ABSTRACT
In the last chapter, we considered arguments for the view that sentience grounds membership in the moral community. In other words, we ought to factor a being’s interests into our moral deliberations just in case that being has the capacity to feel pleasure and pain. This invites us to ask some follow-up questions. The first is methodological: How do we determine which beings are sentient? The second applies that methodology: What does the evidence say about which beings are sentient? The third is about uncertainty: When the evidence is ambiguous, how should we proceed? This chapter tackles all three of these issues.
