Recognising Mental Aptitudes That Accompanying Sentience and the Repercussions for Human Exceptionalism and Moral Obligations, Illustrated by a Cows Concerns About Death

Today, in many countries mammals are recognised as sentient in law. The question addressed here is: “is a cow’s death considered by her similar to how I perceive mind, where is it similar and where different?” It is pointed out how sentience is a necessary requirement for many mental attributes including learning, memory, acquiring knowledge and beliefs, having experiences, consciousness and self-consciousness, having a social contract, communicating, knowing others intentions (theory of mind), and being a moral agent. Some of these mental attributes have and still are considered unique to humans. Therefore, recognising sentience necessitate a re-examination of humanism and human exceptionalism. On re-examination, the fundamental human exceptional skills are bipedalism (which allows developing elaborate manipulative skills) and a context independent language. The mixing and merging of these two skills have given rise to the sciences and religions. By understanding the implications of sentience and recognising the resulting mental similarities between humans and cows, and where their differences really are. it is possible to assess the cows or any mammals, concerns about how she lives and dies and our moral obligations to each other and the world. Each species has an exceptional ontology which ways which can be assessed by careful study. The Anthropocene demands that we al-so take careful account of the environmental effects of the life and death of cows and humans to fulfil our moral obligations.