Word: sentient
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...know that your roommates are conscious? No, not at 4 a.m. after copious libations have reduced them to senseless Neanderthals, but how do you know they are conscious, sentient beings to begin with? You might reason as follows: You are conscious (one can be fairly certain of that, most days) and when you interact with your roommates they behave as if their brains possessed the same characteristics that you attribute to your consciousness. Therefore, you attribute the characteristic of "conscious" to these other entities, your roommates. But this inherently subjective definition of consciousness opens the door wide for beings...
This letter is addressed to Jane--Jane the person, Jane the magazine, Jane the enigmatic figure who has lurked, inconspicuous but ever-present, throughout most of my sentient life. I just bought the one-year-anniversary issue of your new magazine, and my first question is: What happened? Either the irony of the publication is just too subtle for even the most subtle of readers, or someone with big hair and bigger scissors has snipped out your judgment and put it in the crisper of an industrial fridge. This magazine is a slap in the face of everything you used...
...metaphor, a metaphor of resignation. And frighteningly astute. It often feels to an undergraduate on this campus that the administration is at best an ocean and at worst, something even less sentient. In the course of my time here, the University has made, with seeming consistency, decisions in blatant opposition to student opinion. Cases in point: randomization, where the majority of the student body spoke out against it; Phillips Brooks House Association, when hundreds of students rallied for greater student autonomy; the Core, which few professors and even fewer students believe is intellectually meaningful; even our anachronistic schedule, with finals...
Hacking off its fins and then throwing a shark back into the ocean to die is cruel. But fishing can also involve hooks and death by suffocation. As sentient beings, sharks and other fish deserve protection regardless of population issues. We can easily live without using them for food, medicine or other purposes. It is unfortunate that we, with our genius for economics, have not created alternatives for those who continue to practice a primitive livelihood. DAVID J. CANTOR Glenside...
...experiments on animals that will likely follow the cloning, are ethical. Why do we consider human lives sacred and animal lives to be scientific machines? The lives of monkeys and sheep are as sacred to them as ours are to us. When will we incorporate a reverence for all sentient life into our scientific method? --Katja B. Hrones...