In 2008, researchers created human three-dimensional neural tissue – known as the pioneering work of “brain organoids.” In recent years, some researchers have transplanted human brain organoids into animal brains for applicational purposes. With these experiments have come many ethical concerns. It is thus an urgent task to clarify what is ethically permissible and impermissible in brain organoid research. This paper seeks (1) to sort out the ethical issues related to brain organoid research and application and (2) to propose future (...) directions for additional ethical consideration and policy debates in the field. Toward (1), this paper first outlines the current state of brain organoid research, and then briefly responds to previously raised related ethical concerns. Looking next at anticipated scientific developments in brain organoid research, we will discuss (i) ethical issues related to in vitro brain organoids, (ii) ethical issues raised when brain organoids form complexes or have relationships with other entities, and (iii) ethical issues of research ethics and governance. Finally, in pursuit of (2), we propose research policies that are mindful of the ethics of brain organoid research and application and also suggest the need for an international framework for research and application of brain organoids. (shrink)

Many think that a specific aspect of phenomenal consciousness—valenced or affective experience—is essential to consciousness’s moral significance (valence sentientism). They hold that valenced experience is necessary for well-being, or moral status, or psychological intrinsic value (or all three). Some think that phenomenal consciousness generally is necessary for non-derivative moral significance (broad sentientism). Few think that consciousness is unnecessary for moral significance (non-necessitarianism). In this paper, I consider the prospects for these views. I first consider the prospects for valence sentientism in (...) light of Vulcans, beings who are conscious but without affect or valence of any sort. I think Vulcans pressure us to accept broad sentientism. But I argue that a consideration of explanations for broad sentientism opens up possible explanations for non-necessitarianism about the moral significance of consciousness. That is, once one leans away from valence sentientism because of Vulcans, one should feel pressure to accept a view on which consciousness is not necessary for well-being, moral status, or psychological intrinsic value. (shrink)

Consciousness has an important role in ethics: when a being consciously experiences the frustration or satisfaction of its interests, those interests deserve higher moral priority than those of a behaviourally similar but non-conscious being. I consider the relationship between this ethical role and an a posteriori (or “type-B”) materialist solution to the mind-body problem. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that, if type-B materialism is correct, then the reference of the concept of phenomenal consciousness is radically indeterminate between a (...) neuronal-level property that is distinctive to mammals and a high-level functional property that is much more widely shared. This would leave many non-mammalian animals (such as birds, fish, insects and octopuses) with indeterminate moral status. There are ways to manage this radical moral indeterminacy, but all of these ways lead to profoundly troubling consequences. (shrink)

Recent work within such disparate research areas as the epistemology of perception, theories of well-being, animal and medical ethics, the philosophy of consciousness, and theories of understanding in philosophy of science and epistemology has featured disconnected discussions of what is arguably a single underlying question: What is the value of consciousness? The purpose of this paper is to review some of this work and place it within a unified theoretical framework that makes contributions (and contributors) from these disparate areas more (...) visible to one another. (shrink)

Which beings have moral status? I argue that moral status requires some capacity for hedonic feelings of pleasure or displeasure. David Chalmers rejects this view on the grounds that it denies moral status to Vulcans, which are defined as conscious creatures with no capacity for hedonic feelings. On his more inclusive view, all conscious beings have moral status. We agree that only conscious beings have moral status, but we disagree about how to explain this. I argue that we cannot explain (...) why consciousness is necessary for moral status without denying that it is sufficient for moral status. Hence, we cannot exclude unconscious zombies without excluding conscious Vulcans too. (shrink)

Some philosophers think that life is worth living not merely because of the goods and the bads within it, but also because life itself is good. I explain how this idea can be formalized by associating each version of such of a view with a function from length of life to the value generated by life itself. Then I argue that every version of the view that life itself is good faces some version of the following dilemma: either (1) good (...) human lives are worse than very long lives wholly devoid of pleasure, desire-satisfaction, knowledge, or any other goods, or (2) very short lives containing nothing but suffering are worth living. Since neither result is plausible, we ought to reject the view that life itself is good. On the view I favor, any given life may be worth living because of the goods that it contains, but life itself is neutral. (shrink)

According to an orthodox view, the capacity for conscious experience (sentience) is relevant to the distribution of moral status and value. However, physicalism about consciousness might threaten the normative relevance of sentience. According to the indeterminacy argument, sentience is metaphysically indeterminate while indeterminacy of sentience is incompatible with its normative relevance. According to the introspective argument (by François Kammerer), the unreliability of our conscious introspection undercuts the justification for belief in the normative relevance of consciousness. I defend the normative relevance (...) of sentience against these objections. First, I demonstrate that physicalists only have to concede a limited amount of indeterminacy of sentience. This moderate indeterminacy is in harmony with the role of sentience in determining moral status. Second, I argue that physicalism gives us no reason to expect that introspection is unreliable with respect to the normative relevance of consciousness. (shrink)

Many philosophers tacitly accept the View: consciousness is necessary for being a welfare subject. That is, in order to be an eligible bearer of welfare goods and bads, an entity must be capable of phenomenal consciousness. However, this paper argues that, in the absence of a compelling rationale, we are not licensed to accept the View, because doing so amounts to fallacious reasoning in theorizing about welfare: insisting on the View when consciousness is not in fact important for welfare value (...) in a systematic and significant way is objectionably “consciousist.” As a result, the View does not advance our understanding of the value of consciousness. The paper further diagnoses why we may be attracted to the View, and what we should accept instead. (shrink)

This article proposes a methodological schema for engaging in a productive discussion of ethical issues regarding human brain organoids, which are three-dimensional cortical neural tissues created using human pluripotent stem cells. Although moral consideration of HBOs significantly involves the possibility that they have consciousness, there is no widely accepted procedure to determine whether HBOs are conscious. Given that this is the case, it has been argued that we should adopt a precautionary principle about consciousness according to which, if we are (...) not certain whether HBOs have consciousness—and where treating HBOs as not having consciousness may cause harm to them—we should proceed as if they do have consciousness. This article emphasizes a methodological advantage of adopting the precautionary principle: it enables us to sidestep the question of whether HBOs have consciousness and, instead, directly address the question of what kinds of conscious experiences HBOs can have, where the what-kind-question is more tractable than the whether-question. By addressing the what-kind-question, we will be able to examine how much moral consideration HBOs deserve. With this in mind, this article confronts the what-kind-question with the assistance of experimental studies of consciousness and suggests an ethical framework which supports restricting the creation and use of HBOs in bioscience. (shrink)

If moral status depends on the capacity for consciousness, what kind of consciousness matters exactly? Two popular answers are that any kind of consciousness matters (Broad Sentientism), and that what matters is the capacity for pleasure and suffering (Narrow Sentientism). I argue that the broad answer is too broad, while the narrow answer is likely too narrow, as Chalmers has recently argued by appeal to ‘philosophical Vulcans’. I defend a middle position, Motivational Sentientism, on which what matters is motivating consciousness: (...) any kind of consciousness which presents its subject with reasons for action. (shrink)

Does consciousness have non-instrumental aesthetic value? This paper answers this question affirmatively by arguing that consciousness is sublime. The argument consists of three premises. (1) An awe experience of an object provides prima facie justification to believe that the object is sublime. (2) I have an awe experience about consciousness through introspecting three features of consciousness, namely the mystery of consciousness, the connection between consciousness and well-being, and the phenomenological complexity of consciousness. (3) There is no good defeater of the (...) justificatory force of my feeling of awe for the sublime of consciousness. To defend the third premise, I argue against two potential defeaters: The first is that most people do not regard consciousness as sublime. The second is that there do not seem to be physical properties that can ground the sublimity of consciousness. I conclude by emphasizing an important ethical implication of the thesis that consciousness is sublime, namely that it explains why even conscious subjects who cannot have valenced experiences deserve moral consideration. (shrink)

Many philosophers accept both of the following claims: (1) consciousness matters morally, and (2) species membership doesn’t matter morally. In other words, many reject speciesism but accept what we might call 'sentientism'. But do the reasons against speciesism yield analogous reasons against sentientism, just as the reasons against racism and sexism are thought to yield analogous reasons against speciesism? This paper argues that speciesism is disanalogous to sentientism (as well as racism and sexism). I make a case for the following (...) asymmetry: (a) some non-humans clearly have interests, but (b) no non-conscious entities clearly have interests. This asymmetry, I argue, renders sentientism resistant to the standard argument against speciesism. (shrink)

Illusionists about phenomenal consciousness claim that phenomenal consciousness does not exist but merely seems to exist. At the same time, it is quite intuitive for there to be some kind of link between phenomenality and value. For example, some situations seem good or bad in virtue of the conscious experiences they feature. Illusionist views of phenomenal consciousness then face what I call the normative challenge. They have to say where they stand regarding the idea that there is a link between (...) phenomenality and value. If they accept that there is such a link, they might be committed to revisionary normative consequences (and some of them may prove to be uncomfortable). If they deny that there is such link, they might avoid revisionary normative consequences (without being guaranteed against them) but then they have to give reasons to deny that such link obtains, which is not a trivial task. The existence of the normative challenge does not show that illusionism is false, but it shows that illusionism might have important consequences in the normative domain, which have to be clarified. (shrink)

The aesthetic tradition has identified as paradigmatically sublime such objects as imposing mountains and intense storms, as well as monumental art. But the tradition also acknowledges less paradigmatic cases, including sometimes mathematical structures or abstract concepts. In this paper, we argue that there is also a case for considering phenomenal consciousness—the experiential quality of subjective awareness—as a sublime phenomenon. One appreciates this, we argue, when one is struck by (fitting) awe upon contemplating (a) the perplexing existence of something like phenomenal (...) consciousness in an otherwise completely material universe and (b) the role of consciousness in injecting meaning and value in an otherwise brutally factual reality. (shrink)

In this interesting paper, Lavazza and Massimini draw attention to a subset of the ethical issues surrounding the development and potential uses of cerebral organoids. This subset concerns the possibility that cerebral organoids may one day develop phenomenal consciousness, and thereby qualify as conscious subjects—that there may one day be something it is like to be an advanced cerebral organoid. This possibility may feel outlandish. But as Lavazza and Massimini demonstrate, the science of organoids is moving fast, and I agree (...) that the ethical issues now deserve careful scrutiny. The ethical issues are not entirely separate from epistemological issues concerning how certain we could ever be (a) that an organoid is conscious or (b) that regarding any conscious state or process, an organoid is capable of tokening that state or undergoing that process. Lavazza and Massimini’s approach is theory-based—they claim that ‘we need a general theory of consciousness that attempts to explain what experience is and what type of physical systems can have it’. I am not convinced, however, that a theory of consciousness is what we need. Nor am I convinced that detecting the presence of consciousness is the most important moral issue. Let me say a word regarding theories of consciousness first. In general, to the extent that pervasive disagreement characterises expert discussion of some phenomenon P, one should modify one’s credence downward regarding any theory of the nature of P. In my view, this is the case regarding expert discussion of consciousness. Although most philosophers are confident that consciousness is an entirely physical phenomenon, a …. (shrink)

Human cerebral organoids (HCOs) are three-dimensional in vitro cell cultures that mimic the developmental process and organization of the developing human brain. In just a few years this technique has produced brain models that are already being used to study diseases of the nervous system and to test treatments and drugs. Currently, HCOs consist of tens of millions of cells and have a size of a few millimeters. The greatest limitation to further development is due to their lack of vascularization. (...) However, recent research has shown that human cerebral organoids can manifest the same electrical activity and connections between brain neurons and EEG patterns as those recorded in preterm babies. All this suggests that, in the future, HCOs may manifest an ability to experience basic sensations such as pain, therefore manifesting sentience, or even rudimentary forms of consciousness. This calls for consideration of whether cerebral organoids should be given a moral status and what limitations should be introduced to regulate research. In this article I focus particularly on the study of the emergence and mechanisms of human consciousness, i.e. one of the most complex scientific problems there are, by means of experiments on HCOs. This type of experiment raises relevant ethical issues and, as I will argue, should probably not be considered morally acceptable. (shrink)

Illusionism about consciousness entails that phenomenal consciousness doesn’t exist. The distribution question concerns the distribution of consciousness in the animal kingdom. Skepticism of animal consciousness is the view that few or no kinds of animals possess consciousness. Thus, illusionism seems to imply a skeptical view on the distribution question. However, I argue that illusionism and skepticism of animal consciousness are actually orthogonal to each other. If illusionism is true, then phenomenal consciousness does not ground intrinsic value so that the non-existence (...) of phenomenal consciousness would not have ethical implications. In this case, the adequate reaction is to reformulate the distribution question in terms of the quasi-phenomenal functional features associated with the illusion of phenomenal consciousness which do ground intrinsic value. Hence, either illusionism is false or the distribution question does not concern phenomenal consciousness. In any case, illusionism does not directly tell us anything about the distribution question. However, since illusionism forces us to revise our traditional conception of consciousness, it indirectly affects research on animal consciousness by questioning that consciousness is a unified and an all-or-nothing property. (shrink)

Some philosophical theories of consciousness imply consciousness in things we would never intuitively think are conscious—most notably, panpsychism implies that consciousness is pervasive, even outside complex brains. Is this a reductio ab absurdum for such theories, or does it show that we should reject our original intuitions? To understand the stakes of this question as clearly as possible, we analyse the structured pattern of intuitions that panpsychism conflicts with. We consider a variety of ways that the tension between this intuition (...) and panpsychism could be resolved, ranging from complete rejection of the theory to complete dismissal of the intuition, but argue in favour of more nuanced approaches which try to reconcile the two. (shrink)

Most people will grant that we bear special moral obligations toward at least some nonhuman animals that we do not bear toward inanimate objects like stones, mountains, or works of art. These moral obligations are plausibly grounded in the fact that many if not all nonhuman animals share important psychological states and capacities with us, such as consciousness, suffering, and goal-directed behavior. But which of these states and capacities are really critical for a creature’s possessing moral status, and how can (...) we determine which animals do in fact have them? In this paper, I examine three main approaches to answering these questions. First are what I term consciousness-based approaches that tackles these questions by first asking which animals are conscious. Second are affective-state approaches that focus on identifying behavioural and physiological signatures of states like pain, fear, and stress. Finally, I consider what I call preference-based approaches whose focus is on the question of which organisms have robust motivational states. I examine the prospects and challenges—both theoretical and empirical—faced by these seemingly contrasting methodologies. I go on to suggest that there are reasons why, despite challenges, we should be robustly committed to the project of identifying psychological grounds of moral status. I conclude by suggesting we should also take seriously the idea of pluralism about moral status, according to which each of these approaches might be capable of providing independent grounds for moral consideration. (shrink)

In this paper, we outline how one might conduct a comprehensive ethical evaluation of human brain organoid transplantation in animals. Thus far, ethical concerns regarding this type of research have been assumed to be similar to those associated with other transplants of human cells in animals, and have therefore not received significant attention. The focus has been only on the welfare, moral status, or mental capacities of the host animal. However, the transplantation of human brain organoids introduces several new ethical (...) issues. Many of these are related to uncertainty regarding whether or not brain organoids might be conscious. While these concerns might not be immediately relevant, they warrant closer scrutiny. We discuss how various ethical issues are relevant to different stages of human brain organoid transplantation and can guide the ethical evaluation of research. Our examination would broaden the horizons of the debate on the transplantation of brain organoids. (shrink)

Brain Organoids in their current state of development are patentable. Future brain organoids may face some challenges in this regard, which I address in this contribution. Brain organoids unproblematically fulfil the general prerequisites of patentability set forth in Art. 3 (1) EU-Directive 98/44/ec (invention, novelty, inventive step and susceptibility of industrial application). Patentability is excluded if an invention makes use of human embryos or constitutes a stage of the human body in the individual phases of its formation and development. Both (...) do not apply to brain organoids, unless ES-cells are used. Art. 6 (1) EU-Directive 98/44/ec excludes patentability for inventions “the commercial exploitation of which would be contrary to ordre public or morality”. While there is no conceivable scenario, in which the commercial application of current brain organoids violates the ordre public, the same is not necessarily true for future brain organoids. Keeping in mind that a development of consciousness-like abilities in future brain organoids cannot be excluded and that an ability for both physical and psychological suffering has been theorized, both of which are aspects of the ordre public, certain applications of future brain organoids may constitute a violation of the ordre public and therefore lead to an exclusion of patentability. (shrink)

Hank Greely’s target article, “Human Brain Surrogates Research: The Onrushing Ethical Dilemma” reviews the manifold scientific and ethical questions surrounding models of human brains used i...

What consciousness exactly is remains an unsettled issue among both philosophers and biologists. Three aspects of consciousness are generally recognized: awareness consciousness (through connection...

Understanding the biological basis of consciousness is one of the central challenges for modern science. Is a mature scientific explanation really possible, and if so, how should consciousness science be organized so as to achieve this? This thesis is a collection of four papers which approach these questions via an account of the natural categories or ‘kinds’, drawn from philosophy of science, to which paradigmatic mental phenomena like consciousness belong. The central claims defended in the thesis are twofold. Firstly, that (...) to facilitate a mature science of consciousness it is crucial to explicitly introduce a new organizing concept of consciousness modelled on the kinds of concepts which underpin previous successful explanations of other natural phenomena – that of a natural kind concept of consciousness. This draws on the general observation that some concepts are better suited to scientific theorizing about the world than others, and thus that progress in scientific and philosophical domains can be (and indeed, has often been) made by working to refine our existing conceptual schemes to reflect this. Secondly, that a mature science of consciousness will be one which recognizes the reality and explanatory importance of a particular category of mental phenomena called ‘global states of consciousness’ which includes dreaming and wakefulness. Examination of this latter claim leads to a third idea explored and motivated in the thesis which brings consciousness science into closer connection with psychiatry. This is the hypothesis that Major Depressive Disorder involves a change to a subject’s global state of consciousness, marking a change from a state of ordinary wakeful consciousness to an altered ‘depressive state’ of consciousness akin to a dream or psychedelic state. (shrink)

The moral status of human brain organoids (HBOs) has been debated in view of the future possibility that they may acquire phenomenal consciousness. This study empirically investigates the moral sensitivity in people’s intuitive judgments about actions toward conscious HBOs. The results showed that the presence/absence of pain experience in HBOs affected the judgment about the moral permissibility of actions such as creating and destroying the HBOs; however, the presence/absence of visual experience in HBOs also affected the judgment. These findings suggest (...) that people’s intuitive judgments about the moral status of HBOs are sensitive to the valence-independent value of phenomenal consciousness. We discuss how these observations can have normative implications; particularly, we argue that they put pressure on the theoretical view that the moral status of conscious HBOs is grounded solely in the valence-dependent value of consciousness. We also discuss how our findings can be informative even when such a theoretical view is finally justified or when the future possibility of conscious HBOs is implausible. (shrink)

This dialogue presents a substantive account of the nature and aim of ontology.Export citation.

Existential happiness is happiness that one has a basic life at all. Having a basic life, as I understand it, involves being the subject of experiences and being an agent in some minimal sense. As I argue, existential happiness is a fitting response to having a basic life. To make this argument, I look at two possible accounts of the fittingness of existential happiness: the value of a basic life and attachment to the constitutive elements of one’s life. I also (...) consider a few possible sources of existential happiness, including encounters with death, counterfactual thinking, and hedonically positive feelings of awe directed toward one’s own consciousness. (shrink)

Intuitively, there is a close link between moral status and phenomenal consciousness. Taking the link seriously can serve as the basis of a proposal that appears to have a surprising number of theoretical benefits. This proposal is the moral option, according to which moral status is partly determinative of phenomenal consciousness, and phenomenal consciousness is sufficient for possession of a moral property I refer to as “moral status.” I argue for this view on the basis of its ability to shed (...) light on the distribution problem of determining which systems are phenomenally conscious. I explicate it by drawing on a theory of attributions of phenomenal consciousness, and considering its relationship to positions on the metaphysics of consciousness. I defend it against a series of objections, including three based on previous theories of the link between phenomenal consciousness and moral status. The moral option should, in my view, be a serious contender among theories of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

This article investigates a critical yet underexplored structural aspect of consciousness in the context of the practical ethics of neural organoid research: the unity of consciousness. We advocate for the necessity of the unified field, which has garnered substantial support from both philosophical and empirical standpoints, although the debate remains unresolved. We highlight the brainstem as a potential source of the unified conscious field, a structure already under scrutiny in neural organoid research in relation to conditions such as Parkinson’s disease (...) and post-COVID-19 syndromes. We argue that if unity is a necessary feature of consciousness, consciousness is contingent upon a specific biological system without which consciousness cannot arise, thereby narrowing the range of neural organoids of ethical concern. Furthermore, the transplantation of neural organoids into animals has emerged as a practical concern, with ethical implications varying based on the necessity of the unity of consciousness. We argue that transplantation evades a significant ethical dilemma if unity is necessary and if the organoids to be transplanted lack the neural basis for the unified field of consciousness. (shrink)

A target question for the scientific study of consciousness is how dimensions of consciousness, such as the ability to feel pain and pleasure or reflect on one’s own experience, vary in different states and animal species. Considering the tight link between consciousness and moral status, answers to these questions have implications for law and ethics. Here we point out that given this link, the scientific community studying consciousness may face implicit pressure to carry out certain research programs or interpret results (...) in ways that justify current norms rather than challenge them. We show that because consciousness largely determines moral status, the use of nonhuman animals in the scientific study of consciousness introduces a direct conflict between scientific relevance and ethics—the more scientifically valuable an animal model is for studying consciousness, the more difficult it becomes to ethically justify compromises to its well-being for consciousness research. Finally, in light of these considerations, we call for a discussion of the immediate ethical corollaries of the body of knowledge that has accumulated and for a more explicit consideration of the role of ideology and ethics in the scientific study of consciousness. (shrink)

It is now 10 years ago that human embryonic stem cell research appeared as a major topic of societal concern following significant scientific breakthroughs.1 2 During these 10 years it has become obvious that stem cell research is embedded in a narrative characterised by hope and hype and that it has created heated moral and political debate. Although it would be tempting to try to deconstruct the importance attributed to hope in this story or to unmask the different instigators active (...) in promoting hype,3–5 the main aim of this editorial is to briefly review the controversies underlying the debate and propose some possible answers to a set of inter-related questions: What are the main disagreements in the stem cell debate? Is there any hope that we can resolve these main disagreements? Has the debate been a fruitful model for future debates about ethically contentious issues in biomedicine, or has it been characterised more by rhetoric than by argument? What kind of ethical debates are most efficient as models for future debates?The two authors agree with regard to the importance of asking these questions, but they disagree about at least some of the answers. Let us start with the questions about the debate and its use as a model for future debates.WHAT KIND OF ETHICAL DEBATE IS MOST EFFICIENT AS A MODEL FOR FUTURE DEBATES?Could it be the case that ethical debates that are characterised by overselling of the potential of the technology are more efficient as models for future debates about ethically contentious issues in biomedicine than more sober and “neutral” debates? The narratives of stem cell research are full of examples of overselling and underselling, and we will suggest that it is precisely for this reason that there is a lot to learn morally from reviewing the narratives. The two main forms of overselling are therapeutic …. (shrink)

Existential happiness is happiness that one has a basic life at all. Having a basic life, as I understand it, involves being the subject of experiences and being an agent in some minimal sense. As I argue, existential happiness is a fitting response to having a basic life. To make this argument, I look at two possible accounts of the fittingness of existential happiness: the value of a basic life and attachment to the constitutive elements of one’s life. I also (...) consider a few possible sources of existential happiness, including encounters with death, counterfactual thinking, and hedonically positive feelings of awe directed toward one’s own consciousness. (shrink)

Human brain organoids are three-dimensional structures that reproduce the structure and function of the human brain in vitro. In this paper, I focus on the question of the moral status future human brain organoids will occupy. It is generally believed that the moral status a being occupies depend on sentience it possesses. However, in this paper, I argue that the presence or absence of a “consciousness” other than sentience may also have moral importance in the light of the features that (...) seem to be unique to human brain organoids, and assert that a new perspective on whether human brain organoids belong to “we” or not may be necessary for thinking abstractly about how they should be treated morally. I argue that even if future human brain organoids lack sentience, they can occupy a moral status when they have so-called phenomenal or access consciousness. On the other hand, I argue that as long as future human brain organoids are as much a part of the “we” in terms of family membership as patients in a persistent vegetative state are. This would imply that even if human brain organoids do not have any kinds of consciousnesses, they may occupy some moral status. (shrink)