[jengleton]

Hold up, you can't just throw out a claim like "many animals are sentient" as if it's a statement of fact. You might be right, but there's a reason that "the hard problem of consciousness" is hard. We don't really have any way to distinguish sentience/non-sentience based on behavior. The whole concept is extremely mushy.

[oehtXRwMkIs]

You're right but as I've stated before, sentience and consciousness are different terms, and sentience has a definition in which the idea that animals are sentient isn't all that controversial. Not a mathematical axiom sure, but it all depends on what you mean by sentience, and I'm going by the classic definition.