The point isn’t whether robots (or people) could be affected by cardinal magnitudes. The point is that only the valuation which causes action in the subjective present (Bergsonian present) actually motivates people. How they come to have that value might be predictable by direct cardinal ratios (indeed, if you’re a mental determinist and materialist this is true of humans). The point is that this psychological or physiological fact is the origin of a particular motivation. Teleological entities, however, only feel and act right now, and only on their most highly ranked values—however those values came to be most highly ranked. And there is no assessable ‘ratio’ of satisfaction gained or loss, only expectations of better or worse.
The point isn’t whether robots (or people) could be affected by cardinal magnitudes. The point is that only the valuation which causes action in the subjective present (Bergsonian present) actually motivates people. How they come to have that value might be predictable by direct cardinal ratios (indeed, if you’re a mental determinist and materialist this is true of humans). The point is that this psychological or physiological fact is the origin of a particular motivation. Teleological entities, however, only feel and act right now, and only on their most highly ranked values—however those values came to be most highly ranked. And there is no assessable ‘ratio’ of satisfaction gained or loss, only expectations of better or worse.