There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear.

The problem is that no ethical system has ever achieved consensus. Ethical systems are completely unlike mathematics or science. This is a source of concern.

A child raised on a desert island, alone, without social interaction, without language, and thus lacking empathy, is still a sentient being.

Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.

There is no reality of consciousness independent of the effects of various vehicles of content on subsequent action (and hence, of course, on memory).

Natural selection is not gene centrist and nor is biology all about genes; our comprehending minds are a result of our fast evolving culture.