Douglas and Psy-Kosh: Dennett explicitly says that in denying that there are such things as qualia he is not denying the existence of conscious experience. Of course, Douglas may think that Dennett is lying or doesn’t understand his own position as well as Douglas does.
James Bach and J Thomas: I think Eliezer is asking us to assume that there are no knock-on effects in either the torture or the dust-speck scenario, and the usual assumption in these “which economy would you rather have?” questions is that the numbers provided represent the situation after all parties concerned have exerted whatever effort they can. (So, e.g., if almost everyone is described as destitute, then it must be a society in which escaping destitution by hard work is very difficult.) Of course I agree with both of you that there’s danger in this sort of simplification.
Douglas and Psy-Kosh: Dennett explicitly says that in denying that there are such things as qualia he is not denying the existence of conscious experience. Of course, Douglas may think that Dennett is lying or doesn’t understand his own position as well as Douglas does.
James Bach and J Thomas: I think Eliezer is asking us to assume that there are no knock-on effects in either the torture or the dust-speck scenario, and the usual assumption in these “which economy would you rather have?” questions is that the numbers provided represent the situation after all parties concerned have exerted whatever effort they can. (So, e.g., if almost everyone is described as destitute, then it must be a society in which escaping destitution by hard work is very difficult.) Of course I agree with both of you that there’s danger in this sort of simplification.