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Psychology is not a science. It is a pathetic attempt at being a science. Looking for a metaphysical existance within the physical.
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Dude, you are like, soooo Age of Elightenment. Just because you can't make an equation out of it, or measure it exactly doesn't invalidate it. Psychology is able to make some pretty damn accurate predictions based on it's "pathetic attempts."
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So there is no sentience? Does sentience even exist? Bacterium have a functioning brain. Just because it is not similar to ours does not mean it is not a brain. Does the bacterium feel its prey? Does it choose to engulf its prey? Or is that simple conditioning?
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So you're going to turn into one of those lame existentialists who whines that he or she is the only thing that they are sure of in the universe? You are actually going to argue the existence of sentience?
Bacteria DO NOT have a functioning brain because they are ONE cell. I can pull up any diagram of a bacteria you want, and I challenge you to point out the brain... or are you refering to the nucleus? That controls cell functions, moron, and is purely based on reactions to various proteins and chemicals. It is a physical and chemical reaction. There is no "conditioning" involved. Cells are not "trained" to do specific things; there's no Raven's School Gifted Bacteria.
Secondly, bacteria don't exactly "engulf their prey," since they are merely self-replication machines. I believe you're thinking of protozoa, and in that case, there's still no brain!
There's a difference between "brain" and "nerve centre." Nerve centres say, "Hey, my flagella on that side was brushed so I'm gonna move in that direction now." Pure instinct. Have you ever watched an amoeba through a microscope? I have many times. There is no predictable pattern of movement like you would see if the amoeba was making any logical "choices," so to start BSing your way around claiming protozoic organisms can make decisions is crap, even for the sake of playing devil's advocate. Even philosophy has a point at which the wisemen say it's retarded.
Brains are even't that much different, since most animals operate on pure instinct. Why doesn't the deer chose to run away from the headlights? It has a brain. Oh wait! D'oh! Instinct tells the deer to stay still when it gets scared... right.
If brains that could make free choices were that simple to create, trust me, as a computer science major, creating neural nets would be a walk in the park and we'd already have true AI.
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Now answer me this question. Lets assume for a moment that sentience actually exists. How does the existance, or lack there of, of sentience prevent something from being human?
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You know, your arguments are getting dangerously close to proclaiming that imaginary souls are what defines us as humans, and nothing more.
If you were to create a clone of yourself, minus the brain, would you start giving it rights? Would your clone care if you started harvesting its organs? Would it have sensory perception? The answers to the latter two questions are no. Sensory perception requires at least a nerve centre, and caring requires thought.
Since I have just shown that during the first trimester, there is NO brain, and any tiny little nerve cells DO NOT constitute consciousness allowing choice, there is no reason to assume that the embryo would be aware of its surroundings or care what happens to it. Caring requires thought, remember? The only reason why we ASSUME that it would care is because we assign our own beliefs to it when we imagine ourselves in its shoes. That's called the self-reference criterion; you can read any psychology book about it.
If we were to decide that there's no such thing as sentience, which is the idea you appear to have, why not assume EVERYTHING is human? Oh wait... they don't have the same DNA! Well, now, you see, we're back to defining stuff solely on it's physical properties.
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Humanity is stupid for ascribing feelings to themselves.
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Okay, dude, you're not even talking science anymore. You're in the realm of philosophy, which according to the belief structure you outlined above, is just as pathetic as pschology.
You've probably got one of those "famous quotes" desk calendars, and it just happens to be Philosopher Month.