Think of a computer. Now we have enough technology to equip it with all mechanisms to make it able to fully emulate the behaviour of beings that we conceive as able to suffer. However, since we know that what we have built in that computer is just a set of mechanisms, we know that pain doesn’t actually exist in that computer. What exists in that computer are just behaviours caused by the mechanisms that we have built.
Now the problem is that we are mechanisms as well. This means that I can look at you expressing pain and I can think that what is in you is not really pain. You are just another mechanism that produces certain behaviours. Computers are made of plastic and metal, circuits, you are made of proteins, vitamins, but both are just mechanisms.
The situation is slightly different about myself, but just slightly: I can think that even my pain is just a series of mechanisms, that have evolved into a survival instinct aimed to force me to react when something bad is happening in my body.
According to these thoughts, suffering does not exist. The consequence is obviously tragic: if suffering does not exist, violence and crime do not exist either. You cannot do violence to a computer, you cannot commit a crime against a computer, because a computer is unable to feel pain. You cannot kill a computer, because a computer is not alive.
This means that the only reason for non-violence is just an instinct of empathy, that is built in our brains. If somebody doesn’t act according to this instinct, there isn’t any reason to blame them, because they aren’t actually causing any suffering, since suffering itself does not exist.
If you think, instead, that suffering exists, what makes you think that it exists? Can you prove its existence? What is it made of, where is it, what is it?
Pain is much easier than fear and sickness, once you’re in pain, it’s pretty much a linear scene.
You’ll spasm for a period, and experience a worsening condition, heavy and severe body inflammation, ripping or tearing, in a single or multiple points.
A robot is not biotic- it’s the fact we’re biotic(knowing feeling), that pain exists. Pain isn’t just tolerable linear scenes, it’s all of immolation, the light strings touching our eyes, the food entering the stomach.
Yes a biotic is a different mechanism in the same category as robots or electro-light-beings. Yes biotics experience the risk of all possible pain associated with their body.
From being composed of mechanical parts it doesn’t follow that also the whole is mechanical.
From interacting parts you get emergent phenomena. In the case of mechanically interacting neurons, you get conscious states such as the suffering of pain.
This recalls me Occam’s razor. It is true that interaction always creates something that cannot be reduced to the original single components, but this shouldn’t be used to claim the existence of whatever we need or like to justify our conceptions. This way, this idea of emergence could be used to claim the existence of ghosts, magics, gods, anything.
What makes you think that interacting neurons have exactly this magic power of producing, as an emergent phenomenon, conscious states, while instead computer circuits do not have this magic power?
Whatever the explanation for pain is, we have it. The nature of the explanation doesn’t make the red-hot metal pressed to your skin less painful, or less real.
In the way you have referred to pain, what is real is a result of mechanisms, it is a mechanism itself. Why, for example, should I help humans who show tears on their eyes and not a super advanced computer that shows tears as well on its plastic and glass eyes? I know the exact mechanisms that both of them are made of, especially now that we know every detail about our DNA. Why should I help a mechanism?
I’d say interacting neurons are necessary but far from sufficient for conscious states. We ought to consider the whole organism in an environment of things of which it can (and must) be conscious in order to survive and be the kind of organism it is.
That’s an immensely complex set of mechanisms, including the mechanisms of biochemistry to emergent phenomena such as genetic replication and natural selection of not only functional properties but also materials.
With computer circuits, and LLMs we can currently simulate a superficial selection of recognizable features and functions.
I suspect that a conscious super-advanced computer would be more like an organism than a computer. E.g. possess living tissue, have genuine ability to form intent, have conscious states and no need to simulate a behavior programmed by us (i.e. observer-independent).
If I understand correctly, this means that in the future we might be condemned in a court for having caused pain to a computer, or not having respected its right to exist.
I don’t, it is just an impression, that’s why I opened this thread. The problem is that, if a well known mechanism like a computer can feel pain, then we should find a level of complexity or of specific structures where feeling arise. Otherwise even a stone has some embryonic kind of ability to feel, and I cannot deny it for sure. But, in that case, we should also ask: why should a stone prefer to stay whole, rather than being broken in pieces? Why should a computer prefer to stay assembled, rather than broken, even smashed, into pieces? Once we apply this to living beings, it comes evident that there is a mechanism of self preservation introduced by evolution. But it is still a mechanism. Why should I respect that mechanism? Why should I respect a computer that has been programmed to produce tears if I smash it?
It depends what we mean by “suffering”. If we mean just a mechanism that causes behaviours, then my question is: why should I avoid causing suffering in other beings, be them computers or humans, or animals, or plants?
I dont think that the second sentence follows from the first. Experience is real even if it is subjective.
I try to apply Stoic principles in my life including rhe insight that disturbance comes from within. However even the Stoics accepted that we all experience pain. No-one is above it. None of us are gods.
You can’t prove the existance of anything really, beyond the “I think therefore I exist”
But does it have to “exist” for it to be a part of our lives and the stories we tell.
Suffering after all is just a story, it’s narrativization of pain. An animal doesn’t narrativize, hence from an animal’s point of view it doesn’t suffer. Yet we look at it and write a story. “He shouldn’t feel this pain, this is unfair.” And we have thus created suffering. To us now, the animal suffers.
Pain is just your body saying “avoid this”, it’s like if the computer said “my cpu is broken” except it is much much faster and beyond language. It still serves the same purpose of surviving. What we do as humans though is create stories so we can live our lives within them. Violence is bad in so far as we say it is and we don’t want it. No need for higher logical reasoning or appeal.
According to @Highball_2814 animals do not suffer from their point of view. Why should I think that a living organism shouldn’t undergo violence? This way the idea of not doing violence seems similar to a religion: you are free to believe or not to believe it, to follow or not to follow it. As for religions, governments shouldn’t impose me to avoid violence, because the idea of suffering is based on a belief, not on any evidence.
