The “hard problem” of suffering
If Chalmer’s hard problem of consciousness does not exist, then there is no difference between a living human body suffering and a computer built to imitate all happenings and behaviours of suffering. As there is nobody suffering inside a computer, no matter how complex it is, the same way we have no evidence that somebody is suffering inside a body showing alarm signs of suffering.
Nobody would say that we should protect computers from violence; why should we protect humans from violence, if nobody is suffering inside a suffering body? A suffering human body can be interpreted just like the frog’s legs in Galvani’s experiment. We act against violence on animals; would anybody act against violence on dead animals whose body is still able to show reactions?
Now, this seems like a blakmail, or a Catch 22 situation: if you say that something like the “I”, the subject, the self, does not exist, then you are indirectly supporting violence, even if you say explicitly that you are against violence and you will always do everything possible to act against violence. On the other hand, if you say that somebody is suffering inside a suffering body, then you are saying that we need to agree that something, that science is absolutely unable to prove, exists and, as a consequence, needs to be explored, studied, cultivated, discussed. The problem is that, for these discussions, studies and explorations, we won’t have any evidence, any objective material to work on, so that the whole matter is highly exposed to a lot of discretion; I mean: everybody will be able to say anything about it and we will have no serious material to work on. This can explain also the hard, never ending, debates about abortion.
I think that philosophy needs to face this challenge: what, better than philosophy, can be able to face it? At the moment, I think the only way to manage this question is a permanent research, discussion, study, that most probably must never be considered closed. I mean, I think the solution is exactly not stopping discussions, while, on the opposite side, the root of the problem is not violence, but when we close, or look for closing, discussions.
Nobody would say that we should protect computers from violence; why should we protect humans from violence, if nobody is suffering inside a suffering body? A suffering human body can be interpreted just like the frog’s legs in Galvani’s experiment. We act against violence on animals; would anybody act against violence on dead animals whose body is still able to show reactions?
Now, this seems like a blakmail, or a Catch 22 situation: if you say that something like the “I”, the subject, the self, does not exist, then you are indirectly supporting violence, even if you say explicitly that you are against violence and you will always do everything possible to act against violence. On the other hand, if you say that somebody is suffering inside a suffering body, then you are saying that we need to agree that something, that science is absolutely unable to prove, exists and, as a consequence, needs to be explored, studied, cultivated, discussed. The problem is that, for these discussions, studies and explorations, we won’t have any evidence, any objective material to work on, so that the whole matter is highly exposed to a lot of discretion; I mean: everybody will be able to say anything about it and we will have no serious material to work on. This can explain also the hard, never ending, debates about abortion.
I think that philosophy needs to face this challenge: what, better than philosophy, can be able to face it? At the moment, I think the only way to manage this question is a permanent research, discussion, study, that most probably must never be considered closed. I mean, I think the solution is exactly not stopping discussions, while, on the opposite side, the root of the problem is not violence, but when we close, or look for closing, discussions.
Comments (84)
:snicker:
However, this realization, speaking only for myself, doesn't diminish the suffering I have to bear. I don't feel better about someone belittling me in public just because I happen to know that I am in illusion, an accident of circumstances, having no real essence and so on. In short, there is no self, doesn't necessarily imply there is no suffering.
Did I miss the point of the OP? :chin:
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
We suffer, therefore I am.
:death: :flower:
This is probably true.
Quoting M777
I think this is probably not true.
This is exactly the point of my question: if there is no self, who is suffering?
I think that, even about animals, when we think that they suffer, we are assigning to them at least some degree of “self”.
Quoting Angelo Cannata
Saying that the hard problem doesn't exist isn't the same as saying consciousness, in the sense that suffering is an aspect of consciousness, doesn't exist.
On a separate note, there is a case to be made that a computer built to imitate human conscious behavior seamlessly and completely is conscious. Not sure where I come down on that. This brings us into the land of P-zombies, which drives me crazy.
Quoting Angelo Cannata
I think I understand what eastern philosophies mean when they say that the self is an illusion. It's a useful way of looking at things. There are times when I can even experience things that way. On the other hand, most of the time it's me sitting here typing. Doing things the good old fashioned Amurican, western way. As the Beatles sang - "All I can hear, I me mine, I me mine, I me mine. Even those tears, I me mine, I me mine, I me mine."
Quoting Angelo Cannata
Science doesn't prove things exist, it shows they can be measured in a rigorous, repeatable way. If we call that "existence," which is not unreasonable, then the self exists as much as gravity, electrons, and popcorn.
Quoting Angelo Cannata
Of course we have evidence. I can report my personal experience of my self - suffering, thinking, awareness, happiness - everything that people experience. I can get similar reports from lots of different people. I can't use my eyes to see a self directly, but that's true of many things - electrons, x-rays, gravity... Maybe you don't think the evidence for selfhood is very good. I disagree.
Quoting Angelo Cannata
Maybe, logically, we shouldn't care about other people's suffering for the reason you've given. Fact is, though, we do. For most of us empathy is part of our standard equipment. It's built in. For most of us, caring about other people is important. That's a value. Values are not generally rational or logical, not to say they are irrational or illogical. If this computer you're discussing can perfectly simulate suffering and perfectly simulate empathy, then we're really talking.
We need to tread carefully....these are treacherous waters.
You might want to take a closer look at what we mean by self.
Is there any significance to your use of 'we' rather than 'I'? You may have just been careless, or it may have been deliberate.
Philosophy, instead, either from a metaphysical point of view, or from what I think is like the current scientific drift of philosophy, needs definitions, clarity, evidence, logic, consistency. Even nihilists or postmodern thinkers need some kind of clear context where to put questions. This is where Chalmer’s hard problem, or my modification of it by referring to suffering, becomes a challenge.
It seems to me that, in the context of philosophy, not just humanity, however we define the self, we are in the Catch 22 situation: if the self is something clear, then we are like machines with some kind of particular phenomenon that we can call “self”, that, as such, can be referred even to computers properly made; in this case we have the challenge of agreeing that a machine can suffer and, as such, can deserve empathy, fighting for its rights, even making laws to punish those who make violence against computers. In the opposite case, if the self is unclear, then there is not anywhere anybody suffering, so there is no philosophical need to defend the rights of oppressed people.
There are two ways to dismiss Chalmer’s hard problem. The first is to solve it by making materiality primary and declaring humans to be complex machines. Dan Dennett holds to this view. I think that even though for him a conscious self is just an artifact , a convenient function, he would still argue that humans operate on the basis of complex motivational systems that computers currently lack, but that eventually we will be able to construct machines with such systems , and those machines es will indeed be capable of ‘suffering’.
The second way to do away with the hard problem is to dissolve it. This is the approach of phenomenology and postmodern theories. For them bodily and social
systems of differential drives , values and affects, what e than materiality, are fundamental and irreducible a prioris. This makes suffering intrinsic to reality, even without a constituting ‘self’.
This seems dogmatic, which is, a truth without explanation, which, as such, is quite different from postmodern thought.
As I noted, I think selfhood has sufficient definition, clarity, evidence, logic, and consistency to be considered real, existent.
Levinas writes:
“Suffering qua suffering is but a concrete and quasi-sensible manifestation of the non-integratable, the non-justifiable. The `quality' of evil is this very non-integratability...In the appearing of evil, in its original phenomenality, in its quality, is announced a modality, a manner: not finding a place, the refusal of all accomodation with..., a counter-nature, a monstrosity, what is disturbing and foreign of itself. And in this sense transcendence!"(TE180)
Heidegger writes of Nietzsche’s
Zarathustra:
“Zarathustra invokes his ultimate recesses and so conducts himself to himself. He becomes what he is and confesses himself to be the one who he is: "the advocate of life, the advocate of suffering, the advocate of the circle." Living, suffering, and circling are not three distinct matters. They belong together and form one: being as a whole, to which suffering, the abyss, belongs and which is inasmuch as, circling it recurs”
Does the self have a core that remains self-identical
over time , or is it always a slightly new and different self that come back to itself minute to minute , day to day? Have you read Varela and Thompson’s ‘The Embodoed Mind’? There , they use neuropsychological evidence to make the argument that there is only a contingent center of agency, and that the organism is a community of temporary selves.
I think both are good ways of looking at things, depending on the situation. When I'm dealing with people on a day to day basis, of course it makes sense for me to think of them as having a consistent identity. On the other hand, as @Angelo Cannata and others have noted, in some situations it may make sense to think of the self as changeable or even non-existent.
How does one deal with addictions in the light of this? Surely the need to gamble or use substances - even if just for psychological reasons - should be temporary?
Quoting Tom Storm
This article may help give a sense of how a ‘groundless’, embodied self forms addictions.
“The enactive account of addiction is a nonreductive, naturalistic model that views addictive processes (e.g
craving, mental obsessions, abnormal reactions) as “dynamic and embedded interactions” (McGann et al. 2013, 203) between IWEA ( individuals who experience addiction)and their environment.1 Addiction is not seen as residing in IWEA, but “as emerging, existing dynamically in the relationship between [IWEA] and their surroundings, including other agents” (203). Such a model of addiction “groups central concepts (such as action, sense, and agency) in the autonomous organization of [IWEA] and their value-laden, meaningful engagements with their environment” (203).
Two analogies, borrowed from McGann et al. (2013), may be useful. For example, a handshake does not exist except during its enaction. With the enactive approach, the same is true of addiction—it is “intrinsically relational and dynamic in nature” (McGann et al. 2013)
A dance endures “only while the dancers continue to act, and is defined by the coordination, the mutual sensitivity, and reciprocal influence between the dancers and the music” (203). With enaction, addiction “is a dynamically constituted process and, like a dance, or a handshake, should be studied and understood in dynamic, contextualized terms”
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nicholas-Zautra/publication/285747009_Embodiment_Interaction_and_Experience_Toward_a_Comprehensive_Model_in_Addiction_Science/links/5820c24608aea429b29bc06f/Embodiment-Interaction-and-Experience-Toward-a-Comprehensive-Model-in-Addiction-Science.pdf?origin=publication_detail
I wonder how they account for continuity. Maybe I should read it ...
What Chalmer is trying to do as a scientist does not dissolve the use of the "I." Isn't the immediacy of experience a given quality in the discussion?
We have other experiences that serve as evidence in scientific inquiry. For instance, when we try to understand why certain things hurt, it doesn't make the hurt less like hurt to treat it as a result of a process. There is a considerable difference between being able to explain some of a phenomenon and explaining it away.
:fire:
There's a connection between suffering and self-awareness. When suffering we feel most alone and being so isolated, one naturally drifts towards metacognition.
Happiness, on the other hand, tends to be a group affair and one's sense of self is lost in the joyous crowd so to speak.
Our evolutionary history is one consecrated to Algos (the lord of pain) and that explains why we're self-aware, unlike other animals.
I don't think this is a necessary response. In suffering I often feel most connected to others and reminded of a process that ends in death - a unifying feature all living creatures share.
Misery loves company - the loneliness of suffering is obvious/evident, oui?
No. :wink:
Why do you feel connected?
I don't think you're right about this.
Generally because I seek comfort and receive it - friends, family, care professionals. Because suffering is something we all share. Comfort and privilege is something fewer share.
But having worked with people in palliative care (often dying from excruciating illnesses) there are a few things I've seen regularly that seem to contradict commonly held views. 1) dying is often done with family and friends and is often the first time people have felt connected to others in many years. This feedback I've heard too often to ignore. But sure, it's not true for everyone. 2) People with faith often turn away from their beliefs as they die. But this is a separate subject.
Quoting Agent Smith
That's because the idea challenges you. That's ok.
Well, I wanted an argument from you refuting my claim.
Thank you for explaining. You were referring to death, not other kinds of suffering.
Quoting Agent Smith
Best I can do is above already. You just have to trust my experience of this and what I have seen. I don't mind at all if you don't believe me.
Except in depression, which is epitomized by a sense of isolation from others. Physical pain and grief can also isolate.
Matthew Ratcliffe has written extensively about experiences of depression:
“Even more troubling is the loss of emotional connectedness to other people that features in almost every account. The loneliness that sufferers describe is not a contingent form of isolation that might be remedied by a change in social circumstances; one feels irrevocably estranged from the rest of humanity. Elizabeth Wurtzel describes herself as “a stranger in town and on earth” (1996, p.142), and Tracy Thompson writes, “I wanted a connection I couldn't have. [. . . .] The blankness might not even be obvious to others. But on our side of that severed connection, it was hell, a life lived behind glass” (1995, pp.199–200). Absolutely central to depression is the need for a kind of interpersonal relatedness that at the same time presents itself as impossible.”
Quoting Tom Storm
That's a gross oversimplification; as if the only choice were between Dennett and Heidegger.
Why?
This is too fast a step. It is not obvious that the notion of "what it is like" consciousness is coherent, nor that it is impossible for a sufficiently complex artificial organism of some sort to suffer; and to claim that we have "no evidence that somebody is suffering inside a body showing alarm signs of suffering" is reprehensible - of course you can see when someone is suffering.
I never said it can't also do this. :smile: Note Joshs' words 'can also' not 'always'. This is not a black and white world (no matter what some Republicans imagine). :razz:
Quoting Agent Smith
This is inconsistent with my understanding and life experience, Smith. Suffering entails solicitude; self-awareness – "metacognition" – emerges, I think, in early childhood from the perceived interval – wait – between suffering and amelioration, between need (cry) and relief (care). Natal-dependence/vulnerability undeniably, it seems to me, reinforces both 'eusociality' – reciprocal empathy – and, in certain higher mammals, a 'theory of mind' :point: .
"Happiness" like this is the exception to the exception. Suffering is the rule of our species and other mammals and any lucid existentialist, whinging antinatalist or devout Xtian "sinner" will tell you so, mi amigo. Besides, what can be more self-centered – ego-fetishistic-aggrandizing – than the orgiastic? :yum:
Well, there's a whole lot of things science cannot prove, nor even sensibly talk about, which we take for granted:
Literature, the arts, issues pertaining to the will and much else.
We may find some very general and not very interesting suggestions in art by arguing that we like certain symmetries in objects. That doesn't say too much.
Science doesn't really say why Shakespeare or [insert favorite author here] was a genius. Nevertheless, we need not abandon rationality when talking about this and go to mysticism.
There very much are "edge-cases" such as the issue of the self, free will and object constancy that can be somewhat studied, or denied, marginalized or ignored. We have no choice but to deal with them in real life however.
Included in all this is suffering in general: it's very hard to measure. No one doubts it exists.
Would you agree that most living philosophers accept the hard problem in some form? Maybe the conflict is over whether it is solvable at all?
I haven't seen a poll of professional philosophers in relation to this question, so I can't vouch that "most living philosophers" accept the hard problem as stated.
I'd very slightly change the formulation and instead say that the so called "hard problem", has generated of a lot of literature in contemporary philosophy.
You ask 10 different philosophers, and you'll get 10 different replies. Some take it to be solvable, others don't.
Personally, I side with those who think that it is not solvable in a manner in which we would like the answer to be, namely, to explain how matter produces experience.
Much more importantly, in my view, is that it is only one of many "hard problems". We've gotten so used to accepting these problems, that they don't bother us anymore: gravity was hard problem for Newton, motion was a problem for Locke and Hume and many others, the identity of objects is a hard problem going back to Heraclitus, and so on.
What makes you pessimistic?
It's too long to explain here again (I've discussed this too much here), there is a thread I started in which I shared an essay by Chomsky that explains the reasons why.
Besides Chomsky: Locke, Hume, Reid, Kant and up to Russell, share similar intuitions. In a nutshell, we have quite a rigid nature that allows us to pose some questions to nature, but not others. We can ask all kinds of questions, some which may be well posed, of which we have no inkling of an answer.
No one doubts all biological creatures have rigid natures: dogs, dolphins, birds, etc. Why would we be the exception to this rule? Sure, we are vastly more intelligent and unique than any other animal, by a lot, but we don't have an advanced alien civilization to which we could compare ourselves.
I think it's a matter of human cognitive limitation and being epistemologically realistic, not pessimistic.
I think that is a good way to illustrate the problem. Imagine a checklist of all the characteristics that pain has. What if you went down that list, one trait at a time, and programmed all those traits into an artificial being? Conventional wisdom would say "it doesn't matter, because that isn't real suffering". But to the one experiencing the suffering, it's not important how they arrived at this state of pain. If you trick something into believing it is experiencing pain, that is still pain as we know it.
Well, that's the wrong question, right? And a scientific (explanatory) problem, in fact, not a philosophical (descriptive, interpretive) question? :chin:
Yep, that's the complete picture in my humble opinion. Self-awareness has something to do with hedonism, not just suffering but the whole enchilada (sorrow and joy).
However, again with some reservations, I feel that suffering is a more effective method of inducing metacognition than happiness; it usually is the case that the stick is better at making you think about your own welfare than the carrot.
Danke, Herr 180 Proof.
We need some statistics: Isolation cells are not all that popular among inmates I hear.
That's the hard problem.
I suppose it depends who you ask.
One could explain it in terms of which areas in the brain are directly responsible for consciousness (frontal lobe, etc., etc.). Maybe we'll find which areas are strictly necessary for this.
How to interpret this, would be difficult. But the distinction between science and philosophy on this topic is more slippery than in other areas, I think.
Sure. No one knowns what the future may hold. We have different intuitions on this and it's not possible to say who will end up being correct.
As I'm not a scientist, I can't speak from science's standpoint, only from a living being's standpoint. It's a sentiment, a living being's sympathy, universal enough that it has become a norm, an agreement. "I realize I would suffer in a certain situation, so I consider another in such a situation is suffering, too. I want to live, so I consider another wants the same, too. Since we are all 'alive', that is." Many I's would become we. Enough we's, it'd be everyone. It would become a truth.
"Why should we protect humans from violence, if nobody is suffering inside a suffering body?" First, here we must understand what "nobody" - or "somebody" - is. The life inside the body? The "soul"? Or a "consciousness"? To me, knowing inside that body is a life just like mine, I would think that life wants the same thing I want, to not suffer. Then, the question, "why should we protect humans from violence?" is quite hard to answer. Why shouldn't we? Who are we, every human being on earth? How do we protect, with laws, force, all means? Reality has shown that different people would act differently in such a situation. Some would rush to help another, some would just let another suffer. Each has their own reason, so there won't be one answer to this question that will apply to everyone.
Death must exist to entertain killing in some video games, whether or not it must exist in material form is a different matter, but the fact death is material, is beneficent, again, to apt minds- who find homage in a closer sense of death.
Suffering in particular areas(such as vision) is good. The morbid downside of life is not suffering but how inconcise the universe is.
It's not really about suffering, but our awareness of suffering. In what ways are we aware of suffering and how does that differ from actual suffering? What form does the awareness of suffering take as opposed to actual suffering? It seems that there can be one without the other. For instance, I can be aware of your suffering but not suffering myself. As a matter of fact, some people can take pleasure in others' suffering.
The observation of others' suffering takes a different form than my own suffering. From my perspective, others' suffering is a "physical" state (ie they cry, moan, pout, etc,). For myself, it's a mental state. I don't need to be aware of the "physical" state of my body to know that I am suffering. I can close my eyes and still be aware of my own suffering. This is not the case for others' suffering and this is essentially the hard problem - which is more about awareness of states-of-affairs and what form that awareness takes, and why it is different to be aware of others' suffering as opposed to our own suffering.
So, you think that suffering can exist without awareness of it? I don’t think so. I think that suffering is possible exclusively in proportion to awareness: if awareness is 100, suffering is 100, if 50, 50, if awareness is 0, suffering is 0. The medical practice of anaestesia is scientific evidence of it. So, there is absolutely no difference between “actual suffering” and “awareness of suffering”. Suffering without awareness can produce body reactions, but these body reactions are not suffering: when only the body is suffering, nobody is suffering: when doctors are operating your body and you are totally under anaestesia, nobody is suffering. We can see that animals have degree of awareness as well and it is possible to practice anaestesia on animals as well. This seems to me scientific evidence hard to deny.
You psychoanalyzed me señor! I'm most obliged.
Then what is it that suffers?
Quoting Angelo Cannata
If I break my arm, I am aware of the pain. In being aware of the pain, I am aware of my injury. You seem to be saying that I suffer because I am aware of the pain, not because I am in pain. To say that when the body is suffering no one is suffering, are you saying that you are not your body? What is it that you are referring to when you say, "you"? Are you referring to your body, brain, mind, soul, or what?
And the good question award goes to none other than Harry Hindu!
When I say “I”, I am referring to my subjective experience of feeling “I”, that, since it is subjective, is impossible to prove, otherwise it would become objective. So, I cannot say that I am my body, because this would make the meaning of “I” something objective.
I experience that my subjective feeling of “I” is connected, dependent, on some objective things: my body, external events, a lot of things, but “connected” and “dependent” does not mean that it is just an objective result of these elements.
I can put, for a moment, myself in a materialistic, scientific perspective, so that I understand that, for other people, I am just an object: they have no way to enter my subjectivity. But, when I put myself in the perspective coming from my inner experience of myself, which is the perspective of my subjectivity, it becomes impossible to me to reduce my experience of “I” to something objective. I feel my experience of my subjectivity as something undeniable to me; undeniable not because I am able to give evidence of it to myself. I cannot prove my subjectivity even to myself. I feel it undeniable because I feel myself inside it, it is a feeling; it cannot be anything more than feeling, otherwise it would be objective and provable.
I would say i psychoanalyzed us, we humans, I wouldn't know your psychology from Schrödinger's cat's. Or is that cats'.
I disagree. You're conflating the idea of not simply "going along with the flow" and accepting suffering or violence or most importantly lack of innovation to prevent undesirable things as some sort of negative attribute. All while using the very same technology and innovation that solely exists as evidence to the contrary to spread your archaic and frankly barbaric and animalistic views of humanity. It's easy not to give a crap about someone or something else not immediately relevant to you. When did this become "brave" or even positive? This I believe you should look into. That or flee from. Though perhaps for the good of advancement of humanity it's best you stay right where you're at. It'll all be fine. At least, you will live and whatever else by your own proclaimed code. No one could possibly be blamed.
:lol:
3[sup]rd[/sup] person perspective.
1. My soul
2. My body
3. My brain
4. My mind
5. My dog
Compare 1, 2, 3, & 4 to 5
I'm not my dog. Surely then
1. I'm not my soul
2. I'm not my body
3. I'm not my brain
4. I'm not my mind
We also say
1[sup]st[/sup] person perspective
1. I'm thinking
2. I'm suffering
Who/what am I?
You misjudge me. I'm not looking for an award. I'm looking for an answer.
It seems to me that suffering is the awareness of being in pain. I'm not sure if any of it is voluntary. We have an injury, we have pain and we have an awareness of the injury via pain. Pain is the information while we are the informed and the injury is what we are informed of. There should be a difference in behavior between a p-zombie burning its hand on a hot stove vs. a human burning its hand on a hot stove because the p-zombie would never be informed its hand is burning on the hot stove.
Shut up and accept the trophy! :smile:
:snicker:
The being suffers and it manifests that in a lot of various ways. What other evidence shoulld we expect?
How do you mean "somebody" inside a body? A spirit or soul? Impossible. If you believe in the duality of body-spirit, the spirit can be inside the boyd as well as outside. What other entity can exist in a body?
Quoting Angelo Cannata
Aren't virus attacks on computers acts of violence, esp. malware? Shouldn't we protect them from such attacks?
I'm sorry --and I don't like having to say this-- but your assumptions/propositions/statements lack foundation and sense.
This is where I do my bit and say that 'you' are the thing that gets in trouble if 'you' break the rules. Or gets a Scooby snack when 'you' are a good boy. 'You' have to give reasons for what you say is true or for the weird thing you got caught doing. ('I' am caught up basically in the same play, of course, so I'm using the second person when I could be using the first.)
I say this from a perspective that emphasizes that 'you' is a mark/noise traded according to mostly tacit and always evolving rules by curiously inventive monkeys on the third rock from the sun. These monkeys, like other animals, are hungry and horny, and useful and dangerous to one another. So the 'game' of these marks and noises is primarily about organizing the cooperative and occasionally warlike monkey lifestyle. We are the monkeys who make promises. It's evolution, baby.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDaOgu2CQtI
"I am the first mammal to make plans."
IME, you / we are the kind of What which deludes itself that it's also a Who in order to deny to itself that it's nothing but a (strange looping) What. :eyes:
We must do what we can to survive; it has to do with joy and suffering.
Well put !
I was reading Brandom on Kant and something 'obvious' moved to the foreground for me. The metaphysical status of the self is secondary. We could debate about it endlessly. But we who would be debating would be those ethical entities you mention, justifying our claims and demanding that others do so. And we of course remember which little boys have cried wolf, an we gauge the reliability of statements according to the evaluated credulousness or creditability of the claimant. Scorekeeping.
That sounds right to me. The self is a virtual or conventional or ethical entity.