Does Life Without Sentience Have Value?

Original text Luciano Carlos Cunha · Volume VI, p. 54 of the PDF edition · English translation

19.1. Sentience or Life?

If we adopt the biocentric criterion, we will hold that the lives of living beings, sentient or not, are valuable. If, on the other hand, we adopt the sentience criterion, we will say that it is the fact that we can have positive experiences in life that makes it valuable (and not the mere fact that there is biological life). Which of these positions should we adopt? Below are three examples that have been used to defend the sentience criterion.

19.2. The Example of the Total Irreversible Coma

Imagine that you have to choose one of the following two options:

(1) Either die now (with no life at all after death – that is, be annihilated).

(2) Or be placed in a total coma (with no experience at all, not even dreams) that is completely irreversible (that is, with no chance whatsoever of coming out of the coma).

If the mere fact of being alive (without experiences) were something valuable, then we would be benefited by being placed in the total irreversible coma compared with being annihilated now. But from our point of view, it makes no difference whether we are annihilated now or placed in the total irreversible coma: in fact, we are equally annihilated under both options. This suggests that the mere fact of being alive in a biological sense is not valuable in itself.

Obviously, there could be indirect reasons for preferring the coma. Your relatives might want your body kept alive. You might have left a request for your body to be kept alive as long as possible. But these indirect appeals are all appeals to the preferences of sentient beings (those of your relatives, or your own when you were still sentient). Therefore, they do not serve as a defense of biocentrism.

19.3. The Example of the Fraudulent Insurance Company

Sometimes, when people use the word life, what they actually mean is sentience. Because of this ambiguity in the use of the word, it sometimes happens that someone is arguing that it is sentience that has value while believing they are arguing that it is life that has value.

Consider, for example, when people ask: “Is there life after death?” What they really want to know is whether, after death, we go on having experiences (that is, whether we remain sentient). This question is asked for a very simple reason: we value certain experiences and would therefore like to know whether it is possible to go on having them after the death of the body. In this question, what is meant by the word life is not mere biological life, but psychological life, that is, sentience. This can be illustrated by the following example.

Imagine that an insurance company guaranteed that if we paid a monthly premium until we died, we would have a life after death. What's more, the company guarantees that this life would be valuable. Now imagine that you gather all your savings and pay the monthly premium for forty years.

One day, however, you happen to meet the scientist who discovered how to provide a life after death. She tells you that, besides being a scientist, she is also an adherent of the biocentric criterion for moral consideration and believes that all life has value, regardless of whether or not there is sentience. Very curious, you then ask her what this life after death that you spent forty years paying for is like. She answers with a smile: “It is a merely biological life, without any sentience at all. You will never have any experience again, but your body will be kept alive for all eternity. Isn't that wonderful?”

We would certainly be outraged by this answer (especially after paying the monthly premium for forty years). But if we are outraged, it is because we think that such a life has no value. If so, then we do not believe that a merely biological life, with no possibility of experiences at all, has value. What we think has value are the experiences we can have in life. If this is your case, then you accept the sentience criterion, and not the biocentric criterion.

19.4. The Example of Sentience Without Life

Let us look at a third example that also suggests that what has value are experiences, and not biological life.

Suppose you discover, in the future, that you have a terminal illness and that nothing can be done to save your biological body. However, let us imagine that a new technology is available that allows you to gradually replace your biological body with a body made of a nonbiological material. Imagine that this will also apply to your brain, with each biological neuron gradually being replaced by nonbiological neurons. Unlike in the previous example, however, your sentience will not disappear: you will remain just as sentient as you are now, but with a new, nonbiological body⁶⁹.

In this condition, you would no longer be a living being, since you would no longer have the characteristics that define a living being: maintaining homeostasis, having a life cycle, being composed of cells, undergoing metabolism, etc. The question, however, is this: in this condition, will your existence still have value? It seems that it certainly will, since you will be able to go on doing everything you enjoy and experiencing everything that makes your life valuable now – the only difference will be that your body will not be organic. But then this suggests that what has value is sentience, and not biological life, since in such a condition you would remain sentient, but you would no longer be a living being.