Blank slate

So, I've been thinking about, well, metaethics... what it is that makes something matter, morally speaking.

There are rational theories which go something like this: if I decide to do something, then I am claiming that that something has value; a being that can determine (either by recognition or conferral) that something is valuable, is a being of fundamental importance; I am not alone in having this ability - all rational agents do; therefor all rational agents have this fundamental importance. Honestly, I don't know why that second clause is true. In fact, I don't think is, but there we go. Or you could say that as a sentient being, I pursue ends which are valuable to me; this is what makes me count - therefore all sentient beings count. I don't get that either. There is, of course, a lot more to these arguments and maybe they make sense with more fleshing out. Then there's the idea that a 'subject of a life' is intrinsically important, because she knows she is alive. I don't really get that either. In the simplest version, pain and suffering are bad, therefore don't cause them to anyone who can experience them - which may include lobsters and bees. But, why is it bad to cause pain and suffering and not just to cause harm and death - as one could to a tree or a sponge? I mean, what makes feeling something the only thing that matters?

Say I could not feel pain. You slice into me, just because you want to, and cut off some flesh. is that only bad if it hurts? Would it not also be bad if, say, it prevented my liver from functioning - painlessly?

I'd have to take this thought experiment further. Say I was the guy who lost his memory and every few minutes thinks he has just woken up and has no idea who he is. Say he could suffer no physical pain and it also wouldn't matter to him if he were to live ten minutes or ten years as his self-awareness only lasts five minutes at most. You cut into him and prevent his liver from working. Is that not bad, irrespective of whether he feels it or knows it??

Right, so what I have been thinking is this. Say that consciousness occurs in creatures of sufficient complexity because it is adaptive to have a means of reinforcing the salience of certain survival needs. A short lived insect does not need to waste time healing a broken limb, but a longer lived creature will benefit from tending the wound. It can afford to rest and devote resources to healing. So, it is useful for pain to be something that prevents it from using the limb and encourages it to lick the limb. Having some kind of conscious representation of other states - hunger, say, or fear - likewise conferred advantages beyond pure reaction - maybe because the animal could then prioritise more effectively? In all cases, consciousness is just something for sustaining life - the thing that matters is the life, not the consciousness or the sentience, which are... like language-to-self....

Or, another way... accept that there is no libertarian free will. All we do is determined by all the inputs and circumstances. We have an illusion of choosing - and an illusion of a 'self' that does this choosing - a self that is outside the causal nature of reality and is somehow metaphysically able to change the course of determinism. But that self is just a hallucination. We do not have autonomy any more than an ant. Or a golf ball. What we have - due to language and so on - is an incredibly complex mesh of causes (ranging from the levels of chemicals in our brains to the conversation we are having with the carpenter). What makes us different from the golf ball is that our cells - and the totality of our cells as a being - is, like any living organism, defying entropy by sustaining life.

Again, it's life that matters, not reason or consciousness or feeling.

That is all.