A weak argument. Of course animals are sentient - with some sense of self, able to experience pain, fear and so on. I think this is even true to a limited degree of fish and insects.
But that doesn't mean they're conscious of their own mortality, or experience existential suffering in contemplating it; when we project such worries onto animals as in the film Babe, we're committing an anthropomorphic fallacy and equating sentience with sapience. I'm OK with animals being raised for meat and killed painlessly, because animals don't seem the least bit burdened by temporal concerns such as whether their lives have purpose or what sort of life expectancy they enjoy.
I have a large number of pets that I took in as abandoned animals and think about this sort of issue pretty frequently. Although I value their companionship a great deal and even find things worth learning from them, I don't believe they have any abstract concept of mortality, only of discomfort or danger in the present moment. This article assumes such abstract knowledge as an unstated premise and then builds its entire argument upon that. It lacks foundation.
anigbrowl|12 years ago
But that doesn't mean they're conscious of their own mortality, or experience existential suffering in contemplating it; when we project such worries onto animals as in the film Babe, we're committing an anthropomorphic fallacy and equating sentience with sapience. I'm OK with animals being raised for meat and killed painlessly, because animals don't seem the least bit burdened by temporal concerns such as whether their lives have purpose or what sort of life expectancy they enjoy.
I have a large number of pets that I took in as abandoned animals and think about this sort of issue pretty frequently. Although I value their companionship a great deal and even find things worth learning from them, I don't believe they have any abstract concept of mortality, only of discomfort or danger in the present moment. This article assumes such abstract knowledge as an unstated premise and then builds its entire argument upon that. It lacks foundation.