Moral Intuition Regarding the Possibility of Conscious Human Brain Organoids: An Experimental Ethics Study.
Science and engineering ethics December 19, 2024 Koji Ota, Tetsushi Tanibe, Takumi Watanabe et al. 7 citations
People's intuitive moral judgments about actions toward human brain organoids (HBOs) are influenced not only by whether the organoids can experience pain (a valenced experience) but also by whether they can have visual experiences (a non-valenced experience). In an empirical study, participants judged the permissibility of creating and destroying HBOs differently depending on whether the organoids were described as capable of pain or of visual experience. These results suggest that the moral status people attribute to conscious HBOs is sensitive to the value of phenomenal consciousness itself, independent of its valence.