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MugaSofer comments on Arguments Against Speciesism - LessWrong
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It comes from valuing future world trajectories, rather than just valuing the present. I see a small difference between killing a fetus before delivery and an infant after delivery, and the difference I see is roughly proportional to the amount of time between the two (and the probability that the fetus will survive to become the infant).
These sorts of gradual rules seem to me far more defensible than sharp gradations, because the sharpness in the rule rarely corresponds to a sharpness in reality.
What about a similar gradual rule for varying sentience levels of animal?
A quantitative measure of sentience seems much more reasonable than a binary measure. I'm not a biologist, though, and so don't have a good sense of how sharp the gradations of sentience in animals are; I would naively expect basically every level of sentience from 'doesn't have a central nervous system' to 'beyond humans' to be possible, but don't know if there are bands that aren't occupied for various practical reasons.
I don't think anyone is advocating a binary system. No one is supporting voting rights for pigs, for example.