Quote:
Originally Posted by Patricia
Techically, 'sentient' means able to feel --ie capable of feeling pain. (It's not concerned with rationality.)
Jeremy Bentham, the utilitarian philosopher argued that all sentient beings should have moral standing:
"The day may come when the rest of animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognised that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well a more conversible animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"
(Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Ch. 18 - NB.. Bentham was writing before the abolition of slavery in Britain but after it had been abolished briefly during the French Revolution.)
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Interestingly enough, scientists are discovering that plants can suffer, even from the threat of pruning.