ABSTRACT
The similar-minds approach has spawned an industry of cognitive ethologists eager to investigate—ironically often through animal experiments—the extent to which nonhumans have humanlike cognitive characteristics. Although similar-minds theory is ostensibly a recent phenomenon, linking the moral status of nonhumans to cognitive characteristics beyond sentience is not new. Indeed, this idea has, in one form or another, characterized our thinking about the moral status of nonhumans for a long time, and it is responsible for a good deal of mischief. This chapter discusses the history of this idea. It presents several reasons why we should abandon the theory in favor of requiring only sentience for full membership in the moral community. The theory does not explain why sentience is not a sufficient criterion for moral significance but merely assumes that some supposedly uniquely human characteristic is the ticket for admission to the moral community.
