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.
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.