--- On Sun, 11/16/08, Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I wrote: > >> I think the reason that the hard question is > interesting at all is that it would presumably be OK to > torture a zombie because it doesn't actually experience > pain, even though it would react exactly like a human being > tortured. That's an ethical question. Ethics is a belief > system that exists in our minds about what we should or > should not do. There is no objective experiment you can do > that will tell you whether any act, such as inflicting pain > on a human, animal, or machine, is ethical or not. The only > thing you can measure is belief, for example, by taking a > poll. > > What is the point to ethics? The reason why you can't > do objective experiments is because *YOU* don't have a > grounded concept of ethics. The second that you ground your > concepts in effects that can be seen in "the real > world", there are numerous possible experiments.
How do you propose grounding ethics? I have a complex model that says some things are right and others are wrong. So does everyone else. These models don't agree. How do you propose testing whether a model is correct or not? If everyone agreed that torturing people was wrong, then torture wouldn't exist. > The same is true of consciousness. The hard problem of > consciousness is hard because the question is ungrounded. > Define all of the arguments in terms of things that appear > and matter in the real world and the question goes away. > It's only because you invent ungrounded unprovable > distinctions that the so-called hard problem appears. How do you prove that Richard's definition of consciousness is correct and Colin's is wrong, or vice versa? All you can say about either definition is that some entities are conscious and others are not, according to whichever definition you accept. But so what? > Torturing a p-zombie is unethical because whether it feels > pain or not is 100% irrelevant in "the real > world". If it 100% acts as if it feels pain, then for > all purposes that matter it does feel pain. Why invent this > mystical situation where it doesn't feel pain yet acts > as if it does? Because people nevertheless make this arbitrary distinction in order to make ethical decisions. Torturing a p-zombie is only wrong according to some ethical models but not others. The same is true about doing animal experiments, or running autobliss with two negative arguments. If you ask people why they think so, a common response is that the things that it is not ethical to torture are conscious. > Richard's paper attempts to solve the hard problem by > grounding some of the silliness. It's the best possible > effort short of just ignoring the silliness and going on to > something else that is actually relevant to the real world. I agree. This whole irrelevant discussion of consciousness is getting tedious. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
