a mirror. Is it okay for me to kill and eat babies, then, so long as I've purchased them fairly and they don't suffer when they die?
