This kind of sounds like you’re thinking of pain as a sort of physical magnitude, like weight or charge.
Yes.
I’m more inclined towards functionalist interpretations of welfare
Which kind of functionalism? I am very sceptical of at least computational functionalism (CF). Any algorithm run by a digital computer can be executed with pen and paper (although it may take a super long time), and I have a hard time imagining how such process would itself be conscious.
In that case, you might be deeply skeptical that small animals have the right functional role at all, but once you grant they do, it is much more plausible that welfare ranges are similar to humans.
This assumes that the effect on welfare of having the right functional role is not moderated, or is only very weakly moderated, by physical quantities like the number of neurons (as in Bob’s book). I find this very counterintuitive. It implies that a human who is the size of a galaxy would have the same welfare as a normal human.
However, for my point to be right, I think you just need to treat these kinds of functionalist views as in the running. You don’t have to be confident that they’re true.
I agree. However, I think the weight of models which are practically not sensitive to physical quantities could be astronomically low. Mistakes like the one I illustrated above about gravitational force happen when the weights of models are guessed independently of their consequences. I suspect the variance in weights should not be that different from the variance in the consequences. For example, for welfare ranges of a) 10^-100, b) 10^-10, and c) 1, I would guess weights not that different from 1 on a), 10^-10 on b), and 10^-100 on c).
Which kind of functionalism? I am very sceptical of at least computational functionalism (CF). Any algorithm run by a digital computer can be executed with pen and paper (although it may take a super long time), and I have a hard time imagining how such process would itself be conscious.
I’m skeptical of functionalism about consciousness (though I don’t know any alternative that fares better.) But functionalism about valence seems much harder to avoid. Maybe if you have a benevolent God? Or some sort of dualism? Otherwise, it seems to me that you’re going to be hard-pressed to explain why it is that the functional role of valence aligns with whatever properties constitute the fact that valence matters. Why is it that pain is bad and we avoid it, or pleasure is good and we seek it, if it is not just the case that the things we’re inclined to avoid count as pain, and the things we’re inclined to seek count as pleasure (very roughly).
In case it helps, this is (super roughly!) how I think about some of these questions:
I think panpsychism fares much better than functionalism (generally). It seems odd to me that (many) (computational) functionalists seem OK with claims like “consciousness is simply what certain algorithms / information processing / etc. feel like from the inside” (especially given the arbritrariness of algorithms), yet struggle to see how consciousness could be what the fundamental fields of physics (or whatever is at the base layer of reality) feel like from the inside (those are not arbitrary).
More precisely, phenomenally bound minds like ours are what certain configurations of the fields of physics, and especially the EM field, feel like from the inside.
Though as Atai Barkai has very eloquently pointed out, simply stating that the fields of physics are made of qualia (~Russellian monism) does not automatically solve the phenomenal binding problem. But that’s a separate (IMO surmountable) problem (and Barkai gives one possible solution).
I currently think that the Symmetry Theory of Valence, despite being in its infancy, has more explanatory power and is more parsimonious than competing theories of pleasure and suffering.
Putting panpsychism and STV together paints this (admittedly hand-wavy) picture:
Any physical system has an associated valence, proportional to its degree of symmetry/asymmetry (consonance/dissonance).
In the case of human nervous systems, this could be the degree of dissonance present in the spectrum of EM waves that make up our world simulation; see here for more.
Evolution made use of this low-level fact about the universe to design organisms that feel pleasure when they do things aligned with their reproductive success (and the converse with suffering).
But this is an imperfect implementation that can be gamed. For example, we can feel lots of pleasure for reasons totally unrelated to our reproductive success (e.g. the jhanas or a good 5-MeO-DMT trip, which STV seems to predict / capture just fine: the phenomenal fields become simpler and more harmonious).
(Not surprisingly, this position is very QRI-informed.)
Yes.
Which kind of functionalism? I am very sceptical of at least computational functionalism (CF). Any algorithm run by a digital computer can be executed with pen and paper (although it may take a super long time), and I have a hard time imagining how such process would itself be conscious.
This assumes that the effect on welfare of having the right functional role is not moderated, or is only very weakly moderated, by physical quantities like the number of neurons (as in Bob’s book). I find this very counterintuitive. It implies that a human who is the size of a galaxy would have the same welfare as a normal human.
I agree. However, I think the weight of models which are practically not sensitive to physical quantities could be astronomically low. Mistakes like the one I illustrated above about gravitational force happen when the weights of models are guessed independently of their consequences. I suspect the variance in weights should not be that different from the variance in the consequences. For example, for welfare ranges of a) 10^-100, b) 10^-10, and c) 1, I would guess weights not that different from 1 on a), 10^-10 on b), and 10^-100 on c).
I’m skeptical of functionalism about consciousness (though I don’t know any alternative that fares better.) But functionalism about valence seems much harder to avoid. Maybe if you have a benevolent God? Or some sort of dualism? Otherwise, it seems to me that you’re going to be hard-pressed to explain why it is that the functional role of valence aligns with whatever properties constitute the fact that valence matters. Why is it that pain is bad and we avoid it, or pleasure is good and we seek it, if it is not just the case that the things we’re inclined to avoid count as pain, and the things we’re inclined to seek count as pleasure (very roughly).
In case it helps, this is (super roughly!) how I think about some of these questions:
I think panpsychism fares much better than functionalism (generally). It seems odd to me that (many) (computational) functionalists seem OK with claims like “consciousness is simply what certain algorithms / information processing / etc. feel like from the inside” (especially given the arbritrariness of algorithms), yet struggle to see how consciousness could be what the fundamental fields of physics (or whatever is at the base layer of reality) feel like from the inside (those are not arbitrary).
More precisely, phenomenally bound minds like ours are what certain configurations of the fields of physics, and especially the EM field, feel like from the inside.
Though as Atai Barkai has very eloquently pointed out, simply stating that the fields of physics are made of qualia (~Russellian monism) does not automatically solve the phenomenal binding problem. But that’s a separate (IMO surmountable) problem (and Barkai gives one possible solution).
I currently think that the Symmetry Theory of Valence, despite being in its infancy, has more explanatory power and is more parsimonious than competing theories of pleasure and suffering.
Putting panpsychism and STV together paints this (admittedly hand-wavy) picture:
Any physical system has an associated valence, proportional to its degree of symmetry/asymmetry (consonance/dissonance).
In the case of human nervous systems, this could be the degree of dissonance present in the spectrum of EM waves that make up our world simulation; see here for more.
Evolution made use of this low-level fact about the universe to design organisms that feel pleasure when they do things aligned with their reproductive success (and the converse with suffering).
But this is an imperfect implementation that can be gamed. For example, we can feel lots of pleasure for reasons totally unrelated to our reproductive success (e.g. the jhanas or a good 5-MeO-DMT trip, which STV seems to predict / capture just fine: the phenomenal fields become simpler and more harmonious).
(Not surprisingly, this position is very QRI-informed.)