You were not using their non- primitivity to communicate them: you were not offering or being offered a descrption that sed a decomposition of a quale into primitive terms. You were using a knowledge-by-acquaintance mechanism that happened to
be complex, although you did not know it was complex, or needed to know it was complex. In fact it could have been primitive for all you knew.
The issue about discrimination you bring up is not, I think, central. Moral relevance
is tied to the ability to suffer and enjoy. These are qualia. No one feels guilty about kicking rocks because we believe rocks don’t have pain qualia. But even if we did
believe rocks have pain qualia, the epistemological and metaphysical issues remain.
Does your objection to “discrimination” extend to treating rocks as sensitive beings?
Does your objection to “discrimination” extend to treating rocks as sensitive beings?
I certainly would treat a rock as sensitive if I had reason to believe that it would be willing to treat me as sensitive. (Maybe the only thing Kant got right!). Certainly my decision regarding how to treat rocks would have absolutely nothing to do with my guesses as to whether the way they experience the world was ontologically similar to the way I experience the world.
Even if their sensitivity were perfectly well understood in terms of geochemical cause and effect? Understood well enough to simulate? A simulation that could be connected to actuators that would act in my interests (assuming I reciprocated)? Great. Then we are in agreement. There is nothing mysterious or unsimulatable about qualia.
You were not using their non- primitivity to communicate them: you were not offering or being offered a descrption that sed a decomposition of a quale into primitive terms. You were using a knowledge-by-acquaintance mechanism that happened to be complex, although you did not know it was complex, or needed to know it was complex. In fact it could have been primitive for all you knew.
The issue about discrimination you bring up is not, I think, central. Moral relevance is tied to the ability to suffer and enjoy. These are qualia. No one feels guilty about kicking rocks because we believe rocks don’t have pain qualia. But even if we did believe rocks have pain qualia, the epistemological and metaphysical issues remain.
Does your objection to “discrimination” extend to treating rocks as sensitive beings?
I certainly would treat a rock as sensitive if I had reason to believe that it would be willing to treat me as sensitive. (Maybe the only thing Kant got right!). Certainly my decision regarding how to treat rocks would have absolutely nothing to do with my guesses as to whether the way they experience the world was ontologically similar to the way I experience the world.
You’re sensitive. If they were, that would be a broad similarity
Even if their sensitivity were perfectly well understood in terms of geochemical cause and effect? Understood well enough to simulate? A simulation that could be connected to actuators that would act in my interests (assuming I reciprocated)? Great. Then we are in agreement. There is nothing mysterious or unsimulatable about qualia.