Do I understand correctly that, according to your criteria, people with pain asymbolia would not count as moral patients (assuming they literally never experience suffering or aversiveness to nociceptive stimuli)?
People with some sort of fictional insane pain asymbolia where they never felt any aversiveness ever wouldn’t be moral patients no, although they might have value since their family, who are moral patients, still care about them. No such people actually exist irl though, people with pain asymbolia still want things and still feel aversiveness like everyone else , they just don’t suffer from physical pains.
Wait, that doesn’t compute. Why would they become moral patients because other people care about them? That fails on two accounts at once:
The family members do not feel pain about their loved ones. I agree that they suffer, but that is not related to pain stimuli. You can have aversive feelings toward all kinds of things unrelated to nociception. Just think about salty water. You only crave it if you have too little salt, but otherwise it is yuck. Although, maybe, you mean nociception in a non-standard way.
Even if the family member’s aversiveness were sufficient it would prove too much: It would make basically any object that people care about and feel suffering when damaged or lost a moral patient.
But I like the self-representation aspect of your criterion and I think it could be fixed by reducing it to just that:
Any system that represents its own aversive responses, deserves moral patienthood.
It would require to make “represent reponse” very precise, but I think that would be possible.
Why would they become moral patients because other people care about them
Yeah sorry phrased this badly, they would have moral value as in the same way a treasured heirloom has moral value. Second-hand.
The family members do not feel pain about their loved ones. I agree that they suffer, but that is not related to pain stimuli. You can have aversive feelings toward all kinds of things unrelated to nociception. Just think about salty water. You only crave it if you have too little salt, but otherwise it is yuck. Although, maybe, you mean nociception in a non-standard way.
Ahhh I think maybe I know another big reason of why people are confused now. I used nociception in the Gilbert example, but as I mention (probably too fleetingly) in the ‘The Criterion’ part, it is about everything aversive. Aversiveness is where moral value comes from, and it is a subjective sense of aversiveness that first-order systems lack. Nociception is just one thing that typically produces aversiveness.
But I like the self-representation aspect of your criterion and I think it could be fixed by reducing it to just that:
Yes I agree, I will think of a short but maximally precise way of rephrasing it. Thank you.
Do I understand correctly that, according to your criteria, people with pain asymbolia would not count as moral patients (assuming they literally never experience suffering or aversiveness to nociceptive stimuli)?
People with some sort of fictional insane pain asymbolia where they never felt any aversiveness ever wouldn’t be moral patients no, although they might have value since their family, who are moral patients, still care about them. No such people actually exist irl though, people with pain asymbolia still want things and still feel aversiveness like everyone else , they just don’t suffer from physical pains.
Wait, that doesn’t compute. Why would they become moral patients because other people care about them? That fails on two accounts at once:
The family members do not feel pain about their loved ones. I agree that they suffer, but that is not related to pain stimuli. You can have aversive feelings toward all kinds of things unrelated to nociception. Just think about salty water. You only crave it if you have too little salt, but otherwise it is yuck. Although, maybe, you mean nociception in a non-standard way.
Even if the family member’s aversiveness were sufficient it would prove too much: It would make basically any object that people care about and feel suffering when damaged or lost a moral patient.
But I like the self-representation aspect of your criterion and I think it could be fixed by reducing it to just that:
It would require to make “represent reponse” very precise, but I think that would be possible.
Yeah sorry phrased this badly, they would have moral value as in the same way a treasured heirloom has moral value. Second-hand.
Ahhh I think maybe I know another big reason of why people are confused now. I used nociception in the Gilbert example, but as I mention (probably too fleetingly) in the ‘The Criterion’ part, it is about everything aversive. Aversiveness is where moral value comes from, and it is a subjective sense of aversiveness that first-order systems lack. Nociception is just one thing that typically produces aversiveness.
Yes I agree, I will think of a short but maximally precise way of rephrasing it. Thank you.