Two opposite ideas
This text discusses two ideas about the relationship between being alive and feeling.
Idea 1: "without life there's no sentience, so life has intrinsic value"
Some say: to feel, you have to be alive. So we should give consideration to all living things.
Answer: first, maybe in the future there will be beings who feel without being alive in the biological sense, like digital minds. But even setting that aside, the argument only shows that life is useful for sentience. It's like saying a phone needs a battery: that shows the battery is useful, not that it has value in itself.
Idea 2: "sentience is only there to keep us alive"
Another argument says the opposite: pain exists to make us avoid what kills us, and pleasure exists to make us seek what keeps us alive. So what has value would be life, and sentience would just be a tool.
Answer: evolution can explain why sentience appeared. But that doesn't decide what has value. Explaining where something came from doesn't tell you whether it's good or bad.
For those who feel, pain is bad in itself and joy is good in itself, whatever the reasons they came about. Nobody suffers "just as a means."
In short
- Being necessary for sentience only shows that life is useful.
- Explaining how sentience came about doesn't tell us what has value.
- What has value in itself are the experiences of those who feel.