This section includes some hypotheses about sentience may sound very implausible.
Why even considering controversial and speculative types of sentience that many people find impossible or ridiculous?
Well, first of all, as long as they are consistent and compatible with evidence, there is a probability greater than zero that these types of sentience could be true.
Is it worth research effort?
Probably not. Or maybe it is, but at most for the attitude of a hits-based donor; or of a science-fiction writer.
This is true, but not all the truth. There’s another view on the subject.
If these theories were true, their implications for preventing suffering would be huge. Or even astronomical (see this and this).
In general, hypotheses about sentience are valued by many criteria, but rarely can we find among them the opportunity to reduce suffering if they were true.
Imagine that we can travel back in time when no one considered the suffering of non-human animals (or just fish or invertebrates).
Someone in the past can develop (as has happened) the idea that the suffering of non-human animals exists and is relevant. This would have a tremendous impact. As it has happened.
At present we can consider that something similar is happening with the suffering of animals in nature or the suffering of insects.
Additionally, it may be happening with other, more controversial suffering (to which this section is dedicated) like that of robots and digital simulations, and suffering in natural non-animal biological entities (plants), suffering in artificial / manipulated biological substrates (organoids and ex vivo tissues) as well as other speculative suffering as suffering in fundamental physical entities, in abstractions (like anthills or countries), platonic suffering, etc.
The categories of this section are:
- Sentience In Manipulated Biological Substrates
- Sentience In Plants
- Sentience In Machines
- Digital Sentience
- Sentience In Physics
- Sentience In Ideas
- Platonic Sentience
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