Is the criterion of sentience anthropocentric at bottom?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VI, p. 14 of the PDF edition · English translation

Proponents of anthropocentrism choose a typically human characteristic (for example, a certain way of reasoning) and assign moral standing to nonhuman animals according to their degree of similarity to humans in that characteristic. Defenders of the criterion of sentience are sometimes accused of doing the same⁹: they notice that sentience is a characteristic of humans, and choose to consider only beings that are sentient (excluding plants, fungi, and bacteria, for example). The objection concludes that, in both cases, only those who have similarities to humans receive consideration (all that changes, in each case, is the characteristic chosen as the standard of similarity).

The main response to this criticism points to two things.

First, there is a difference between using a way of reasoning and using sentience as the criterion for moral consideration: as we saw in chapter 1, the former does not determine who can be harmed and/or benefited, and the latter does.

Second, it is not that proponents of the criterion of sentience first postulate that humans matter and then look, among the animals they also intend to consider, for some similarity to humans. They are not arguing: “we should consider sentient beings because they resemble humans,” but exactly the opposite: “we should consider humans because they are sentient.” The criterion of sentience would continue to indicate which beings can be harmed and benefited (and, therefore, which should receive moral consideration) even if humans were not sentient. Thus, it is false that the criterion of sentience is, at bottom, anthropocentric.