If someone offered me a pill that would merely reduce my qualia experience of pain I would take it, even if it still triggered in me a process of information that would cause me to try to avoid similar circumstances in the future, and even if it were impossible to tell observationally that I had taken it, except by asking about my qualia of experiencing pain and other such philosophical topics. That is, if I am going to writhe in agony, I would prefer to have my mind do it for me without me having to experience the agony. If I’m going to never touch a hot stove because of one time when I burned me, I’d prefer to do that without having the memory of the burn. This idea is not malformed, given what we know about the human brain’s lack of introspection on it’s actions.
I believe it’s unethical to inflict pain on people (or animals, unnecessarily), because to hold something in a state of pain is to frustrate its goals. I don’t think that it is any qualia associated with pain that makes it bad.
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.” There are certainly reasons that the pain is adaptive, but it certainly seems from the inside like the most objectionable part is the qualia. 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).
If someone offered me a pill that would merely reduce my qualia experience of pain I would take it
Morphine is said to have this effect. Some people who have been prescribed it for pain say that they still feel the pain but it doesn’t hurt. But it’s illegal in most places except for bona fide medical purposes.
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?
If someone offered me a pill that would merely reduce my qualia experience of pain I would take it, even if it still triggered in me a process of information that would cause me to try to avoid similar circumstances in the future, and even if it were impossible to tell observationally that I had taken it, except by asking about my qualia of experiencing pain and other such philosophical topics. That is, if I am going to writhe in agony, I would prefer to have my mind do it for me without me having to experience the agony. If I’m going to never touch a hot stove because of one time when I burned me, I’d prefer to do that without having the memory of the burn. This idea is not malformed, given what we know about the human brain’s lack of introspection on it’s actions.
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.” There are certainly reasons that the pain is adaptive, but it certainly seems from the inside like the most objectionable part is the qualia. 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).
Morphine is said to have this effect. Some people who have been prescribed it for pain say that they still feel the pain but it doesn’t hurt. But it’s illegal in most places except for bona fide medical purposes.
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?