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A lot of people have wrote about the ethical considerations and to me they make no sense. Since when did our generally accepted ethics say that imposing sufferi
by nmilo 3y ago
A lot of people have wrote about the ethical considerations and to me they make no sense. Since when did our generally accepted ethics say that imposing suffering onto a conscious being is bad, but non-conscious beings is fine? This is the completely wrong correspondence because there's counter-arguments for both sides. You wouldn't harm a puppy, even though it's (probably?) not conscious, and I personally wouldn't care to cause a computer program to suffer, even if it claims to have some form of consciousness.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoI see what happened there: sneaking that word 'being' to imply value and consciousness and then contradict that. You can reach any conclusion when the argument includes a contradiction?
- nmilo 3y agoWhat are you talking about? I'm not trying to pull an underhanded argument, I'm genuinely confused about others' views.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoA rock is unconscious. Is it a 'being'? What is a 'being'? Something you feel bad about treating badly? The argument is circular.
- nmilo 3y agoPlants, bugs, and fish are all "beings" despite having varying degrees of consciousness and ethical allowability-of-harm. But fine. Whatever, my bad. Replace "being" with "entity" and my question still stands.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoSorry, I thought that was a critical distinction, my bad. The hard part of this conversation is that 'consciousness' in other than the 'knocked unconscious' sense is a slippery concept. So we're all arguing from different assumptions.
- magnetic 3y ago> You wouldn't harm a puppy, even though it's (probably?) not conscious What makes you think a puppy is not conscious? For ref: conscious | ˈkänSHəs | adjective aware of and responding to one's surroundings; awake. Source: have a puppy. He's plenty aware of his surroundings.
- nmilo 3y agoYou found the wrong form of the word. There's the medical consciousness found in the dictionary, as in, "He is asleep so he has lost consciousness," and there is the metaphysical consciousness as in "does a fish have consciousness?" The latter is what people refer to in ethical debates, the former is more of a medical term.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoThe metaphysical version is undefined. So we have the slippery discussions in this whole thread.
- nmilo 3y agoThat's the whole point. Consciousness is a fuzzy concept and shouldn't be used as an ethical basis as to what is OK to harm and not harm.
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoI guess we slip into that because inanimate objects are ok to manipulate as we wish without concern. It's a gentle slope from there up to humans, and somewhere along the line it becomes problematic.