This section needs additional citations for verification. This is why the limit of sentience (.) is the only defensible boundary of concern for the interests of others. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of experiencing enjoyment or happiness, there is nothing to be taken into account. No matter what the nature of the being, the principle of equality requires that the suffering be counted equally with the like suffering – in so far as rough comparisons can be made – of any other being. If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration. A mouse, on the other hand, does have an interest in not being tormented, because mice will suffer if they are treated in this way. Nothing that we can do to it could possibly make any difference to its welfare. A stone does not have interests because it cannot suffer. It would be nonsense to say that it was not in the interests of a stone to be kicked along the road by a child.
The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful way. Peter Singer provides the following justification of sentiocentrism: Consider transferring direct quotations to Wikiquote or, for entire works, to Wikisource. Please help improve the article by presenting facts as a neutrally worded summary with appropriate citations. This section contains too many or overly lengthy quotations for an encyclopedic entry. Utilitarianism accepts sentiocentrism, thus granting all sentient beings moral concern, where sentient beings are those that have the capacity for experiencing positive or negative conscious states. There are sources that consider sentiocentrism as a modification of traditional ethic, which holds that moral concern must be extended to sentient animals. According to the concept, there are organisms that have some subjective experience, which include self-awareness, rationality as well as the capacity to experience pain and suffering. Other organisms, therefore, aside from humans are morally important in their own right. Sentiocentrism believes that sentience is the necessary and sufficient condition in order to belong to the moral community. Sentiocentrism is a term contained in the Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare, edited by Marc Bekoff and Carron A. Other prominent philosophers discussing or defending sentiocentrism include Peter Singer, Tom Regan, and Mary Anne Warren. : 81–82 Moore used the term "zoocentricism" to describe the belief that universal consideration and care should be given to all sentient beings he believed that this was too difficult for humans to comprehend in their current stage of development. As a result, he argued that sentience and ethics are inseparable and therefore every sentient piece of the universe has an intrinsic ethical relationship to every other sentient part, but not the insentient parts. Moore believed that only sentient beings can make such moral judgements because they are the only parts of the universe which can experience pleasure and suffering. He argued that what aids them in their struggle can be called good and what opposes them can be called bad. Howard Moore, in Better World Philosophy (1899), described every sentient being as existing in a constant state of struggle. The late 19th- and early 20th-century American philosopher J. Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, (1823), 2nd edition, Chapter 17, footnote But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old.
#When does a fetus gain sentience skin
The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. In his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Bentham made a comparison between slavery and sadism toward humans and non-human animals: Members of species who are able to experience pleasure and pain are thus included in the category. He maintained that any individual who is capable of subjective experience should be considered a moral subject.
The 18th-century utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham was among the first to argue for sentiocentrism.
English utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), early proponent of sentiocentrism