I also lend significant25% credence to a similar view, which I’d summarize as “animals with fewer neurons aren’t less sentient, their sensations are just less complex”.
I used to think that babies had fewer neurons, but people would not believe babies to be lower on moral patienthood, but I was mistaken: apparently neurogenesis ends early (and adult neurogenesis is still in question):
neurogenesis in humans generally begins around gestational week (GW) 10 and ends around GW 25 with birth about GW 38-40.
However, perhaps we don’t just want to go by neuron count: number of synaptic connections seems perhaps just as important.
But that apparently didn’t make most humans to think that human babies are more sentient/more complex in experience. Actually, we pretty much thought the reverse. Untill mid 1980s, most doctors do not use anesthesia in operations for newborn human infants.
I also lend significant25% credence to a similar view, which I’d summarize as “animals with fewer neurons aren’t less sentient, their sensations are just less complex”.
I used to think that babies had fewer neurons, but people would not believe babies to be lower on moral patienthood, but I was mistaken: apparently neurogenesis ends early (and adult neurogenesis is still in question):
However, perhaps we don’t just want to go by neuron count: number of synaptic connections seems perhaps just as important.
Speaking of synaptic connection, there’s another problem: Human adults have less than the average human infants. Peter Huttenlocher “showed that synaptic density in the human cerebral cortex increases rapidly after birth, peaking at 1 to 2 years of age, at about 50% above adult levels . It drops sharply during adolescence then stabilizes in adulthood, with a slight possible decline late in life.”
But that apparently didn’t make most humans to think that human babies are more sentient/more complex in experience. Actually, we pretty much thought the reverse. Untill mid 1980s, most doctors do not use anesthesia in operations for newborn human infants.