The fish seems to be choosing environment B in order to relieve its pain
Given that a child can build a Lego robot that will avoid light, or loud sounds, or whatever else it has a sensor for, it’s not clear why this behaviour in a fish is evidence of pain qualia when we don’t take it to be so in a robot.
Because, unlike the robot, the cognitive architectures producing the observed behavior (alleviating a pain) are likely to be similar to those producing the similar behavior in us (since evolution is likely to have reused the same cognitive architecture in us and in the fish), and we know that whatever cognitive architecture produces that behavior in us produces a pain quale. The worry was supposed to be that perhaps the underlying cognitive architecture is more like a reflex than like a conscious experience, but the way the experiment was set up precluded that, since it’s highly unlikely that a fish would have a reflex built in for this specific situation (unlike, say, the situation of pulling away from a hot object or a sharp object, which could be an unconscious reflex in other animals).
You are correct. There is no known experiment that can conclusively prove the existence of qualia in other minds (as far as I know). All this prove is that the fish can feel pain (which we already know from neurophysiological research) not that it can experience it.
Although the experience of pain is almost inevitable in every large enough evoluture (from a theoretical point of view).
Given that a child can build a Lego robot that will avoid light, or loud sounds, or whatever else it has a sensor for, it’s not clear why this behaviour in a fish is evidence of pain qualia when we don’t take it to be so in a robot.
Because, unlike the robot, the cognitive architectures producing the observed behavior (alleviating a pain) are likely to be similar to those producing the similar behavior in us (since evolution is likely to have reused the same cognitive architecture in us and in the fish), and we know that whatever cognitive architecture produces that behavior in us produces a pain quale. The worry was supposed to be that perhaps the underlying cognitive architecture is more like a reflex than like a conscious experience, but the way the experiment was set up precluded that, since it’s highly unlikely that a fish would have a reflex built in for this specific situation (unlike, say, the situation of pulling away from a hot object or a sharp object, which could be an unconscious reflex in other animals).
You are correct. There is no known experiment that can conclusively prove the existence of qualia in other minds (as far as I know). All this prove is that the fish can feel pain (which we already know from neurophysiological research) not that it can experience it.
Although the experience of pain is almost inevitable in every large enough evoluture (from a theoretical point of view).