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Comment by bumby | Hacker News Reader

I'm a bit out of my lane here so maybe somebody can jump in with a better understanding.

>what should the difference between you and your screwdriver be to me?

If we can't define consciousness, I can't prove to you that I'm not effectively an unconscious zombie.

We create social contracts based, in part, on empathy. I.e., I can estimate what it "feels like" to be you and therefore extend certain rights to you as a recognition of that subjective conscious experience. If you were simply an unconscious moist robut, there's nothing immoral about me subjugating you, or stomping on your foot, or anything else that relies on rights or subjective suffering.

So I'll assert the question back to you: since you can't prove I'm conscious, what prevents you from flippantly treating me just as you would a screwdriver?

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The biggest factor is that evolution made me to be a social creature. As a product of that evolution, I was also socialized to be empathic. Notion of consciousness is not necessary to create and explain morality.

BTW - We call people who will treat you like a screwdriver a psychopath (or bureaucrat :P). And people like that exists, they apparently do not estimate what it "feels like" to be you. Maybe because it does not feel anything like to be them? Or maybe consciousness is just property of existence and interaction, in the same way a color charge is a property of a quark, and so consciousness has nothing to do with high level behavior.

There are also people with lock-in syndrome. In most extreme cases they can not interact in any way besides maybe changing patterns of their brain activity in response to what's happening. We can try to establish trough contrived communication protocols if their responses make sense, sometimes just to ask if they even want to live like that.

There are also people in persistent vegetative state, where we are not be able to establish clear communication protocol. The whole thing is probably a multidimensional spectrum, depending on what damage these people suffered. So, it may be extremely hard to tell if they are aware and whether we should kill them / stop their life support or not.

Probably because most people don't care about consciousness and treat people like people if they can relate to them?

You said it yourself -- "we create social contracts based, in part, on empathy". As long as empathy works, we should be treating others nice.

Trying to replace simple and understandable things like "empathy" with vague "consciousness" leads to dangerous roads. One moment you are talking philosophy and next moment you are declaring beings you don't like as "unconscious zombie" and you are enslaving and subjugating them.

We're saying the same thing, I think. I'm just asserting that ideas like empathy are rooted in an understanding of subjective experience. I.e., they are based on the idea of consciousness, even if we struggle to define it. I would hope better definitions lead to more clarity, not less.

To build on your example, a robust definition of consciousness could prevent declaring someone an "unconscious zombie". The opposite may be true, however. It would potentially cause problems for lots of people if we could prove certain subjects (plants, for example) have subjective experience.

So you flippantly kill plants?

I do. I was just weeding my yard yesterday. To the same point, we generally don't have reservations about that because we don't ascribe them moral value. As I understand it, even the environmental protections for endangered plants are based in the plant's potential utility for humans, not their inherent moral value.

Life has no value for you? Plants aren't inert and defend themselves from harm.

Given enough reason it's legal to kill humans too. Sometimes it's mandatory, e.g. at war, when utility of murder is more important than their inherent moral value.

>Life has no value for you?

Sure. And, while I know you're just trying to communicate a different stance it borders on straw-manning.

It's not that life has no value. I know there are some ideologies that don't think any life (including plants) should be harmed [1], most forms of animal life (including humans) are predicated on other life forms dying for them to continue. To me, the more relevant concern regarding this conversation is 'suffering' not 'life'. To that end, if we can define consciousness and use that to defend the position that plants have subjective experience and suffer, I would probably stop weeding my yard.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa_in_Jainism

Your inability to understand murder is relevant. Law imposes punishment even when one didn't harm anyone, and you happily kill living beings.

I can’t tell if you’re trolling or playing devils advocate. Murder, by definition, is the act of killing another human being. So it comes across as if you don’t understand the term. Law makes distinctions in this regard, as well as intent, as law is a reflection of our ethics and morals.

In your eyes, is intent all that matters? Your life results in the death of other living beings; how should you be held accountable for that fact?

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