Ethics question

[anotherfilthyape]

 

 

No, your trying to say that you know one thing is more conscious than another despite the fact that consciousness can't be quantified and therefore can't have values compared.

 

Consciousness has not yet been quantified, it does not mean it cannot be quantified... It could be quantified in bits (bits is used for information, consciousness is a type of information)

 

We would care because we're not objects.

 

But why should we care about everything?

 

Why would we not care then? Just because we can not care? It works both ways.

We should not care because we should only care about what can be known positively, we can positively know about our own sentience and bet about the sentience of other humans and even betabout the sentience of other vertebrates, further than that there is no educated guess but mere whimsical bets, it is whimsical to bet other lifeforms or objects have a consciousness so we should not go that far...

 

We do behave like animals though, it is animal to form large social groups and interact and support each other, and it is animal to have cell-membranes and limbs and a brain and consume food rather than make it like plants.

 

I said animists not animals... you know what an animist is? check it in wikipedia.

 

Nature naturally likes to do the most efficient thing, but the most efficient thing isn't the only thing to do.

 

How is that an answer to my post? And why not be efficient? We have a drive to survive the longest time possible and enjoy our existence the longest possible, why should we not follow that drive?

 

What does an EM wave have to do with a universal view? An air temperature of no more than 130 degrees Fahrenheit would kill us eventually, but not necessarily machines.

 

My point is that your example of the comet is not universal... Life is something different than its absence and sentience is something different than its sentience. We can die from fright, without being touched... That is how different we are... You cannot kill a cockroach from fright.

 

No, it hasn't proven it, it has provided some limited evidence for it. These types of experiments aren't always the strictest. Have you ever considered that some species don't even see well or don't even see in the visible spectrum? Besides, doesn't really matter anyway.

 

These experiments are done taking into account the animal's ability to perceives themselves reflected, that is my point... I think you are unjustly desestimating ethology.

 

Science does't say anything about it at all, it can't even touch something as complex as consciousness itself at this point, all it can say is how animals respond to certain things, and different animals respond to things in different ways. Just because an animal doesn't do the exact same thing as us doesn't mean it can't have any similarities.

 

You know how science works, when it cannot directly observe something it works observing consequences of it... This is a tool every field of science uses, you are just not giving value to ethology and may be biased against it but entomologists have not achieved yet the evidence they have always searched for that their object of study are not mere robots of nature... Exact same behaviour is not what is sought but behaviour that reflects the inner workings... Behaviourism is what is applied.

 

It happened with us, why not with other species? Besides, I thought you said every person who died was potentially a genius. And who is to say what a species "must" go through to get to that level?

 

Potentiallity has different levels/percentages/-degree of probability-, a living human has more potential than a zygote, a human zygote has more potential than a sponge or a mosquito. A naive poster asked about humans evolving wings... Look the answers the poster got, now think about sentience, that is much more complex than wings and you would get your answer about other species developing sentience.

 

Emotions themselves aren't much more complex. You have this chemical released into the bloodstream and brain, and your brain reads it and has an interaction that tells perception what it is, similar to how pain works even.

 

Emotions are more complex in the way they involve things that are not necessary present, that is not as simple as releasing chemicals into the bloodstream and brain, it involves the advanced sentience we have developed thanks to the higher computing abilities of the vertebra and brain duo... Our spinal cord is why we are smarter, and our high brain-body ratio.

 

 

[questionposter]

Consciousness has not yet been quantified, it does not mean it cannot be quantified... It could be quantified in bits (bits is used for information, consciousness is a type of information)

It could be, but it could also not be, like the existence of god.

 

 

 

But why should we care about everything?

But why shouldn't we? The universe doesn't care about us, we can make a world of total peace if we put enough work into it since the universe doesn't care about us enough to limit us.

 

We should not care because we should only care about what can be known positively, we can positively know about our own sentience and bet about the sentience of other humans and even betabout the sentience of other vertebrates, further than that there is no educated guess but mere whimsical bets, it is whimsical to bet other lifeforms or objects have a consciousness so we should not go that far...

Science does not "know" what is sentient or conscious and what is not, in science we simply observe how animals react to things. What if dolphins are actually more sentient than us but because we can't communicate with them we don't know and because they don't have fingers they can't build anything to show us? For all we know even the sun could be a living thing: It's very complex, it changes, it has energy, it responds to stuff touching it, and it will eventually "die".

In order to actually know for sure if something is sentient or not, you'd have to be that thing if it can't communicate that it is not sentient.

 

 

 

said animists not animals... you know what an animist is? check it in wikipedia.

Sorry, I misread. Actually, would would be logical to play it safe like that.

 

 

 

How is that an answer to my post? And why not be efficient? We have a drive to survive the longest time possible and enjoy our existence the longest possible, why should we not follow that drive?

No, we don't have a drive to survive the longest, evolution is not a law of physics. There is no component of the universe that says we must do so, we do not have to survive to "strive the longest". What would even the point of outliving every other species? The universe could be infinitely large anyway and if we were the last species it must only mean some huge catastrophe has happened.

 

 

 

My point is that your example of the comet is not universal... Life is something different than its absence and sentience is something different than its sentience. We can die from fright, without being touched... That is how different we are... You cannot kill a cockroach from fright.

No, you don't die from fright, you die from your heart malfunctioning which can happen to a cockroach as well.

 

 

 

These experiments are done taking into account the animal's ability to perceives themselves reflected, that is my point... I think you are unjustly desestimating ethology.

All we can do is infer it's possible they do or do not care. What if we said it does look in the mirror and see itself yet in reality it didn't actually think it was seeing itself? Or what if it didn't act like it saw itself because it just didn't care enough that it saw itself in the mirror?

 

 

 

You know how science works, when it cannot directly observe something it works observing consequences of it... This is a tool every field of science uses, you are just not giving value to ethology and may be biased against it but entomologists have not achieved yet the evidence they have always searched for that their object of study are not mere robots of nature... Exact same behaviour is not what is sought but behaviour that reflects the inner workings... Behaviourism is what is applied.

 

Except we don't actually know what consciousness is or even if there are direct consequences to its existence therefore we don't know what exact traits of it to look for

 

Potentiallity has different levels/percentages/-degree of probability-, a living human has more potential than a zygote, a human zygote has more potential than a sponge or a mosquito. A naive poster asked about humans evolving wings... Look the answers the poster got, now think about sentience, that is much more complex than wings and you would get your answer about other species developing sentience.

Sentience is a pretty loose term.

 

 

 

Emotions are more complex in the way they involve things that are not necessary present, that is not as simple as releasing chemicals into the bloodstream and brain, it involves the advanced sentience we have developed thanks to the higher computing abilities of the vertebra and brain duo... Our spinal cord is why we are smarter, and our high brain-body ratio.

You say it is important that some animals don't have this type thing that is so special to you that you call emotions, but why do those animals act at all then? What is perceiving the compulsion to do something of not some type of perception?

Edited May 11, 2012 by questionposter

[anotherfilthyape]

 

 

It could be, but it could also not be, like the existence of god.

 

The existence of god has greater amount of inconsistencies and is more problematic and more whimsical to accept...

 

I said that consciousness could be quantified in bits (bits is used for information, consciousness is a type of information) and it can, consciousness is information about the existence of information in a system that collects information so consciousness is a percentage between how many bits are dedicated to being self-aware and how many bits are dedicated to being aware of the remaining data, the problem is we cannot duplicate the reading equipment our brain uses to give us awareness of our thoughts, in other words, we can observe the brain system's working but we cannot understand the language... In other words, looking at the brain work is like looking at a computer programmed by someone else or watching someone speak a different language that has no relationship with one's own language, we can identify there is a code but we cannot translate it to something we comprehend.

 

 

But why shouldn't we? The universe doesn't care about us, we can make a world of total peace if we put enough work into it since the universe doesn't care about us enough to limit us.

 

Define peace... The universe might not care about us but... You know, no matter how good you treat a saltwater crocodile it will still try to eat you if it gets a chance and no matter how much you try to make mosquitos avoid causing an epidemic of breakbone fever among humans they would continue causing it because the epidemic does not hurts them and they are motivated by survival for the sake of survival, not even for the sake of pleasure and joy, it is a world-eat-world, the universe does not care about us but the rest of the biosphere is just minding its own bussiness for survival

 

Science does not "know" what is sentient or conscious and what is not, in science we simply observe how animals react to things. What if dolphins are actually more sentient than us but because we can't communicate with them we don't know and because they don't have fingers they can't build anything to show us? For all we know even the sun could be a living thing: It's very complex, it changes, it has energy, it responds to stuff touching it, and it will eventually "die".

 

Ok, the dolphins are pretty much studied and I bet they are smart as ancient greeks, and that means they are very smart, but they are vertebrates... On the other hand the sun is just a slow explosion that keeps exploding and from which we derive energy... It would be being animist to give the sun the credence of sentience because we do not know otherwise, you are making the ad ignorantiam fallacy and the burden of proof lays on you, you are the one that has to prove that the sun or mosquitos are sentient.

 

In order to actually know for sure if something is sentient or not, you'd have to be that thing if it can't communicate that it is not sentient.

 

If it cannot communicate, how can it be sentient? Sentience is a by-product of the ability to communicate or a parallel product; sentience needs a language to express the toughts and communication happens through language.

 

Sorry, I misread. Actually, would would be logical to play it safe like that.

 

Being animist would be a safe bet? Cost-benefit analysis says otherwise, we would die from trying not to destroy all the other potential sentience that we would be imagining in the world around us...

 

No, we don't have a drive to survive the longest, evolution is not a law of physics.

 

What are you saying? That only laws of physics are valid science? That only laws of physics are facts? Evolution is a fact... But I was not strictly speaking about evolution but about the drive to survive... You seem to be biased against the more complex natural sciences that study life at a more complex level than physics... Which makes me remind you to read about emergentism... Chemistry also has facts, and so does sociology and anthropology and psychology and neurobiology... Et cetera.

 

There is no component of the universe that says we must do so, we do not have to survive to "strive the longest". What would even the point of outliving every other species? The universe could be infinitely large anyway and if we were the last species it must only mean some huge catastrophe has happened.

 

There is no need to bring alien species into the problem, we have not yet discovered alien species, even less, sentient alien species... The problem is just our biosphere; our point is not outliving other species in our biosphere but living longer (with or without them, "longer" here means "longer than already" not "longer than others") and living better (the later is a goal that justifies itself, "better" here means "better than already" not "better than others") or better said "living good enough" (sooner or later there is not much room for better, sooner or later you life good enough). The instinct for this is real and we know about it, it is a fact, not a whimsical nonsensical self-contradictory fantasy like god.

 

No, you don't die from fright, you die from your heart malfunctioning which can happen to a cockroach as well.

 

Fright is why your heart malfunctions... not something inherently wrong in the heart but a flawed reaction to something that only causes fear to a sentient being (like finding that your 13 year old grand-daughter is pregnant when you are her legal guardian because her mother, your daughter, died and never knew the father)

 

All we can do is infer it's possible they do or do not care. What if we said it does look in the mirror and see itself yet in reality it didn't actually think it was seeing itself? Or what if it didn't act like it saw itself because it just didn't care enough that it saw itself in the mirror?

 

Saying "in reality it didn't actually think it was seeing itself" is contradictory...

 

Caring enough? The tests are done when it is known the creature will care about the reaction... You must be arguing these experiments with those that made them, not with me...

 

Except we don't actually know what consciousness is or even if there are direct consequences to its existence therefore we don't know what exact traits of it to look for

 

We know what consciousness has as consequence, we see it every day when our own consciousness results in our behaviour.

 

Sentience is a pretty loose term.

 

Why is it a loose term? Becuase you say so or why?

 

You say it is important that some animals don't have this type thing that is so special to you that you call emotions, but why do those animals act at all then?

 

Why do plants act? Why do volcanoes erupt? Sans emotions instinct is the only driving motor for these creatures. Or something even simpler... Sperms do not have a system complex enough to be called instinctual yet they move through the best path they can find towards the ovum... You feel you are comiting mass murder every time you throw a bunch?

 

What is perceiving the compulsion to do something of not some type of perception?

 

At first I thought I understood that question but the more I read it the less I understand it... However perception is not an issue here...