Sentience and Life: What Has Value as an End and What Has Value as a Means?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VI, p. 46 of the PDF edition · English translation

16.1. If Being Alive Is Necessary for Being Sentient, Does Being Alive Have Intrinsic Value?

It is sometimes argued that, for there to be sentience, the organism must be alive, and that we should therefore give moral consideration to all living beings, sentient or not.

The claim that biological life is necessary for sentience may turn out to be false if nonorganic sentient beings (for example, in digital media) come to exist in the future. This is a possibility accepted by many experts in the philosophy of mind and also by many scientists⁵⁸. If beings of this kind come to exist, they would be sentient beings, but they would not be alive, since they would lack the essential characteristics that define a living being: maintaining homeostasis, having a life cycle, being composed of cells, undergoing metabolism, etc. Thus, it is possible that in the future there will be sentient beings that are not living beings. However, at least with respect to the sentient beings that have existed so far, biological life seems necessary for sentience.

Regardless of this, however, observing that biological life is necessary for sentience does not serve as a defense of the claim that we should consider nonsentient living beings, since what this observation shows is that biological life has instrumental value for sentience, not value in itself. That is, what the observation in question does is say that biological life is important because it is (at least so far) essential for sentience to exist. But showing that something has value as a means is not showing that it has value in itself.

Of course, this does not show that it is impossible for biological life to have intrinsic value either. It does show, however, that if it does, it will be for some other reason, and not because it has instrumental value for sentience. Obviously, it is not possible to show that something has intrinsic value by pointing out that it has instrumental value. Thus, even though the observation in question offers reasons to keep sentient beings alive, it offers no reasons to keep nonsentient organisms alive.

16.2. Isn't Sentience Just a Means of Sustaining Life?

Now consider the opposite claim. Another argument that tries to show that what has intrinsic value is biological life, and not sentience, points out that sentient beings use the sensation of pain to avoid what would kill them and, through positive sensations, learn which things help them stay alive.

According to this argument, sentience is merely a means of preserving life: positive experiences would have no value in themselves, and negative experiences would not be bad in themselves. On this view, the value of sentience would be merely instrumental to what really has intrinsic value: being alive. The argument then concludes that living beings (sentient or not) should receive direct moral consideration.

The main problem with this argument is that it does not follow from the fact that sentient beings avoid negative experiences and seek to stay alive that they do so because they see biological life as having intrinsic value. The main reason they avoid negative experiences is the very fact that they are negative. Of course, it is possible to avoid something that causes suffering also because we know it would cause our death. But it does not follow from the fact that we aim to stay alive that we see biological life as having value in itself. This will be explained in more detail below.

We normally think that being alive is good because it allows us to have valuable experiences⁵⁹. Sentient beings seek certain things because they value the experiences those things provide. They do not see these experiences as having value merely instrumental to staying alive. Rather, being alive is good because it makes these experiences possible. If these experiences also help us remain biologically alive or contribute to other things (such as the continuation of the species, for example), this is merely a side effect: by itself, it does not indicate that sentient beings aim at such things as ends.

We normally think that life is worth living when it contains experiences valuable enough for us to consider staying alive better than dying. If we thought that biological life had intrinsic value, we would hold that there is something good about remaining a

living body with no possibility of experiences (nor of ever having them again), and even when we experienced nothing but extreme suffering. However, this does not seem to be the case.

All of this suggests that we have reasons to conclude the opposite of what the objection holds: it is being alive that has value only as a means to having meaningful experiences.