Sentience

[Preechr]

Self-Aware and Sentience are kind of esoteric terms. What passes as Self-Aware to you is just as different from that for a puppy as it is for a mentally handicapped person.

I don't think Vince was actually off the mark. The distinctions being made here are directly aimed at a valuation of one life over another. Self-Awareness and Sentience is what essentially separates us from other life forms from our point of view. We value everything that exhibits those traits, and can morally digest lesser treatment of those things that do not.

We like things that are like us more. We place a higher value on human life than any other. From a universal perspective, everything is just various collections of different forms of electricity, even people. The universe values each particle the same, because all of those particles belong to it and it wouldn't care to lose ANY of them. Mankind values each man the same for the same reason, and each subset contained therein follows the same rule, all the way down to the part where you value your own individual subset of particles more than any other person's.

Your own valuation of the rest of everything is not going to be the same as anybody else's. A sewer rat is aware of itself and has sentience, but not to the same degree you do. If human sentience and self-awareness are uniques to humans, it's possible that sewer rats have some other defining trait that is as equally valuable to them as our Sentience is to us.

I'm just kinda rambling now... just trying to pitch in a little....