Can I just say, and I'm just being honest...

[Crossless2.0]

That's just a restatement of what you already wrote.

No, you responded asking why on earth I thought that they didn't feel anything. I said because I don't think they're sentient. I didn't know you knew that was the same thing so I was trying to clarify that for you. You seemed clueless about sentience so I thought I'd point out more directly that it's entirely relevant to feeling.

I don't think they're sentient because I don't think their brains are developed enough to be sentient.

I take it you're not an 'animal person'.

How do you come to that conclusion?

 
It doesn't seem to me that you've spent much time around them if you aren't aware that birds exhibit behaviors consistent with feeling pain.

What on earth makes you think animals don't require advanced neurophysiology to feel something?

Show me where I ever suggested any such thing, and you might have a point.

Aren't you an atheist that believes that we've all evolved from microbes?

 
Yes.

Do you believe all life has sentience?

No. 

Would you call grass sentient?

 
No.

Bacteria sentient?

No.

Viruses sentient?

 
Again, no. I also don't think that viruses fulfill all of the criteria associated with living organisms.

All animals are sentient?

 
Not sure, but I 'err' on the side of assuming they are.

Bacteria are animals.

No, they aren't. Bacteria belong to an entirely different domain.

Do you think they're sentient?

 
Asked and answered.

Anything that is a vertebrate is sentient?

Again, not sure -- especially about fish, reptiles, and salamanders. I err on the side of assuming they might be. 

What about octopuses?

 
Yes.

Why are your lines so arbitrary?

Are they? Tell me more about what I think on this subject we've never previously discussed. 

Why on earth do YOU think the way you do?

 
I agree that sentience must be tied to a certain degree of nervous development. I also think you draw the line incorrectly in the case of birds.

You sound to me like you may as well believe in souls.

Sounds to me like someone is straining for a rhetorical point. I assume so, since that sentence has fuck all to do with thinking.

No need to be such a sardonic shithead towards me when you're the pleb who is coming across as the unthinking nutjob, from my perspective.

First, my apologies. I didn't realize -- lowly pleb that I am -- that I was in the presence of nobility. Second, before you start in about how I'm an unthinking nutjob, you might want to learn the most basic fucking thing about domains.

Anyway, I'm glad you like animals -- even the bacterial 'kind'.