Politrukk said:
Happyninja42 said:
LegendaryGamer0 said:
Happyninja42 said:
Can you prove they are sentient? Because from what I've seen from most experts in the field, cats don't qualify as sentient.
As someone who has lived with an assload of cats for the majority of my life, I would state they very much qualify as sentient. Even if they aren't, I can't stop loving these little bastards!
Oh I love cats too, and have 2 of them right now. But the issue was a poster was calling people in this thread hypocrites for "owning sentient creatures" while decrying the act of owning a sentient creature. Considering that by every actual scientific definition of sentient, I'm pretty sure cats don't qualify, it makes his holier than thou stance fairly moot, and contrary to the actual discussion.
Loving the cats is another issue entirely, and has no bearing on whether or not they are sentient.
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/sentient
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentient
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/sentient
Holier than thou you said?
Fun fact, science fiction typically uses an incorrect definition of sentience, but makes the generally accepted arguments based on their definition. So linking the actual definition is not a particularly strong argument just because you are not actually addressing the issue at all.
You are basically saying "the point is moot", someone says "I agree, there is no reason to discuss it." and you respond with "Ah-ha! Moot actually means subject to debate and dispute! I win!" Though I am not sure you did this intentionally.
This is done because no good word exists to convey the actual ideas that people are trying to get across. Because it is a really complex issue. For a good example, watch "The Measure of a Man" a Star Trek TNG S02E09. In this episode there is a court hearing to determine if Data is property. This is particularly noteworthy to the discussion at hand, because without his emotion chip (which he will not get for years) Data does not meet the technical definition of sentient. He does not have emotions or desires as we understand them. But you are going to have a hell of a time convincing me that this justifies owning a being like Data.
But I am just going to use the incorrect definition going forward because I need a word.
The trick is that there is no line. Like so many things you cannot create a clearly defined test that puts all sentient things on one side and all not sentient things on the other. However, this does not mean that certain things do not clearly fall in one category, while other things clearly fall in the other. Biologists deal with this all the time. But just because you cannot draw an exact line in the sand does not make the categories incorrect or arbitrary.
Going further, most would agree that a person is deserving of more respect and rights than a cat, which is deserving of more respect than a cow, and a cow in turn deserves more respect than an ant. And with good reason. The question of what respect they deserve is an interesting one. Most people will draw the property line somewhere between the cat and the human, and I agree with that assessment.
I personally like the Issac Asimov position: "There is no right to deny freedom to any object with a mind advanced enough to grasp the concept and desire the state." But even this leaves open a very interesting point: What if the object can understand freedom, but does not desire the state? Is it ok to own such a being? And secondarily, is it ok to create such a being?
This is essentially the question asked by our good friend Paragon Fury.
I got to go, but I'll finish this up later.
Edit: Made a slight mistake: Data does not meet the originally intended use of sentient. The original point was that establishing sentience is assumed to establish the ability to suffer, and that if a thing is capable of suffering we should not cause it to suffer. The argument was originally made with the point of animal ownership in mind.
Data is not capable of suffering, hence the argument does not apply to him. This is what I meant.