From: decay@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (dean.kaflowitz)
Subject: Re: A comment on RvW    (personhood)
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: na
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 16:32:11 GMT

In article <1992Aug13.154730.7261@menudo.uh.edu> HADCRJAM@admin.uh.edu (MILLER, JIMMY A.) writes:
> In <1992Aug13.133656.8458@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> decay@cbnewsj.cb.att.com writes:
> > Point of information back at you.
> > How are you defining "animal" and "human"?  Unless they lied
> > to me in bio, humans are animals.  I understand that there are
> > common usages that separate human from animal, and I think
>   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > that's where you're driving, but if you're driving there
>   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > you need to show the rest of us the roadmap.  I think Eric and
> > Dougie were being stricter in terms of the biological definition.
>   Bingo, Dean.  That's exactly what *I* was driving at.  I had a feeling E&D
> were using the strict term, but IMO its best to distinguish between the 
> common and the technical, and use the common because its more clear (in this 
> case).  Kinda silly to argue that a sentient thing doesn't deserve "human"
> rights just cause it's green and has four legs.

Leaving aside my minor quibbles, I think you need a lint
remover because there are some serious fuzzballs on your
definitions.

Sentience as you use the term is, I think, intended to mean
somthing more like "self-awareness."  "Sentience," as defined
by the dictionary, does not have that meaning.  That's why I
was looking for clearer definitions, and though I asked you
only, the others ought to define their terms as well.  "self-
awareness" is itself a sticky term, and relies to an extent on
metaphysics for any meaning.  My own view of the term, in this
discussion, is an awareness of being alive rather than just
being alive.  That is rather abstract, so I'll shove it a little
further out.  Humans tend to not only be alive but to be aware
that they are alive.  The clearest indication of this is the
awareness of the not alive or of the cessation of life.  Most
other animals do not recognize anything significant in and of
itself in the death of a fellow creature.  Some other animals
do.  I would not necessarily regard such animals as self-aware,
since they are only aware of death externally.  One would
need to know if they recognize death as an inevitability for
themselves as well.

Another sign of self-awareness would be identity.  While my cats
no their names, I do not know that they have named me.  I do
not know that they recognize their names as attached to them, or
that they simply respond because I taught them their names
by calling them by name when I fed them as kittens.  Anyway,
you see where I am going.  I have a definition, but I don't
have a way of determining whether many other animals fit
the definition because there is a definite break in communication.
We can only be sure that humans are, for the most part at some
point in their development, self-aware.

> * Speak for my employers?  They don't even know I exist!		       *

Ah, but do you know you exist, and do they know they exist, and
do they really exist or are they simply a phantasm created by
some all-powerful deceiver?

Dean Kaflowitz