If we have the technological capability of giving animals enhanced cognitive capabilities—and we do not give it to them—that is an interesting moral choice. Worth a thought.
We shouldn’t just leave them as-is after doing so though—we should build a super massive aquarium, and if we actually succeeded in making them smarter — be there to teach them science, math, physics, biology, medicine, computer science, etc.
The trouble is, in this situation, how could you possibly make an informed choice? For, after all, you cannot know what it is like to be a vampire until you are one. And if you can’t know what it’s like to be a vampire without becoming one, you can’t compare the character of the lived experience of what it is like to be you, right now, a mere human, to the character of the lived experience of what it would be like to be a vampire. This means that, if you want to make this choice by considering what you want your lived experience to be like in the future, you can’t do it rationally. At least, you can’t do it by weighing the competing options concerning what it would be like and choosing on this basis. And it seems awfully suspect to rely solely on the testimony of your vampire friends to make your choice, because, after all, they aren’t human any more, so their preferences are the ones vampires have, not the ones humans have. -- L.A. PaulBut the first time? Absolutely.
Kind of your moral question but in reverse.
As it happens, I am perfectly comfortable with the idea of intervening to help animals in more cases than we currently do, and if I had to guess what one belief we have now that will be regarded as appalling by some future generation, I think this (letting nature run its course when it leads to animals suffering) could be one of them.
Becoming sentient on an already developed industrialized world seems like it would be awful, though . I like to think there are many paths where a species could be welcomed & supported well, but it's hard to imagine that happening on our present earth.
We should be careful in case someone decides to try to uplift us.
So that may not be an argument in favor of it being the moral choice.
A lot of discussion on the problem of evil is quite obscure but worth reading if you're in any doubt about all of creation being a fundamentally excellent thing.
Edit: missed the "if". Assuming you put that there because we currently do not have this tech. Speculatively: like most society wide moral choices, it'd probably be made in such a way as to serve the short term interests of whoever had the power to enact the policy.
Alternatively: Would octopus uplift increase the quarterly profits? If so, say hello to your new eight-legged neighbors.
But then, perhaps they would learn to give each other nub rubs and then we’d have this runaway hedonic biological phenomena underseas. My god.