we donât think anyone really believes it for empirical reasons
Arguably every view on consciousness hinges on (controversial) non-empirical premises, right? You can tell me every third-person fact there is to know about the neurobiology, behavior, etc. of various species, and itâs still an open question how to compare the subjective severity of animal Aâs experience X to animal Bâs experience Y. So itâs not clear to me what makes the non-empirical premises (other than hedonism and unitarianism) behind the welfare ranges significantly less speculative than Conscious Subsystems. (To be clear, I donât see much reason yet to be confident in Conscious Subsystems myself. My worry is that I donât have much reason to be confident in the other possible non-empirical premises either.)
Sorry if this is addressed elsewhere in the post/âsequence!
Fair, but there are degrees here, right? Some hypotheses are fairly tightly tied to empirical evidence while others involve many more speculative premises.
But as I said, totally makes sense to want an all-in estimate. Iâve been thinking about how to do that and hope to have something concrete to say eventually.
Makes sense, thanks. I think I just want to highlight that hypotheses that are âtightly tied to empirical evidenceâ still do sneak in some non-empirical premises, mostly about how to do induction, though of course some such premises can be more controversial than others. (Related post.)
If what you mean to say is something like the following, Iâm sympathetic: Conscious Subsystems is more speculative in the sense that it violates Occamâs razor â weâre positing lots of extra minds we can never verify. Whereas, a principle like âif two animalsâ pain-related brain regions have the same neuron-firing rate, we should expect the intensity of their suffering to be the same all else equalâ seems privileged by Occam, even if we canât empirically verify this either.
((ETA: Feel free to ignore if the above misses your point, I donât mean to put words in your mouth!) I might quibble about how we cash out âall else equal.â In practice, Iâd think we donât have nearly fine-grained enough neurobiological evidence to apply that principle. So Iâd worry that many of our inferences about comparisons of suffering intensity hinge on somewhat arbitrary judgment calls.)
Thanks for explaining!
Arguably every view on consciousness hinges on (controversial) non-empirical premises, right? You can tell me every third-person fact there is to know about the neurobiology, behavior, etc. of various species, and itâs still an open question how to compare the subjective severity of animal Aâs experience X to animal Bâs experience Y. So itâs not clear to me what makes the non-empirical premises (other than hedonism and unitarianism) behind the welfare ranges significantly less speculative than Conscious Subsystems. (To be clear, I donât see much reason yet to be confident in Conscious Subsystems myself. My worry is that I donât have much reason to be confident in the other possible non-empirical premises either.)
Sorry if this is addressed elsewhere in the post/âsequence!
Fair, but there are degrees here, right? Some hypotheses are fairly tightly tied to empirical evidence while others involve many more speculative premises.
But as I said, totally makes sense to want an all-in estimate. Iâve been thinking about how to do that and hope to have something concrete to say eventually.
Makes sense, thanks. I think I just want to highlight that hypotheses that are âtightly tied to empirical evidenceâ still do sneak in some non-empirical premises, mostly about how to do induction, though of course some such premises can be more controversial than others. (Related post.)
If what you mean to say is something like the following, Iâm sympathetic: Conscious Subsystems is more speculative in the sense that it violates Occamâs razor â weâre positing lots of extra minds we can never verify. Whereas, a principle like âif two animalsâ pain-related brain regions have the same neuron-firing rate, we should expect the intensity of their suffering to be the same all else equalâ seems privileged by Occam, even if we canât empirically verify this either.
((ETA: Feel free to ignore if the above misses your point, I donât mean to put words in your mouth!) I might quibble about how we cash out âall else equal.â In practice, Iâd think we donât have nearly fine-grained enough neurobiological evidence to apply that principle. So Iâd worry that many of our inferences about comparisons of suffering intensity hinge on somewhat arbitrary judgment calls.)
Thanks for the productive exchange!