@boringuser2, I vouched for your now-dead sibling comment of 29 minutes ago, because I think you're on to something and I believe your argument should have voice in this discussion. However, even though I sympathize with your position, and even though I don't think your comment should be dead, it's very fighty and condescending. Even if you aren't technically violating any of the rules that I can see, the condescension gets very close to being a personal attack. I think you'd be more successful in voicing your argument if you toned it down a little (or a lot).
Leaving the unjustifiable condescension aside, the argument in the dead comment still founders on precisely the lack of any philosophically rigorous definition of sentience on which it attempts to support itself.
That's the question I called out earlier as being begged: in order to discard a definition of sentience (or of anything!) as insufficient, one must be able to show where it fails. That would admittedly be an impossibly tall order in this case, but my sympathy for the difficulty is curtailed by it being one our interlocutor has chosen to take upon himself, and attempt to bluster his way past anyone else noticing.
Even politely expressed, such an attempt to demand an impossible standard of others while excusing oneself from the same merits exactly the obloquy it's received.
Your impression of how philosophically rigorous conclusions are reached is completely unnecessary to address; it is simply wrong.
You don't seem to understand that a rationalistic approach isn't going to lead you to conclusions that approximate accuracy about the world. See: philosophy that is over 100 years old as a reference, when people realized that this method of inquiry made no sense.
That being said, brushing aside your basic philosophical misunderstanding, it still follows that the burden of this challenge lies on the people who have outrageously claimed that they have uniquely solved it.
