When people say that it’s conceivable for something to act exactly as if it were in pain without actually feeling pain, they are using the word “feel” in a way that I don’t understand or care about.
Taken literally, this suggests that you believe all actors really believe they are the character (at least, if they are acting exactly like the character). Since that seems unlikely, I’m not sure what you mean.
If an actor stays in character his entire life, making friends and holding down a job, in character—and if, whenever he seemed to zone out, you could interrupt him at any time to ask what he was thinking about, and he could give a detailed description of the day dream he was having, in character...
Well then I’d say the character is a lot less fictional than the actor. But even if there is an actor—an entirely different person putting on a show—the character is still a real person. This is no different from saying that a person is still a person, even if they’re a brain emulation running on a computer. In this case, the actor is the substrate on which the character is running.
Would you say a thermostat feels pain when it can’t adjust the temperature towards its preferred setting? Otherwise you might have some strange ideas about the complexity of video game characters. There’s a very long way to go in internal complexity from a video game character to, say, a bacterium.
This program aimlessly wanders over a space of locations, but eventually tends to avoid locations where X has returned True at past times. It seems obvious to me that X is pain, and that this program experiences pain. You might say that the program experiences less pain than we do, because the pain response is so simple. Or you might argue that it experiences pain more intensely, because all it does is implement the pain response. Either position seems valid, but again it’s all academic to me, because I don’t believe pain or pleasure are good or bad things in themselves.
To answer your question, a thermostat that is blocked from changing the temperature is frustrated, not necessarily in pain. Although, changing the setting on a working thermostat may be pain, because it is a stimulus that causes a change in the persistent behavior a system, directing it to extricate itself from its current situation.
Taken literally, this suggests that you believe all actors really believe they are the character (at least, if they are acting exactly like the character). Since that seems unlikely, I’m not sure what you mean.
If an actor stays in character his entire life, making friends and holding down a job, in character—and if, whenever he seemed to zone out, you could interrupt him at any time to ask what he was thinking about, and he could give a detailed description of the day dream he was having, in character...
Well then I’d say the character is a lot less fictional than the actor. But even if there is an actor—an entirely different person putting on a show—the character is still a real person. This is no different from saying that a person is still a person, even if they’re a brain emulation running on a computer. In this case, the actor is the substrate on which the character is running.
So would you say video game characters “feel” pain?
Probably some of them do (I don’t play video games). But they aren’t even close to being people, so I don’t really care.
Would you say a thermostat feels pain when it can’t adjust the temperature towards its preferred setting? Otherwise you might have some strange ideas about the complexity of video game characters. There’s a very long way to go in internal complexity from a video game character to, say, a bacterium.
I don’t think a program has to be very sophisticated to feel pain. But it does have to exhibit some kind of learning. For example:
This program aimlessly wanders over a space of locations, but eventually tends to avoid locations where X has returned True at past times. It seems obvious to me that X is pain, and that this program experiences pain. You might say that the program experiences less pain than we do, because the pain response is so simple. Or you might argue that it experiences pain more intensely, because all it does is implement the pain response. Either position seems valid, but again it’s all academic to me, because I don’t believe pain or pleasure are good or bad things in themselves.
To answer your question, a thermostat that is blocked from changing the temperature is frustrated, not necessarily in pain. Although, changing the setting on a working thermostat may be pain, because it is a stimulus that causes a change in the persistent behavior a system, directing it to extricate itself from its current situation.
(edit: had trouble with indentation.)