Is “can they feel pain” or “can they feel pleasure” really the right question, though? Let’s say we research the biological correlates of pleasure until we understand how to make a compact and efficient network of neurons that constantly experiences maximum pleasure. Because we’ve thrown out nearly everything else a brain does, this has the potential for orders of magnitude more sentience per gram of neurons than anything currently existing. A group of altruists intend to create a “happy neuron farm” of these: are they awesome and inspiring or misguided and creating nothing of value?
I think this is a false dilemma. I don’t find that scenario “awesome”, but I do believe it would be creating something of value. The reason I believe this is that, when I experience intense pleasure, I can apprehend that these experiences ought to exist in the universe, by virtue of how they feel like. Filling the universe (or a portion of it) with these experiences is therefore a great thing, regardless of how “awesome” or “inspiring” I happen to find it.
I think this is a false dilemma. I don’t find that scenario “awesome”, but I do believe it would be creating something of value. The reason I believe this is that, when I experience intense pleasure, I can apprehend that these experiences ought to exist in the universe, by virtue of how they feel like. Filling the universe (or a portion of it) with these experiences is therefore a great thing, regardless of how “awesome” or “inspiring” I happen to find it.
I’ve edited the post to just ask the simpler question of whether this is valuable.