this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2025
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The important part is that it feels like something subjectively to be a living human. It's easy to presume animals close to humans are like us to a degree, but all we know is what it's like to be ourselves moment to moment. There's no reason to deny an unalive system cannot also feel - we cannot test anything.
Where do we draw the line though? Humans assign emotions to all kinds of inanimate things: plush animals, the sky, dead people, fictional characters etc. We can't give all of those the rights of a conscious being, so we need to have some kind of objective way to look at it.
If someone claims feeling in a mere concept (without a body in a location).. I would find it very difficult to take seriously. But I must admit that's just my intuition.
I see nothing special in human meat that couldn't be be significantly replicated by electronics, software, gears, etc. Consciousness is an imergent property.
I fear that non-human, conscious creatures must fight us for those rights.