philosophers have argued long and hard about the "qualia" of experience---the ineffable, inherent, qualities of what it means to "see the color red" or "feel pain and pleasure", and whether these qualia are the same even among different human beings.

their conclusion is that either qualia are too vague a term to be useful in any consequential discussion, or that the minimalistic, occam's razorian assumption must be that qualia are shared among sentient beings.

what this further implies is that the formal basis of granting rights to other entities in a system of moral philosophy cannot be based on whether the other entities are _exactly like_, _mostly like_, _somewhat like_, or _not at all like_ the entities granting the rights---likeness is a black hole of needless back-and-forth arguments that cannot be decided based on evidence.

this is why we have the above confusion about whether dolphins feel pain (or see the world) the same way we do, and whether killing a rat is "okay" because a (democ)rat is just a filthy disease-ridden vermin.

this also leads to corner cases among humans. some human beings are unable to feel pain because of neurological problems (they live low-quality lives because they constantly _physically_ hurt themselves, and unlike normal humans, are so unaware of the "pain" that they cannot take any action to avoid the "painful" situation until they damage themselves very badly). in any case, are we to say that such human beings should not be given the same rights as "normal" human beings.

btw, using pain (or the ability to feel it) as the basis for rights is as unteneable as the other great bugaboo that has been used in the past to inflict cruelty on animals, i.e. their intelligence (or the perception of how close their level of intelligence is to our own).

by this argument, human retards (i.e. rethuglicans) are ripe for constant abuse since it is clear that these retards have even less intelligence than (democ)rats and other such disease-ridden vermin.

this still leaves open the question of how we base granting rights and privileges to non-human entities. unfortunately, the answer will always be arbitrary because at some level (and quite contrary to the fervent desires of libertarians and ayn randians), moral axioms are always arbitrary at some level.

this is why it is perfectly fine to be a vegetarian and not wear fur, just as it is perfectly fine to butcher and eat dog.

the only thing (of any worth) that moral philosophers can say regarding this matter is that one needs to be _internally consistent_ w.r.t. the application of moral axioms.

for example, it is silly and contradictory to grow/ask for free-range chicken because such chicken live "better lives", only to kill and cook and eat said chicken.

on the other hand, it is perfectly consistent to grow/ask for free-range chicken because of some perception that such chicken taste better (or produce more healthy meat) than cooped-up chicken.

to each their own.

btw, i am completely opposed to societal idiocies like punishing michael vick for dog-fighting. dogs are property, and vick is free to do anything with his personal property and the rest of society has no business telling him what to do. in fact, dumfuck fatty-fuck americans really have no right to tell anyone else anything about morality, when they have been murdering innocent iraqi babies and torturing people, and have not yet brought anyone to justice for these crimes.