I appreciate your interesting point! I would note that as Erich mentioned, we’re interested in moral patiency rather than moral agency, and we ultimately don’t endorse the idea of using neuron counts.
But in response to your comment, there are different ways of trying to spell out why more neurons would matter. Presumably, on some (or most) of those, the way neurons are connected to other neurons matters, and as you know in babies the connections between neurons are very different from the connections in older individuals. So I think a defender of the neuron count hypothesis would still be able to say, in response to your point, that it’s not just the number of neurons but rather the number of neurons networked together in a particular way that matters.
Hi Rhiza,
I appreciate your interesting point! I would note that as Erich mentioned, we’re interested in moral patiency rather than moral agency, and we ultimately don’t endorse the idea of using neuron counts.
But in response to your comment, there are different ways of trying to spell out why more neurons would matter. Presumably, on some (or most) of those, the way neurons are connected to other neurons matters, and as you know in babies the connections between neurons are very different from the connections in older individuals. So I think a defender of the neuron count hypothesis would still be able to say, in response to your point, that it’s not just the number of neurons but rather the number of neurons networked together in a particular way that matters.