Sorry, I donât see the mixing up of two senses of mattering and donât understand your example.
Good point about weighing preferences. Yes, you can have a multidimensional goal function, as a landscape, where different directions (preferences) have different slopes (strengths). (Picture a consumer choice diagram used in microeconomics, with indifference curves.) But in this context, with strength I ment the amount of amplification of a signal. The preference to avoid a strong pain is stronger than the preference to avoid a slight pain, because the pain signal of the strong pain is more strongly amplified to get my attention.
Maybe I misunderstood it as an argument for seeing preferences as a terminal value. I think almost all theories would agree âthis theory matters in some senseâ but I can imagine many ethical theories that do not see âbelieving in this moral theoryâ as either good or bad, each for different reasons. Hedonic utilitarianism, as an example of a consequentialist theory, does not see âbelieving in hedonic utilitarianismâ as inherently valuableâdepending on the consequences of believing it, it might even recommend not believing it in some contextsâwhile still positing hedonism itself is true. For a nihilist, ânihilism itselfâ probably does not matter morally but it does âmatterâ in terms of its alleged explanatory power.
You could see the luminosity itself as a factor that moderates the intensity of the signal to grow. But there also seem to be many internal processes that moderate the intensity of signals processed by plants: AI points me to a barley study where stress-related calcium signals varied by stimulus, dose, and tissue (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov). It still doesnât require an attention schemaâi.e. weighted preferences donât imply consciousness (at least under your conception of preferences and Grazianoâs of consciousness, as I understand them).
Good points, I think I know what you are trying to say. My idea is incomplete or perhaps wrong. Perhaps having a representation of the attention becomes important, but if so, why? Iâll have to think further about this. Thanks
Sorry, I donât see the mixing up of two senses of mattering and donât understand your example.
Good point about weighing preferences. Yes, you can have a multidimensional goal function, as a landscape, where different directions (preferences) have different slopes (strengths). (Picture a consumer choice diagram used in microeconomics, with indifference curves.) But in this context, with strength I ment the amount of amplification of a signal. The preference to avoid a strong pain is stronger than the preference to avoid a slight pain, because the pain signal of the strong pain is more strongly amplified to get my attention.
Maybe I misunderstood it as an argument for seeing preferences as a terminal value. I think almost all theories would agree âthis theory matters in some senseâ but I can imagine many ethical theories that do not see âbelieving in this moral theoryâ as either good or bad, each for different reasons. Hedonic utilitarianism, as an example of a consequentialist theory, does not see âbelieving in hedonic utilitarianismâ as inherently valuableâdepending on the consequences of believing it, it might even recommend not believing it in some contextsâwhile still positing hedonism itself is true. For a nihilist, ânihilism itselfâ probably does not matter morally but it does âmatterâ in terms of its alleged explanatory power.
You could see the luminosity itself as a factor that moderates the intensity of the signal to grow. But there also seem to be many internal processes that moderate the intensity of signals processed by plants: AI points me to a barley study where stress-related calcium signals varied by stimulus, dose, and tissue (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov). It still doesnât require an attention schemaâi.e. weighted preferences donât imply consciousness (at least under your conception of preferences and Grazianoâs of consciousness, as I understand them).
Good points, I think I know what you are trying to say. My idea is incomplete or perhaps wrong. Perhaps having a representation of the attention becomes important, but if so, why? Iâll have to think further about this. Thanks