This is not what is, this is an interpretation; as such, it is conditioned by those humans who elaborated it and conditions those who reflect on it. It’s not a neutral thing.
This doesn’t seem a problem to me: we can just experiment to make robots more and more human-like, because we humans like to build things that are surprisingly similar to humans.
Yes, but still, tell me how it works? Does it cry because we built liquids reservoirs in certain locations, and programmed it to leak liquid from certain places, and make certain sounds, when it is physically damaged? That is meaningless. It’s not evidence of a conscious intelligence. (Although it might be a conscious intelligence.)
Exaxtly. It’s all subjective. There is no objective truth.
The request for a proof that suffering exists reads as an excuse for psychopathy. There is something remiss in someone who needs such a proof.
Should you care about any person, including yourself, even if it costs you something?
Pain exists, as an unpleasant sensation, mediated by a dedicated neural pain circuitry.
Robots are not a good reason that pain doesn’t exist; like a wind-up toy car is not a good reason that there’s no such thing as an internal combustion engine. In fact the existence of a mechanism goes against the OP’s thesis; after all if there’s a mechanism for pain then there’s pain.
There are different kinds of pain e.g. resulting from physical, chemical, biological, and emotional trauma.
Pretty much. There’s also the point that pain is not any specific mechanism. The pain in my foot need bear no mechanical similarity to the pain of your lost youth. There is a mistake in the OP in thinking of pain as somehow unitary.
The OP hasn’t set out his case in the best way possible, philosophically speaking. He’s juggling multiple ideas, even in the restricted domain of discourse, pain. Hence, I guess, my post and your inevitable reply.
The experience of pain is indubitable, but that it can’t be identified as a public referrent to define our usage of the term doesn’t call into question its existence. The grammar of suffering isn’t the metaphysics of suffering, which points out that the inability to identify the floating substance of suffering doesn’t imply its nonexistence, but it only points out the incoherence of the effort.
There are people in whom the nociceptive system doesn’t develop. Something to do with genes getting turned off. They are permanently anaglesic. It’s a similar condition to Hansen’s disease, but more profound in its state of painlessness. It’s one of those conditions that pop up in Ripley’s believe or not. I’m however not in Hollywood, not having been offered even a minor role in an 8 mm pornographic movie. ![]()
Do we have evidence of a conscious intelligence in humans?
What seems strange to me is the idea that I am ok if I intentionally cause pain to someone and I don’t care about that pain.
Why is it psychopathy or remiss?
Question: Has anyone here not felt pain?
Well, describe Psychopathy for us. Isn’t a part of such a description an inability to recognise and respond with empathy to suffering? Or have you a different account. Either way, such a disability is somewhat pathological.
Did you read “The Wasp Factory” by Iain Banks?
A computer programmed properly would be able to answer “I have felt pain”.
My question was about having felt/not felt pain. Perhaps it was too general for a question on pain, the exclusive domain of sentience. Apologies.
Responding with empathy is not evidence that pain exists. We respond with empathy to a certain behaviour, but both that behaviour and our empathy are not evidence of the existence of pain. I find natural in myself to respond with empathy. Does this imply that wanting to enquire about the whole phenomenon is pathological?