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If we could uplift dogs or other non-sentient animals to sentience, should we? There's a Rick and Morty episode where they uplift the intelligence of a pet dog, who goes on to uplift all other dogs and lead a rebellion against humans. Theoretically the idea is that if humans and dogs had the same level of intelligence, the way we treat dogs would be inhumane.
While I agree with the statement above, obviously there's a vast gulf between the intelligence of humans and every other form of life we know of. If we accept the premise that once we have the technology to uplift dogs we not only must treat them different but have a moral imperative to uplift all dogs, we get into dangerous territory. Essentially as soon as we become capable of increasing the intelligence of any form of life, we must. This sounds like a bad idea, especially since at a certain point we may lose out to other forms of species that have evolved to kill us. (Mosquitos, insects generally that are hard to kill but venomous/diseased enough to kill us.)
Assuming uplifting other species is even possible, I wonder how this would change our outlook on how we treat animals today. Personally I am not a vegetarian, totally fine with pets, although I do find the state of factory farming today pretty dismal, and think we should treat animals we eat better. As someone's flair here says, how far will we last until we have to become outright speciesist?
Short answer? Utilitarianism.
I have heard some of the more extreme animal advocacy people arguing for this type of thing. Basically the idea that if a living being has any qualia whatsoever, it deserves to have enough intelligence to make its own decisions in some capacity. Usually with some caveats around the idea of intelligence actually making people less happy. Then of course you get into the area of whether or not it's positive utility to make everyone dumber.
Tell you what, I think animal advocacy people don't want the dog/owner relationship to exist because the anthropomorphize dogs so they're tying themselves into knots imagining how they can abolish that relationship but not make dogs extinct.
In dogs we have (rightly or wrongly) bread an animal more noble and worthy than we are. They serve us better than we serve each other. They might not be as intelligent as we are, but I think they're having a much better time. I don't think we should strive to be as dumb/happy as dogs are, but to me (a staunch dog-phobic mind you) it would seem cruel to take away the arraignment they currently enjoy.
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