I may be misinterpreting your argument, but it sounds like it boils down to:
Given that we don’t know much about qualia, we can’t be confident that shrimp have qualia.
[implicit] Therefore, shrimp have an extremely low probability of having qualia.
Therefore, it’s ok to eat shrimp.
The jump from step 1 to step 2 looks like a mistake to me.
You also seemed to suggest (although I’m not quite sure whether you were actually suggesting this) that if a being cannot in principle describe its qualia, then it does not have qualia. I don’t see much reason to believe this to be true—it’s one theory of how qualia might work, but it’s not the only theory. And it would imply that, e.g., human stroke victims who are incapable of speech do not have qualia because they cannot, even in principle, talk about their qualia.
(I think there is a reasonable chance that I just don’t understand your argument, in which case I’m sorry for misinterpreting you.)
Nope, this is not my argument at all. Perhaps this comment can clarify the argument a bit.
I’m definitely not saying that a being that can’t describe qualia does not have qualia. I’m saying that if a being can describe qualia, we know this is caused by qualia somewhere in the causal structure. So we can be pretty sure that humans have qualia. But when our brains identify emotions in things, they can think that humans have qualia, and also that geometric shapes have qualia. When we look at humans and feel like they feel something, this feeling is probably correct, because humans would talk about qualia. When we look at other things, the feeling that other things feel something is no longer linked to a valid way of inferring that other things have qualia, and we need other evidence.
Seems to me like the case for the importance of verbal report as evidence may be overstated. If my friend looks and behaves like they are suffering (cringing, recoiling away, etc.), but says they are not, I would assume that they actually are suffering. I assume you would agree? That suggests that other forms of evidence are actually more important than talking about qualia.
The existence of a verbal report of qualia is strong evidence that the reporter has subjective experience (or someone they’ve learned to report this way from having subjective experience). I’m not talking about specific emotional states being reported
But you agree there are nonverbal humans who nonetheless probably have qualia, right? If you think their species indicates their capacities then I think you should take phylogenetic relatedness more seriously as a reason to expect similar mental experiences.
I wasn’t talking about the specific emotional state either. I think this example here casts some doubt on the idea that verbal report is the principal or only way that we come to believe that other humans have qualia.
But how can you assume that humans in general have qualia if all the talking about qualia tells you only that qualia exist somewhere in the causal structure? Maybe all talking about qualia derives from a single source? How would you know? For me, this seems to be a kind of a reductio ad absurdum for your entire line of argument.
Not sure I understand why is this a good reductio ad absurdum.
You know qualia exist somewhere in the causal structure. Sure, maybe the universe is a two-player game, and everyone else is played by a single party; or maybe we’re pranking ourselves, wrote scripts for everyone and erased our own memory or something. All of that is just far less likely than a normal universe.
The argument is that hearing others talk about qualia is extremely strong evidence for living in worlds where there’s qualia causing these talks; it makes more absurd worlds (like one with p-zombies who accidentally- like monkeys writing random letters- talk about something that describes your experience) unlikely, it doesn’t promote worlds that were strongly less likely than others
The key point that I am trying to make is that you seem to argue against our common sense understanding that animals are sentient because they are anatomically similar to us in many respects and also demonstrate behavior that we would expect sentient creatures to have. Rather you come up with your own elaborate requirements that you argue are necessary for a being able to say something about qualia in other beings but then at some point (maybe at the point where you feel comfortable with your conclusions) you stop following your own line of argument through to the end (i.e., qualia somewhere in the causal structure != other humans have qualia) and just revert back to “common sense”, which you have argued against just before as being insufficient in this case. So, your position seems somewhat selective and potentially self-serving with respect to supporting your own beliefs rather than intellectually superior to the common sense understanding.
I may be misinterpreting your argument, but it sounds like it boils down to:
Given that we don’t know much about qualia, we can’t be confident that shrimp have qualia.
[implicit] Therefore, shrimp have an extremely low probability of having qualia.
Therefore, it’s ok to eat shrimp.
The jump from step 1 to step 2 looks like a mistake to me.
You also seemed to suggest (although I’m not quite sure whether you were actually suggesting this) that if a being cannot in principle describe its qualia, then it does not have qualia. I don’t see much reason to believe this to be true—it’s one theory of how qualia might work, but it’s not the only theory. And it would imply that, e.g., human stroke victims who are incapable of speech do not have qualia because they cannot, even in principle, talk about their qualia.
(I think there is a reasonable chance that I just don’t understand your argument, in which case I’m sorry for misinterpreting you.)
Nope, this is not my argument at all. Perhaps this comment can clarify the argument a bit.
I’m definitely not saying that a being that can’t describe qualia does not have qualia. I’m saying that if a being can describe qualia, we know this is caused by qualia somewhere in the causal structure. So we can be pretty sure that humans have qualia. But when our brains identify emotions in things, they can think that humans have qualia, and also that geometric shapes have qualia. When we look at humans and feel like they feel something, this feeling is probably correct, because humans would talk about qualia. When we look at other things, the feeling that other things feel something is no longer linked to a valid way of inferring that other things have qualia, and we need other evidence.
I’ll add a TL;DR
Seems to me like the case for the importance of verbal report as evidence may be overstated. If my friend looks and behaves like they are suffering (cringing, recoiling away, etc.), but says they are not, I would assume that they actually are suffering. I assume you would agree? That suggests that other forms of evidence are actually more important than talking about qualia.
The existence of a verbal report of qualia is strong evidence that the reporter has subjective experience (or someone they’ve learned to report this way from having subjective experience). I’m not talking about specific emotional states being reported
But you agree there are nonverbal humans who nonetheless probably have qualia, right? If you think their species indicates their capacities then I think you should take phylogenetic relatedness more seriously as a reason to expect similar mental experiences.
I wasn’t talking about the specific emotional state either. I think this example here casts some doubt on the idea that verbal report is the principal or only way that we come to believe that other humans have qualia.
But how can you assume that humans in general have qualia if all the talking about qualia tells you only that qualia exist somewhere in the causal structure? Maybe all talking about qualia derives from a single source? How would you know? For me, this seems to be a kind of a reductio ad absurdum for your entire line of argument.
Not sure I understand why is this a good reductio ad absurdum.
You know qualia exist somewhere in the causal structure. Sure, maybe the universe is a two-player game, and everyone else is played by a single party; or maybe we’re pranking ourselves, wrote scripts for everyone and erased our own memory or something. All of that is just far less likely than a normal universe.
The argument is that hearing others talk about qualia is extremely strong evidence for living in worlds where there’s qualia causing these talks; it makes more absurd worlds (like one with p-zombies who accidentally- like monkeys writing random letters- talk about something that describes your experience) unlikely, it doesn’t promote worlds that were strongly less likely than others
The key point that I am trying to make is that you seem to argue against our common sense understanding that animals are sentient because they are anatomically similar to us in many respects and also demonstrate behavior that we would expect sentient creatures to have. Rather you come up with your own elaborate requirements that you argue are necessary for a being able to say something about qualia in other beings but then at some point (maybe at the point where you feel comfortable with your conclusions) you stop following your own line of argument through to the end (i.e., qualia somewhere in the causal structure != other humans have qualia) and just revert back to “common sense”, which you have argued against just before as being insufficient in this case. So, your position seems somewhat selective and potentially self-serving with respect to supporting your own beliefs rather than intellectually superior to the common sense understanding.