Matt: I don't believe that the ability to feel pleasure and pain depends on
consciousness. That is just a circular definition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
Richard:It is not circular. Consciousness and pleasure/pain are both
subjective
issues. They can resolved together.
Both of you, in fairly standard fashion, are approaching humans and animals
as if they were dissected on a table with consciousness/ emotions/ pleasure
& pain lying around.
The reality is that we are integrated systems in which -
a self
is continually subjected to
and feels (or to some extent may choose not to feel)
emotions (involving pleasure/pain)
via a (two-way) nervous system.
The questions Matt has to answer is:
1) are the systems you envisage going to have a self (to feel emotions) -
and if so, why? - and
2) why will that self have to be continually pleasured and pained - punished
and rewarded - by emotions? - and
3) are you, and if so how are you, going to attach a nervous system to your
computer - without which pleasure and pain, as we know them, couldn't
conceivably work?
Are you sure IOW that you are not just blindly following fads? If you are
attaching nominal emotions to your system merely because you wish to
encourage/discourage its behaviours, well you don't need the whole complex
apparatus of emotions at all, surely. You can simply attach positive or
negative numbers, or other stores of value, to those behaviours, , and
change the system's behaviour automatically, since it's a deterministic
system, no? It needs no persuasion. No need for all those complex, endless
pains and pleasures and nerves.
The only possible reason it would make sense to pleasure and pain a self
with emotions - to torture it, to the extent that humans are tortured by
their emotions - is if that self is not deterministic, but able to resist
those emotions, (and we do indeed show every sign of being able to resist
emotions, and not acting on every impulse - you don't immediately rush to
the toilet, or reach for a bandage, every time you have the appropriate
painful urge). If that self can resist, then it makes sense to torture the
bastard so that it doesn't forget this dangerous wound or other kind of
injury that it is currently ignoring or continue to do something else that
is dangerous to the system. You only torture someone who is resisting you.
Of course, nature could just be a pure sadist - torturing humans and animals
purely for its own gratification, rather than any functional reason. But
that's hardly likely.
So are you in the torture business, Matt? Do you want computers that are
desperate for a fag/ drink/ drug etc like you, because they want to soothe
the pain of those emotions/ urges that their mechanical nervous system
continually assaults them with. Do you want computers with all kinds of
substance abuse problems? Or are you just in the valuation business? Which?
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