[ON HOLD... BUT NOT FOREVER] Animal Sentience

[Tinhampton]

Character count: 631
Word count: 99

ICly by Alexander Smith, Tinhamptonian Delegate-Ambassador to the World Assembly.
OOC: Vaguely inspired by the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill and its failure to recognise the sapience of invertebrates.

Animal Sentience
A resolution to restrict civil freedoms in the interest of moral decency.

Category: Moral Decency

Strength: Mild

Proposed by: Tinhampton

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Recognising that animals are sentient, a status including the ability to feel happiness and delight as well as pain and distress, and

Believing that the wellbeing of sentients, much like the wellbeing of sapients, is every member state's business...

The General Assembly hereby:

1. defines "animals," for the purpose of this resolution, as those non-sapient organisms in possession of a nervous system,
2. requires member states to recognise, through legislation, the ability of all animals to experience feelings, and
3. urges members and their inhabitants not to act in a way that harms the wellbeing of animals.

[Trellania]

Dame Allania Trueblood wanders in, carrying what looks like a tennis racket. Only it strangely has metal cross-hatching and a button on the handle.

"Okay, this is not the closet I sto... borrowed to store my belongings..."

She stops to look at the resolution, opens her mouth, and then notices the nation proposing. "Nope."

Dame Allania spins a full 180 degrees on the ball of her foot and marches out.

OOC: Not certain the point of this one?

OOC2: I really should have checked this one for typoes.

[Bears Armed]

OOC: Even if you do limit the definition of "animals" to those with nervous systems, thus excluding [for example] Sponges, there is no scientifically valid reason to think that all of those are capable of feeling emotions rather than just reactive or instinctive responses to stimuli. In many cases those nervous systems simply aren't complex enough for there to be any concentrations of neurons in which emotional capacity could be developed, and in many cases -- particularly those of "anchored" filter-feeders or suspension-feeders, or endoparasites, that could do little or nothing to change their situations -- the inability to do anything with those emotions would make the development of facilities for feeling emotions a waste of resources against which evolutionary pressure would probably select. I'll definitely concede this ability as reasonably likely in the Squids & Cuttlefish & Octopi (a group to which RL British law actually does extend the same protections that it gives to vertebrates...), and the possibility of its existence in certain Arthropod groups (primarily at least the larger types of both Spiders & Scorpions, and perhaps also some of the larger & more active types of Crustaceans), but would require serious evidence in most other cases. What evolutionary use would feeling emotions be to a Coral polyp or an adult Barnacle or [even more closely related to us] an adult Sea-Squirt, for example, or to a Tapeworm?

[Tinfect]

OOC:
As true as it is, (to the extent Bears Armed up there notes,) what exactly do you expect legal recognition to achieve, exactly? I assure you it isn't in ignorance of the fact that an animal can feel pain and/or excitement etc. that animal abuse happens, it's in disregard thereof. If you want animal welfare legislation, you, have to actually write some, not do vague recognition without actual effect.

[Outer Sparta]

Ambassador Tav: Nah, I don't think we would support this resolution that recognizes animal sentience but fails to have concrete measures taken to ensure that. Also, it's not coming home. Outer Sparta is way better at football than a bunch of it's coming home players who think it's coming home.

[Jedinsto]

no

[Separatist Peoples]

"There is no need for this proposal. Opposed."

[Picairn]

"Simply no."

[Honeydewistania]

why?

[Imperium Anglorum]

OOC:
As true as it is, (to the extent Bears Armed up there notes,) what exactly do you expect legal recognition to achieve, exactly? I assure you it isn't in ignorance of the fact that an animal can feel pain and/or excitement etc. that animal abuse happens, it's in disregard thereof. If you want animal welfare legislation, you, have to actually write some, not do vague recognition without actual effect.

Concurred.

[Araraukar]

defines "animals," for the purpose of this resolution, as those non-sapient organisms in possession of a nervous system,

OOC: How many nerves count as a nervous system, how much signaling must they do, must there be feedback thresholds and actually systemic emergent signaling? Asking seriously.

[Tinhampton]

Now listen, folks, I am so sorry that I can't go ahead with this right now. But trust me, I will get a second draft out there, and that draft will be big, and it will be beautiful, and it will have very many important provisions. Believe me - it'll be huge.

. .

[Separatist Peoples]

Now listen, folks, I am so sorry that I can't go ahead with this right now. But trust me, I will get a second draft out there, and that draft will be big, and it will be beautiful, and it will have very many important provisions. Believe me - it'll be huge.

. .

Ooc: why bother

[Outer Sparta]

Now listen, folks, I am so sorry that I can't go ahead with this right now. But trust me, I will get a second draft out there, and that draft will be big, and it will be beautiful, and it will have very many important provisions. Believe me - it'll be huge.

. .

Your favorite emoticon.

[Herby]

Well ehhhh if you ever come back to this then can we make an exception for squirrels? I mean Roadkill Sundays just won’t be the same if we have to consider the squirrels’ feelings about the whole thing.