hmm...here’s a better way to illustrate what I’m getting at.
Do you like to read stories that have conflict? (yes) Would you enjoy those stories if they didn’t illicit emotions for you? (no)
Now imagine you are unable to feel those emotions that the sad story illicits. Do you still feel like reading the story? (no) If not, isn’t that one less item on the satisfaction menu? (yes)
(In parenthesis are my answers.)
You can apply this to other stuff. Most of the arts fit nicely. Arts are important to me.
Or imagine that you feel down about some small matter, and your friend comes and makes you feel better. That whole dynamic just seems part of what it means to be human.
Maybe life would be better without negative affect. Certainly, if I were to start never feeling negative affect tomorrow, I wouldn’t be bothered (by definition). But that version of me would be so different from the current version. It would disrupt continuity quite a bit..
I guess the acid test would be to go into the postiive-affect-only state temporarily, and then go back to normal. If I still wanted to keep negative affect states after the experience then maybe it wouldn’t really be a disruption of continuity at all.
(“disrupt continuity” here is short for: this hypothetical future being might be descended from my computations in some way, but it differs from the being that I currently am in such a way that I should now be considered partially if not wholly dead)
Sure, I expect that I’d have very different tastes in stories if my ability to experience emotion were significantly altered, and that there are stories I currently enjoy that I would stop enjoying. And, as you say, this applies to a Iot of things, not just stories.
I also expect that I’d start liking a lot of things I don’t currently like.
I mean, I suppose it’s possible that I’m currently at the theoretical apex of my ability to enjoy things without disrupting continuity, such that any change in my emotional profile would either disrupt continuity or narrow the range of things I can enjoy… but it doesn’t seem terribly likely. I mean, what if I passed that apex point a while back, and I would actually have a wider menu of satisfaction if I increased my ability to be sad?
Heck, what if having enough to eat stripped me of a huge set of potentially satisfying experiences involving starving, or giving up my last mouthful of food so someone I love can have enough to eat? Perhaps we would have done better to live closer to the edge of starvation?
I dunno. This all sounds pretty silly to me. If it’s compelling to you, I conclude we’re just different in that way.
I also expect that I’d start liking a lot of things I don’t currently like.
I think the reason we disagree is that you are only considering first-order preferences, which is understandable because the initial examples i provided were pretty near first order preferences. The other comment articulates my thoughts about why higher order preferences are necessarily affected when you alter emotions.
Aren’t your preferences (not first order preferences, but deeper ones) part of your self-identity? Is a version of you which doesn’t really feel empathetic pain still you in any meaningful sense? Would such a being care about actual torture? (I’m aware I’m switching tracks here. I’m still attempting to capture my intuition.)
The other comment articulates my thoughts about why higher order preferences are necessarily affected when you alter emotions.
Like preferring that people not suffer, and the feeling of pain at contemplating suffering? See my reply there, then.
“Affected” is a vague enough word that I suppose I can’t deny that my preferences would be affected… but then, my preferences are affected when I stay up late, or drink coffee.
It seems to me that you are equating emotions with preferences, such that altering my emotional profile is equivalent to altering my preferences. I’m not sure that’s justified, as I said there.
But, sure, there are preferences I strongly identify with, such that I would consider a being who didn’t share those preferences to be not-me.
And sure, I suppose I can imagine changes to my affect that are sufficiently severe as to effect changes to those preferences, thereby disrupting continuity. I’d prefer not to do that, all things being equal.
But it seems to me you’re trying to get from “there exist emotional changes so disruptive that they effectively kill the person I am” to “we shouldn’t make emotional changes”… which strikes me as abuot as plausible as “there exist physiological changes so disruptive that they effectively kill the person I am” to “we shouldn’t make physiological changes.”
But it seems to me you’re trying to get from “there exist emotional changes so disruptive that they effectively kill the person I am” to “we shouldn’t make emotional changes”… which strikes me as abuot as plausible as “there exist physiological changes so disruptive that they effectively kill the person I am” to “we shouldn’t make physiological changes.”
That’s actually really close to what I am saying, but minor alteration.
I’m going from “there exist emotional changes so disruptive that they effectively kill the person I am” to “we probably shouldn’t specifically make the emotional change where change = remove all negative affect. It’s probably one of those changes that effectively kills most people.”
I’m totally down with making some emotional changes, such as “stop clinical depression”, “remove hatred”, etc.
To follow the physiology analogy, “remove all negative affect” seems equivalent to saying “cut the right half of the brain off”. That’s approximately half of human emotion that we’d be removing.
But maybe if we can replace “suffering” with an emotion that we don’t intrinsically hate feeling which ends up producing the same “utility function” (as determined behaviorally), then it’s all good? It’s a lot of changes, but then again my preferences are where I place a large part of my identity, so if they are unaltered then maybe I haven’t died here...
Edit: Can you identify any positive preferences within yourself which do not correspond to a positive emotion? (or negative). I’m currently attempting to do so, nothing yet.
Can you taboo “negative affect”? I was fine with it as shorthand when it was pointing vaguely to an illustrative subset of the space of emotions, but if you mean to define it as a sharp-edged boundary of what we can safely eliminate, it might be helpful to define it more clearly.
Depending on what you mean by the term, I might agree with you that “remove all negative affect” is too big a change.
Can you identify any positive preferences within yourself which do not correspond to a positive emotion?
Well, I feel the emotion of satisfaction when I’m aware of my preferences being satisfied, so a correspondence necessarily exists in those cases. In cases where I’m not aware of my preference being satisfied, I typically don’t experience any differential emotion. E.g., given a choice between people not suffering and my being unaware of people suffering, I prefer the former, although I don’t experience them differently (emotionally or any other way).
hmm...here’s a better way to illustrate what I’m getting at.
Do you like to read stories that have conflict? (yes) Would you enjoy those stories if they didn’t illicit emotions for you? (no)
Now imagine you are unable to feel those emotions that the sad story illicits. Do you still feel like reading the story? (no) If not, isn’t that one less item on the satisfaction menu? (yes)
(In parenthesis are my answers.)
You can apply this to other stuff. Most of the arts fit nicely. Arts are important to me.
Or imagine that you feel down about some small matter, and your friend comes and makes you feel better. That whole dynamic just seems part of what it means to be human.
Maybe life would be better without negative affect. Certainly, if I were to start never feeling negative affect tomorrow, I wouldn’t be bothered (by definition). But that version of me would be so different from the current version. It would disrupt continuity quite a bit..
I guess the acid test would be to go into the postiive-affect-only state temporarily, and then go back to normal. If I still wanted to keep negative affect states after the experience then maybe it wouldn’t really be a disruption of continuity at all.
(“disrupt continuity” here is short for: this hypothetical future being might be descended from my computations in some way, but it differs from the being that I currently am in such a way that I should now be considered partially if not wholly dead)
Sure, I expect that I’d have very different tastes in stories if my ability to experience emotion were significantly altered, and that there are stories I currently enjoy that I would stop enjoying. And, as you say, this applies to a Iot of things, not just stories.
I also expect that I’d start liking a lot of things I don’t currently like.
I mean, I suppose it’s possible that I’m currently at the theoretical apex of my ability to enjoy things without disrupting continuity, such that any change in my emotional profile would either disrupt continuity or narrow the range of things I can enjoy… but it doesn’t seem terribly likely. I mean, what if I passed that apex point a while back, and I would actually have a wider menu of satisfaction if I increased my ability to be sad?
Heck, what if having enough to eat stripped me of a huge set of potentially satisfying experiences involving starving, or giving up my last mouthful of food so someone I love can have enough to eat? Perhaps we would have done better to live closer to the edge of starvation?
I dunno. This all sounds pretty silly to me. If it’s compelling to you, I conclude we’re just different in that way.
I think the reason we disagree is that you are only considering first-order preferences, which is understandable because the initial examples i provided were pretty near first order preferences. The other comment articulates my thoughts about why higher order preferences are necessarily affected when you alter emotions.
Aren’t your preferences (not first order preferences, but deeper ones) part of your self-identity? Is a version of you which doesn’t really feel empathetic pain still you in any meaningful sense? Would such a being care about actual torture? (I’m aware I’m switching tracks here. I’m still attempting to capture my intuition.)
Like preferring that people not suffer, and the feeling of pain at contemplating suffering?
See my reply there, then.
“Affected” is a vague enough word that I suppose I can’t deny that my preferences would be affected… but then, my preferences are affected when I stay up late, or drink coffee.
It seems to me that you are equating emotions with preferences, such that altering my emotional profile is equivalent to altering my preferences.
I’m not sure that’s justified, as I said there.
But, sure, there are preferences I strongly identify with, such that I would consider a being who didn’t share those preferences to be not-me.
And sure, I suppose I can imagine changes to my affect that are sufficiently severe as to effect changes to those preferences, thereby disrupting continuity. I’d prefer not to do that, all things being equal.
But it seems to me you’re trying to get from “there exist emotional changes so disruptive that they effectively kill the person I am” to “we shouldn’t make emotional changes”… which strikes me as abuot as plausible as “there exist physiological changes so disruptive that they effectively kill the person I am” to “we shouldn’t make physiological changes.”
That’s actually really close to what I am saying, but minor alteration.
I’m going from “there exist emotional changes so disruptive that they effectively kill the person I am” to “we probably shouldn’t specifically make the emotional change where change = remove all negative affect. It’s probably one of those changes that effectively kills most people.”
I’m totally down with making some emotional changes, such as “stop clinical depression”, “remove hatred”, etc.
To follow the physiology analogy, “remove all negative affect” seems equivalent to saying “cut the right half of the brain off”. That’s approximately half of human emotion that we’d be removing.
But maybe if we can replace “suffering” with an emotion that we don’t intrinsically hate feeling which ends up producing the same “utility function” (as determined behaviorally), then it’s all good? It’s a lot of changes, but then again my preferences are where I place a large part of my identity, so if they are unaltered then maybe I haven’t died here...
Edit: Can you identify any positive preferences within yourself which do not correspond to a positive emotion? (or negative). I’m currently attempting to do so, nothing yet.
Can you taboo “negative affect”? I was fine with it as shorthand when it was pointing vaguely to an illustrative subset of the space of emotions, but if you mean to define it as a sharp-edged boundary of what we can safely eliminate, it might be helpful to define it more clearly.
Depending on what you mean by the term, I might agree with you that “remove all negative affect” is too big a change.
Well, I feel the emotion of satisfaction when I’m aware of my preferences being satisfied, so a correspondence necessarily exists in those cases. In cases where I’m not aware of my preference being satisfied, I typically don’t experience any differential emotion. E.g., given a choice between people not suffering and my being unaware of people suffering, I prefer the former, although I don’t experience them differently (emotionally or any other way).