LAUSR

In their latest target article, Zilio and Lavazza (2023) major claim is that research on human cerebral organoids (HCOs) must take into account whether they can acquire sentience or a primitive form of consciousness, how to detect it, and what it would mean for the moral standing of the HCOs. My OPC on Zilio and Lavazza’s article will be structured around these very same points: (1) whether HCOs can become conscious, (2) how to detect it and (3) what it means for the moral status of HCOs. The underlying thesis of the whole commentary is that we must not succumb to premature assumptions. As I have noted in the past (Monasterio Astobiza and Molina P erez 2022), we must restrain ourselves from making premature assumptions regarding new disruptive technology. It is safe to say that from a practical or technological point of view HCOs -as labgrown, three-dimensional structures that mimic the structure and function of the human brainare helpful for discovering new drugs and conducting toxicity tests, as well as for researching brain development and its disorders. However, regarding moral standing, it depends on how we define morality in relation to HCOs. My intuition, in a sense similar to that of Zilio and Lavazza, is that in functional terms HCOs do not have the mature functional features of a person’s brain, nor do they have the ontological development similar to that of a human being and therefore whether they have a moral status is certainly not the same as that of a human being. Moral status requires more than sentience, such as the type of being one is (ontological criteria). Zilio and Lavazza understand it because they speak of degrees in moral status and despite strong antispeciesist positions, the moral status of a human being is very different from that of any other entity regardless of where they are on the conscious spectrum if they are not on the same ontological level as a human being. There is a discontinuity in consciousness between HCOs and humans and consequently, also due to other factors beyond consciousness, a discontinuity in their moral status. In humans, the onset of consciousness occurs after 20weeks of pregnancy (Lagercrantz 2014, RCOG 2010). At present it is an open empirical question with little evidence in favor of the presence of consciousness in HCOs. Because they lack phenomenal experience, but also other ontological criteria, HCOs do not have the same moral status as human beings and are not likely to have it in the short to medium term. If we believe otherwise, we can easily fall into the trap of moving from anticipatory (neuro)ethics to speculative (neuro)ethics. Today, it is unclear whether or when HCOs will become conscious, and even if they do, it is also unclear what kind of experience they can or will have. Some have contended that the existence of sentience in HCOs would entail the potential of “valenced experiences” in them, which would thereafter indicate some degree of moral concern. The state of the art of structures created in the lab from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) that selforganize into three dimensions and have cellular and network characteristics similar to some features of the growing human brain, also known as HCOs, suggests there may have “islands of awareness” in them (Bayne, Seth, and Massimini 2020).