Huh, yes, in my view C. elegans is a P-zombie. If we grant reductive physicalism, the primitive nervous system of C. elegans can’t support a unitary subject of experience. At most, its individual ganglia (cf. http://www.sfu.ca/biology/faculty/hutter/hutterlab/research/Ce_nervous_system.html) may be endowed with the rudiments of unitary consciousness. But otherwise, C. elegans can effectively be modelled classically. Most of us probably wouldn’t agree with philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel. (“If Materialism Is True, the United States Is Probably Conscious” http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/USAconscious-130208.pdf) But exactly the same dilemma confronts those who treat neurons as essentially discrete, membrane-bound classical objects. Even if (rightly IMO) we take Strawsonian physicalism seriously (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism#Strawsonian_physicalism) then we still need to explain how classical neuronal “mind-dust” could generate bound experiential objects or a unitary subject of experience without invoking some sort of strong emergence.
davidpearce
Alas so. IMO a solution to the phenomenal binding problem (cf. http://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/body_and_health/Neurology/Binding.pdf) is critical to understanding the evolutionary success of organic robots over the past 540 million years—and why classical digital computers are (and will remain) insentient zombies, not unitary minds. This conjecture may be false; but it has the virtue of being testable. If / when our experimental apparatus allows probing the CNS at the sub-picosecond timescales above which Max Tegmark (“Why the brain is probably not a quantum computer”) posits thermally-induced decoherence, then I think we’ll get a huge surprise! I predict we’ll find, not random psychotic “noise”, but instead the formal, quantum-coherent physical shadows of the macroscopic bound phenomenal objects of everyday experience—computationally optimised by hundreds of millions years of evolution, i.e. a perfect structural match. (cf. http://consc.net/papers/combination.pdf) By contrast, critics of the quantum mind conjecture must presumably predict we’ll find just “noise”.
Cruelty-free in vitro meat can potentially replace the flesh of all sentient beings currently used for food. Yes, it’s more efficient; it also makes high-tech Jainism less of a pipedream.
I disagree with Peter Singer here. So I’m not best placed to argue his position. But Singer is acutely sensitive to the potential risks of any notion of lives not worth living. Recall Singer lost three of his grandparents in the Holocaust. Let’s just say it’s not obvious that an incurable victim of, say, infantile Tay–Sachs disease, who is going do die around four years old after a chronic pain-ridden existence, is better off alive. We can’t ask this question to the victim: the nature of the disorder means s/he is not cognitively competent to understand the question.
Either way, the case for the expanding circle doesn’t depend on an alleged growth in empathy per se. If, as I think quite likely, we eventually enlarge our sphere of concern to the well-being of all sentience, this outcome may owe as much to the trait of high-AQ hyper-systematising as any widening or deepening compassion. By way of example, consider the work of Bill Gates in cost-effective investments in global health (vaccinations etc) and indeed in: http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Features/Future-of-Food (“the future of meat is vegan”). Not even his greatest admirers would describe Gates as unusually empathetic. But he is unusually rational—and the growth in secular scientific rationalism looks set to continue.
Nornagest, fair point. See too “The Brain Functional Networks Associated to Human and Animal Suffering Differ among Omnivores, Vegetarians and Vegans” : http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0010847
Eugine, are you doing Peter Singer justice? What motivates Singer’s position isn’t a range of empathetic concern that’s stunted in comparsion to people who favour the universal sanctity of human life. Rather it’s a different conception of the threshold below which a life is not worth living. We find similar debates over the so-called “Logic of the Larder” for factory-farmed non-human animals: http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-c/salt02.htm. Actually, one may agree with Singer—both his utilitarian ethics and bleak diagnosis of some human and nonhuman lives—and still argue against his policy prescriptions on indirect utilitarian grounds. But this would take us far afield.
On (indirect) utilitarian grounds, we may make a strong case that enshrining the sanctity of life in law will lead to better consequences than legalising infanticide. So I disagree with Singer here. But I’m not sure Singer’s willingness to defend infanticide as (sometimes) the lesser evil is a counterexample to the broad sweep of the generalisation of the expanding circle. We’re not talking about some Iron Law of Moral Progress.
The growth of science has led to a decline in animism. So in one sense, our sphere of concern has narrowed. But within the sphere of sentience, I think Singer and Pinker are broadly correct. Also, utopian technology makes even the weakest forms of benevolence vastly more effective. Consider, say, vaccination. Even if, pessimistically, one doesn’t foresee any net growth in empathetic concern, technology increasingly makes the costs of benevolence trivial.
[Once again, I’m not addressing here the prospect of hypothetical paperclippers—just mind-reading humans with a pain-pleasure (dis)value axis.]
an expanding circle of empathetic concern needn’t reflect a net gain in compassion. Naively, one might imagine that e.g. vegans are more compassionate than vegetarians. But I know of no evidence this is the case. Tellingly, female vegetarians outnumber male vegetarians by around 2:1, but the ratio of male to female vegans is roughly equal. So an expanding circle may reflect our reduced tolerance of inconsistency / cognitive dissonance. Men are more likely to be utilitarian hyper-systematisers.
There is no guarantee that greater perspective-taking capacity will be matched with equivalent action. But presumably greater empathetic concern makes such action more likely. [cf. Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature”. Pinker aptly chronicles e.g. the growth in consideration of the interests of nonhuman animals; but this greater concern hasn’t (yet) led to an end to the growth of factory-farming. In practice, I suspect in vitro meat will be the game-changer.]
The attributes of superintelligence? Well, the growth of scientific knowledge has been paralleled by a growth in awareness—and partial correction—of all sorts of cognitive biases that were fitness-enhancing in the ancestral environment of adaptedness. Extrapolating, I was assuming that full-spectrum superintelligences would be capable of accessing and impartially weighing all possible first-person perspectives and acting accordingly. But I’m making a lot of contestable assumptions here. And see too the perils of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophatic_theology
Perhaps it’s worth distinguishing the Convergence vs Orthogonality theses for: 1) biological minds with a pain-pleasure (dis)value axis. 2) hypothetical paperclippers.
Unless we believe that the expanding circle of compassion is likely to contract, IMO a strong case can be made that rational agents will tend to phase out the biology of suffering in their forward light-cone. I’m assuming, controversially, that superintelligent biological posthumans will not be prey to the egocentric illusion that was fitness-enhancing on the African savannah. Hence the scientific view-from-nowhere, i.e. no arbitrarily privileged reference frames.
But what about 2? I confess I still struggle with the notion of a superintelligent paperclipper. But if we grant that such a prospect is feasible and even probable, then I agree the Orthogonality thesis is most likely true.
notsonewuser, yes, “a (very) lossy compression”, that’s a good way of putting it—not just burger-eating Jane’s lossy representation of the first-person perspective of a cow, but also her lossy representation of her pensioner namesake with atherosclerosis forty years hence. Insofar as Jane is ideally rational, she will take pains to offset such lossiness before acting.
Ants? Yes, you could indeed choose not to have your brain reconfigured so as faithfully to access their subjective panic and distress. Likewise, a touchy-feely super-empathiser can choose not to have her brain reconfigured so she better understands of the formal, structural features of the world—or what it means to be a good Bayesian rationalist. But insofar as you aspire to be an ideal rational agent, then you must aspire to maximum representational fidelity to the first-person and the first-third facts alike. This is a constraint on idealised rationality, not a plea for us to be more moral—although yes, the ethical implications may turn out to be profound.
The Hedonistic Imperative? Well, I wrote HI in 1995. The Abolitionist Project (2007) (http://www.abolitionist.com) is shorter, more up-to-date, and (I hope) more readable. Of course, you don’t need to buy into my quirky ideas on ideal rationality or ethics to believe that we should use biotech and infotech to phase out the biology of suffering throughout the living world.
On a different note, I don’t know who’ll be around in London next month. But on May 11, there is a book launch of the Springer volume, “Singularity Hypotheses: A Scientific and Philosophical Assessment”:
http://www.meetup.com/London-Futurists/events/110562132/?a=co1.1_grp&rv=co1.1
I’ll be making the case for imminent biologically-based superintelligence. I trust there will be speakers to put the Kurzweilian and MIRI / lesswrong perspective. I fear a consensus may prove elusive. But Springer have a commissioned a second volume—perhaps to tie up any loose ends.
True Desrtopa. But just as doing mathematics is harder when mathematicians can’t agree on what constitutes a valid proof (cf. constructivists versus nonconstructivists), likewise formalising a normative account of ideal rational agency is harder where disagreement exists over the criteria of rationality.
Tim, when dreaming, one has a generic delusion, i.e. the background assumption that one is awake, and a specific delusion, i.e. the particular content of one’s dream. But given we’re constructing a FAQ of ideal rational agency, no such radical scepticism about perception is at stake - merely eliminating a source of systematic bias that is generic to cognitive agents evolved under pressure of natural selection. For sure, there may be some deluded folk who don’t recognise it’s a bias and who believe instead they really are the centre of the universe—and therefore their interests and preferences carry special ontological weight. But Luke’s FAQ is expressly about normative decision theory. The FAQ explicitly contrasts itself with descriptive decision theory, which “studies how non-ideal agents (e.g. humans) actually choose.”
Khafra, one doesn’t need to be a moral realist to give impartial weight to interests / preference strengths. Ideal rational agent Jill need no more be a moral realist in taking into consideration the stronger but introspectively inaccessible preferences of her slaves than she need be a moral realist taking into account the stronger but introspectively inaccessible preference of her namesake and distant successor Pensioner Jill not to be destitute in old age when weighing whether to raid her savings account. Ideal rationalist Jill does not mistake an epistemological limitation on her part for an ontological truth. Of course, in practice flesh-and-blood Jill may sometimes be akratic. But this, I think, is a separate issue.
khafra, could you clarify? On your account, who in a slaveholding society is the ideal rational agent? Both Jill and Jane want a comfortable life. To keep things simple, let’s assume they are both meta-ethical anti-realists. Both Jill and Jane know their slaves have an even stronger preference to be free—albeit not a preference introspectively accessible to our two agents in question. Jill’s conception of ideal rational agency leads her impartially to satisfy the objectively stronger preferences and free her slaves. Jane, on the other hand, acknowledges their preference is stronger—but she allows her introspectively accessible but weaker preference to trump what she can’t directly access. After all, Jane reasons, her slaves have no mechanism to satisfy their stronger preference for freedom. In other words, are we dealing with ideal rational agency or realpolitik? Likewise with burger-eater Jane and Vegan Jill today.
The issue of how an ideal rational agent should act is indeed distinct from the issue of what mechanism could ensure we become ideal rational agents, impartially weighing the strength of preferences / interests regardless of the power of the subject of experience who holds them. Thus if we lived in a (human) slave-owning society, then as white slave-owners we might “pragmatically” choose to discount the preferences of black slaves from our ideal rational decision theory. After all, what is the point of impartially weighing the “preferences” of different subjects of experience without considering the agent that holds / implements them? For our Slaveowners’ Decision Theory FAQ, let’s pragmatically order over agents by their ability to accomplish their goals, instead of by “rationality,” And likewise today with captive nonhuman animals in our factory farms ? Hmmm....
Pragmatic? khafra, possibly I interpreted the FAQ too literally. [“Normative decision theory studies what an ideal agent (a perfectly rational agent, with infinite computing power, etc.) would choose.”] Whether in practice a conception of rationality that privileges a class of weaker preferences over stronger preferences will stand the test of time is clearly speculative. But if we’re discussing ideal, perfectly rational agents - or even crude approximations to ideal perfectly rational agents—then a compelling case can be made for an impartial and objective weighing of preferences instead.
IlyaShpitser, you might perhaps briefly want to glance through the above discussion for some context [But don’t feel obliged; life is short!] The nature of rationality is a controversial topic in the philosophy of science (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions). Let’s just say if either epistemic or instrumental rationality were purely a question of maths, then the route to knowledge would be unimaginably easier.
Wedrifid, yes, if Schwitzgebel’s conjecture were true, then farewell to reductive physicalism and the ontological unity of science. The USA is a “zombie”. Its functionally interconnected but skull-bound minds are individually conscious; and sometimes the behaviour of the USA as a whole is amenable to functional description; but the USA not a unitary subject of experience. However, the problem with relying on this intuitive response is that the phenomenology of our own minds seems to entail exactly the sort of strong ontological emergence we’re excluding for the USA. Let’s assume, as microelectrode studies tentatively confirm, that individual neurons can support rudimentary experience. How can we rigorously derive bound experiential objects, let alone the fleeting synchronic unity of the self, from discrete, distributed, membrane-bound classical feature processors? Dreamless sleep aside, why aren’t we mere patterns of “mind dust”?
None of this might seem relevant to ChrisHallquist’s question. Computationally speaking, who cares whether Deep Blue, Watson, or Alpha Dog (etc) are unitary subjects of experience. But anyone who wants to save reductive reductive physicalism should at least consider why quantum mind theorists are prepared to contemplate a role for macroscopic quantum coherence in the CNS. Max Tegmark hasn’t refuted quantum mind; he’s made a plausible but unargued assumption, namely that sub-picosecond decoherence timescales are too short to do any computational and/or phenomenological work. Maybe so; but this assumption remains to be empirically tested. If all we find is “noise”, then I don’t see how reductive physicalism can be saved.