why do people think consciousness has anything to do with moral weight?
One of my strongest moral intuitions is that suffering is bad, meaning that it’s good to help other minds not-suffer. Minds can only suffer if they are conscious.
Interesting, that is not a terribly strong intuition for me. I’m willing to suffer some amount for some causes, so at least it’s not fundamental and universal.
The intuition that feels more fundamental is that joy should be maximized, and suffering is (in many cases) a reduction in joy. Which gets to “useless suffering is bad”, but that’s a lot weaker than “suffering is bad”.
Anyhow, I suspect this difference in intuition is a deep enough disagreement that it makes it difficult to fully agree on moral values. Both are about consciousness, though, so we at least agree there. I wonder what the moral intuitions are that make one thing consciousness is not central.
Yeah, “suffering is bad” doesn’t mean that I would never accept trades which involved some amount of suffering. Especially since trying to avoid suffering tends to cause more of it in the long run, so even if you only cared about reducing suffering (which I don’t), you’d still want to take actions involving some amount of suffering.
Compare that even if you want to have a lot of money, never spending any money (on e.g. investments) isn’t a very good strategy, even though your stated goal implies that spending money is bad.
Hmm, the money analogy misses me too. I’d never say “spending money is bad”, even as shorthand for something, as it’s simply not a base-level truth. I think of money as a lifetime flow rather than an instantaneous stock, and failing in your goals when you have unspent money is clearly a mistake.
I suspect we do agree on a lot of intuitions, but also disagree on the modeling of which of those are fundamental vs situational.
One of my strongest moral intuitions is that suffering is bad, meaning that it’s good to help other minds not-suffer. Minds can only suffer if they are conscious.
Interesting, that is not a terribly strong intuition for me. I’m willing to suffer some amount for some causes, so at least it’s not fundamental and universal.
The intuition that feels more fundamental is that joy should be maximized, and suffering is (in many cases) a reduction in joy. Which gets to “useless suffering is bad”, but that’s a lot weaker than “suffering is bad”.
Anyhow, I suspect this difference in intuition is a deep enough disagreement that it makes it difficult to fully agree on moral values. Both are about consciousness, though, so we at least agree there. I wonder what the moral intuitions are that make one thing consciousness is not central.
It’s not clear to me, from what’s written here, that you two even disagree at all. Kaj says, “suffering is bad.” You say, “useless suffering is bad.”
Are you sure Kaj wouldn’t also agree that suffering can sometimes be useful?
Yeah, “suffering is bad” doesn’t mean that I would never accept trades which involved some amount of suffering. Especially since trying to avoid suffering tends to cause more of it in the long run, so even if you only cared about reducing suffering (which I don’t), you’d still want to take actions involving some amount of suffering.
Compare that even if you want to have a lot of money, never spending any money (on e.g. investments) isn’t a very good strategy, even though your stated goal implies that spending money is bad.
Hmm, the money analogy misses me too. I’d never say “spending money is bad”, even as shorthand for something, as it’s simply not a base-level truth. I think of money as a lifetime flow rather than an instantaneous stock, and failing in your goals when you have unspent money is clearly a mistake.
I suspect we do agree on a lot of intuitions, but also disagree on the modeling of which of those are fundamental vs situational.