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A comment on What the grieving mother orca tells us about how animals experience death. Parent comment

Re:What the grieving mother orca tells us about how animals ... by clay_the_ripper on Monday August 27, 2018 @12:35AM (#17849450)
Whether they actually have similar internal experience or not I think still does not justify the way humans treat animals. If a developmentally disabled human was not able comprehend life, death or suffering, that would not excuse mistreatment of that person.

Whether animals understand life or not isn’t really the point, and I think these arguments are misused to justify explotation and mistreatment.

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Re:What the grieving mother orca tells us about how animals ... by emodendroket on Monday August 27, 2018 @04:02AM (#17850078)
This whole discussion is about whether they understand it. But I think it's revealing that multiple people have shifted the discussion to the treatment of animals -- it seems to me like some of us, rather than thinking animals deserve better treatment because of their sentience, think animals must be sentient because they deserve better treatment. Personally, I do not find the evidence that humans have anything approaching a human internal life persuasive.
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