I think that split-brain study shows the opposite of what you think it shows. If you observed yourself to be writhing around in agony, then you would conclude that you were experiencing the qualia of pain. Try to imagine what this would actually be like, and think carefully about what “trying to avoid similar circumstances in the future” actually means. You can’t sit still, can’t think about anything else. You plead with anyone around to help you—put a stop to whatever is causing this—insisting that they should sympathize with you. The more intense the pain gets, the more desperate you become. If not, then you aren’t actually in pain (as I define it) because you aren’t trying very hard to avoid the stimulus. I’d sympathize with you. Are you saying you wouldn’t sympathize with yourself?
BTW, how do you think I’d respond, if subjected to pain and asked about my “qualia”? By this reasoning, is my pain irrelevant?
In practice it seems that the only reason that it frustrates a person’s goals to receive pain is because they have a goal, “I don’t want to be in pain.”
I think you have the causation backwards. Pain causes a person to acquire the goal of avoiding whatever the source of the pain is, even if they didn’t have that goal before. (Think about someone confidently volunteering to be water-boarded to prove a point, only to immediately change his mind when the torture starts.) That’s how I just defined pain above. That’s all pain is, as far as I know. Of course, in animals, the pain response happens to be associated with a bunch of biological quirks, but we could recognize pain without those minutiae.
If the sophisticated intelligence HAS qualia but doesn’t have as a goal avoidance of pain, that suggests your ethical system would be OK to subject it to endless punishment (a sentiment with which I may agree).
Well, you just described an intelligence that doesn’t feel pain. So it doesn’t make sense to ask whether it would be OK to inflict pain on it. Could you clarify what it would mean to punish something that has no desire to avoid the punishment?
I think that split-brain study shows the opposite of what you think it shows. If you observed yourself to be writhing around in agony, then you would conclude that you were experiencing the qualia of pain. Try to imagine what this would actually be like, and think carefully about what “trying to avoid similar circumstances in the future” actually means. You can’t sit still, can’t think about anything else. You plead with anyone around to help you—put a stop to whatever is causing this—insisting that they should sympathize with you. The more intense the pain gets, the more desperate you become. If not, then you aren’t actually in pain (as I define it) because you aren’t trying very hard to avoid the stimulus. I’d sympathize with you. Are you saying you wouldn’t sympathize with yourself?
BTW, how do you think I’d respond, if subjected to pain and asked about my “qualia”? By this reasoning, is my pain irrelevant?
I think you have the causation backwards. Pain causes a person to acquire the goal of avoiding whatever the source of the pain is, even if they didn’t have that goal before. (Think about someone confidently volunteering to be water-boarded to prove a point, only to immediately change his mind when the torture starts.) That’s how I just defined pain above. That’s all pain is, as far as I know. Of course, in animals, the pain response happens to be associated with a bunch of biological quirks, but we could recognize pain without those minutiae.
Well, you just described an intelligence that doesn’t feel pain. So it doesn’t make sense to ask whether it would be OK to inflict pain on it. Could you clarify what it would mean to punish something that has no desire to avoid the punishment?