Recasting Moral Patienthood: A Minimalist Ethical Framework Grounded in Higher-Order Intelligence and Sentience

Current scientific efforts are investing enormous resources into detecting signs of consciousness in artificial intelligence and organoids, yet they systematically neglect a more fundamental question: If the test returns a positive result, how should we treat these entities? Existing ethical frameworks, trapped in the implicit premise that "human" is the sole moral subject, fall collectively silent on this issue. This paper proposes a new ethical perspective rooted in humanism but seeking to transcend its traditional boundaries—it unbinds moral status from the contingency of biological species and rebinds it to a more fundamental, first-principle attribute: higher-order intelligence and sentience. To test the explanatory power of this framework, the paper applies it to three progressively deepening frontier cases: the ethical pre-judgment of AI consciousness tests, the dilemma of organoid intelligence, and the ultimate verdict on AI shutdown rights. This paper does not attempt to provide a final, immutable answer, but rather offers itself as an open ethical preparatory draft for the consciousness singularity, inviting interdisciplinary scrutiny and dialogue.