As a human, I feel empathy for other beings, and I project a conscious sentient being on them
Couldn’t agree more. It’s one of those “subjective objectivity” questions: there probably isn’t any objective definition of animal pain that feels right except for “they are in pain if they look like they are”, using humans::looks_like, of course, but the fact that their pain is not an objective bad thing about the world doesn’t make its existence better or less of a thing to avoid.
By the way, is there anyone else here inclined to also help stuck electric motors and fans? OK, that’s really not pain (you can’t really empathize with them), but still… somehow feels bad to just leave them there. Otherwise they would be… just… sad.
I doubt there’s any objective definition of pain if you simply assume the subject in question isn’t a reliable narrator (they could be a p-zombie, or faking it, or it could be entirely programmed behavior...), so yeah, at some point you have to go with the affect—they look like they’re in pain, they act like they’re in pain, and sure, my judgement of that is biased by my own perspective as a human with certain brainbits that make that call, but they’re making that call and that’s got a direct impact on my own perceptions of the situation.
I often sympathize with machines and objects as well, BTW. >> But I’m like that.
Couldn’t agree more. It’s one of those “subjective objectivity” questions: there probably isn’t any objective definition of animal pain that feels right except for “they are in pain if they look like they are”, using humans::looks_like, of course, but the fact that their pain is not an objective bad thing about the world doesn’t make its existence better or less of a thing to avoid.
By the way, is there anyone else here inclined to also help stuck electric motors and fans? OK, that’s really not pain (you can’t really empathize with them), but still… somehow feels bad to just leave them there. Otherwise they would be… just… sad.
I doubt there’s any objective definition of pain if you simply assume the subject in question isn’t a reliable narrator (they could be a p-zombie, or faking it, or it could be entirely programmed behavior...), so yeah, at some point you have to go with the affect—they look like they’re in pain, they act like they’re in pain, and sure, my judgement of that is biased by my own perspective as a human with certain brainbits that make that call, but they’re making that call and that’s got a direct impact on my own perceptions of the situation.
I often sympathize with machines and objects as well, BTW. >> But I’m like that.