A Conversation for Sentient Fish
Sentience
Noggin the Nog Started conversation Jun 9, 2002
Question one; are we talking about awareness or self awareness? Awareness is almost certainly widespread, and probably universal among mammals. Self awareness is a bit more tricky; how do you know other humans are self-aware? There is no absolute empirical proof of this, except that we have to learn how to talk about such things from other humans; if I was the first self-aware human there would be no words to describe what was going on. The problem is that for other possibly sentient creatures we have no such test. Morally speaking, however, I think the best policy is to err on the side of caution. Other creatures, at least the complex ones, show every sign of being capable of suffering, and the infliction of needless suffering is always to be avoided.
Sentience
Alex 195614 As everyone else seems to like incredibly long names I keep mine ironically short. Posted Jun 9, 2002
Aka
sentient until proven not
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Sentience
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