That pragmatic approach makes sense and helps me understand your view better. Thanks! I do feel like the consequences of suggesting objectivism for consciousness are more significant than for “living things,” “mountains,” and even terms that are themselves very important like “factory farming.”
Consequences being things like (i) whether we get wrapped up in the ineffability/hard problem/etc. such that we get distracted from the key question (for subjectivists) of “What are the mental things we care about, and which beings have those?” and (ii) in the particular case of small minds (e.g. insects, simple reinforcement learners), whether we try to figure out their mental lives based on objectivist speculation (which, for subjectivists, is misguided) or force ourselves to decide what the mental things we care about are, and then thoughtfully evaluate small minds on that basis. I think evaluating small minds is where the objective/subjective difference really starts to matter.
Also, to a less extent, (iii) how much we listen to “expert” opinion outside of just people who are very familiar with the mental lives of the being in question, and (iv) unknown unknowns and keeping a norm of intellectual honesty, which seems to apply more to discussions of consciousness than of mountains/etc.
That pragmatic approach makes sense and helps me understand your view better. Thanks! I do feel like the consequences of suggesting objectivism for consciousness are more significant than for “living things,” “mountains,” and even terms that are themselves very important like “factory farming.”
Consequences being things like (i) whether we get wrapped up in the ineffability/hard problem/etc. such that we get distracted from the key question (for subjectivists) of “What are the mental things we care about, and which beings have those?” and (ii) in the particular case of small minds (e.g. insects, simple reinforcement learners), whether we try to figure out their mental lives based on objectivist speculation (which, for subjectivists, is misguided) or force ourselves to decide what the mental things we care about are, and then thoughtfully evaluate small minds on that basis. I think evaluating small minds is where the objective/subjective difference really starts to matter.
Also, to a less extent, (iii) how much we listen to “expert” opinion outside of just people who are very familiar with the mental lives of the being in question, and (iv) unknown unknowns and keeping a norm of intellectual honesty, which seems to apply more to discussions of consciousness than of mountains/etc.