Abstract

Are some organisms more sentient than others? Recent attention within animal welfare research centres around which and how much evidence is sufficient to ascertain whether a species' members are sentient. However, as more species are recognised as potentially sentient, a pressing issue arises in policymaking: should all sentient species be regarded as sentient to the same extent? While a degreed notion of sentience has been criticised as conceptually implausible or ethically problematic, this paper argues that these objections are flawed. By employing formal semantic tools, this paper proposes a delineation of the multidimensional structure of sentience that can serve as the basis for a framework for responsibly comparing degrees of sentience across species. The framework proposed underscores that the current debate regarding cross-species comparisons will only progress through an overall understanding of the different commitments that achieving welfare comparisons involves within the science-policy interface.