i was thinking about how my Brave New World of cloning would look when i thought, what if we just made ox-humans who were just barely smart enough to know how to be a very efficient ox who doesnt really need to be watched over and guided by people because he was barely smart enough to learn how to do it on his own. this guy would be a completely new species and i would assume that if hes got human dna for some of his brain, he ought to have some kind of perverted consciousness similar to ours.
if creating this guy is unethical, then maybe so is domesticating any animal. locking them up in a prison of a house with a backyard at best when what they really want is to run hunt and chase things.
whatever the answer to that ethical dilemma might be, what i really want to know is what does anybody think abut animals being sentient?
because clearly gorillas can learn to talk with sign language. if they can talk does that mean they are as sentient as a stupid human? and if so, how many other animals are like progressively stupider humans? where if any would a line be drawn between sentient life and non? cells? non-mammals?
I think the argument goes… to say we can slaughter animals because we possess a superior intellect would mean it would be ok to slaughter humans who are mentally defecient.
One group has tried exactly that (killing the mentally handicapped)… they were called Nazis.
Sentience connotes sensation, which is related to memory, which is related to consciousness, so I would say that since animals have sensation and memory, they also have consciousness, or “souls”, just like us, albeit simpler (dumber) ones. Essentially we slaughter animals because we are racist (speciesist?) against them. If they could communicate with us, then we would have empathy with them and this wouldn’t happen, much like if Blacks never learned English, then we wouldn’t empathize with them and they would still be slaves.