Human Brain Organoids and Consciousness

Takuya Niikawa,Joshua Shepherd,Tsutomu Sawai,Yoshiyuki Hayashi

doi:10.1007/s12152-022-09483-1

Takuya Niikawa, Joshua Shepherd + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s12152-022-09483-1

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Abstract

This article proposes a methodological schema for engaging in a productive discussion of ethical issues regarding human brain organoids (HBOs), which are three-dimensional cortical neural tissues created using human pluripotent stem cells. Although moral consideration of HBOs significantly involves the possibility that they have consciousness, there is no widely accepted procedure to determine whether HBOs are conscious. Given that this is the case, it has been argued that we should adopt a precautionary principle about consciousness according to which, if we are not certain whether HBOs have consciousness—and where treating HBOs as not having consciousness may cause harm to them—we should proceed as if they do have consciousness. This article emphasizes a methodological advantage of adopting the precautionary principle: it enables us to sidestep the question of whether HBOs have consciousness (the whether-question) and, instead, directly address the question of what kinds of conscious experiences HBOs can have (the what-kind-question), where the what-kind-question is more tractable than the whether-question. By addressing the what-kind-question (and, in particular, the question of what kinds of valenced experiences HBOs can have), we will be able to examine how much moral consideration HBOs deserve. With this in mind, this article confronts the what-kind-question with the assistance of experimental studies of consciousness and suggests an ethical framework which supports restricting the creation and use of HBOs in bioscience.

Highlights

40 years ago, Hilary Putnam [1] presented the nowfamous “brain in a vat” thought experiment:A human being [...] has been subjected to an operation by an evil scientist
It is in the sense that three-dimensional cortical neural tissues—so called “human brain organoids” (HBOs) —have successfully been artificially created and cultured in vitro
Even if we need to give moral consideration to HBOs if they have consciousness, we cannot establish an ethical protocol to regulate the creation and use of HBOs in bioscience because we do not know whether the conditional holds

Summary

Introduction

40 years ago, Hilary Putnam [1] presented the nowfamous “brain in a vat” thought experiment:. Even if we need to give moral consideration to HBOs if they have consciousness, we cannot establish an ethical protocol to regulate the creation and use of HBOs in bioscience because we do not know whether the conditional holds. A Japanese research group successfully created threedimensional cortical neural tissues by inducing them from human pluripotent stem cells for the first time in 2008 [2, 3] Such cortical neural tissues have been named “cerebral organoids” [4], though we shall call them HBOs. HBOs have been produced in such a way that they mimic various parts of the brain, including the cerebrum, midbrain, hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and hippocampus. There are, several theories of consciousness which allow that HBOs can have consciousness

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Conclusion

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