If I understand it correctly, this is the position endorsed here. I don’t think realizing that this view is right would change much for me; I would still try to generalize criteria for why I care about a particular experience and then care about all instances of the same thing. However, I realize that this would make it much more difficult to convince others to draw the same lines. If the question of whether a given being is sentience translates into whether I have reasons to care about that being, then one part of my argument would fall away. This issue doesn’t seem to be endemic to the treatment of non-human animals though, you’d have it with any kind of utility function that values well-being.
If I understand it correctly, this is the position endorsed here. I don’t think realizing that this view is right would change much for me; I would still try to generalize criteria for why I care about a particular experience and then care about all instances of the same thing. However, I realize that this would make it much more difficult to convince others to draw the same lines. If the question of whether a given being is sentience translates into whether I have reasons to care about that being, then one part of my argument would fall away. This issue doesn’t seem to be endemic to the treatment of non-human animals though, you’d have it with any kind of utility function that values well-being.