I must admit that I didn’t dig much into the debate, and only offering personal intuition, but I always found something odd off with the argument that “more neurons = greater ability to feel pain”.
The implication of this argument would be “Children and babies have a lower neuron count than adults, so they should be given lower moral value”, as pointed out (i.e. it’s less problematic if they die).
And I just don’t see many people defending that. Many people would say the opposite: that children tend to be happier than adults. So I kept wondering why people used that approximation for other species.
Thanks for the report !
I must admit that I didn’t dig much into the debate, and only offering personal intuition, but I always found something odd off with the argument that “more neurons = greater ability to feel pain”.
The implication of this argument would be “Children and babies have a lower neuron count than adults, so they should be given lower moral value”, as pointed out (i.e. it’s less problematic if they die).
And I just don’t see many people defending that. Many people would say the opposite: that children tend to be happier than adults. So I kept wondering why people used that approximation for other species.
I think children and babies actually have about as many neurons as adults, but also far more synapses/connections.
https://extension.umaine.edu/publications/4356e/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK234146/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron#Connectivity
Oh, ok, I didn’t know that. Thanks for the link, this is surprising.
Thanks Michael!
Thanks, this is a great point.